Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mikegreenberg 5164 days ago
Hiya! Sorry it took a bit. (I've been fighting with taxes.) So...

- Signup: I was a little surprised when it sent me directly to Dropbox to signin. I thought it was an error, but realized it was asking me to signin so I could authenticate your service. Then I authenticated and was faced with your price. I don't think this is the right way to do it. I know you're trying to test the viability of your product (separate from your price) but I think there's more going on here.

First, you didn't warn me about a price with the exception of mentioning a "subscription" and a 7-day guarantee. Waiting until after authorization frustrates me because if I didn't want to signup, now I have to go back to dropbox and cancel my authorization there (instead of just closing the page and moving on with my life).

And even though you're using an inverted pricing model (subscription price grows with wide-spread use), you should use that to create a sense of urgency to signup faster instead of hiding it after authorization. Use demand to compel them to try sooner by showing the raising price up-front before they authorize Dropbox.

- Then there's the issue of permissions. Because the first experience with your service via Dropbox is "Give this random app FULL access to your ENTIRE dropbox." I think it's a lot to ask someone when they just want to edit their text files with your service. It could help if you prepare them before sending them to the authorization funnel with a warning/explanation screen.

+ The app is incredibly snappy and a pleasure to use.

+ The search bar is helpful even if it wasn't immediately obvious that it was search. I think it was easy to discover though. Maybe make it robust enough to support fuzzy search (a path of app/js/main.js could be found by searching for "appjmain") and masking (*? characters).

- PLEASE put some basic file handling functionality. (Delete, rename, move would be helpful...) Anyone editing dropbox text files will probably want these functions as well. (If they're there, I couldn't find them.) It also wasn't clear how to "close" a file aside from switching away from it.

+ Refund seemed to be cake. I'll let you know if I have trouble getting the funds back. (Big fan of stripe.js, too!)

Hope this feedback helped. And again, sorry for the delay.

1 comments

Hi Mike, please, no need to apologize for the delay. I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this.

These are all great points, especially regarding the signup process and and permissions. I think you have validated some of the concerns that I have had regarding these issues.

I do have delete and rename, but maybe I should pop up a quick intro screen for first-time users to get acquainted with the functionality.

Thanks again and all the best to you.