Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

There's not enough information in the readme section to make me understand what your product does, how it will help me, or why I should try it.

My first impression was, note taking for $29? I can buy a pad and pencil for $2. Where's the value?



Jodi

I browsed through your site.

IMHO, you need a copy writer BADLY...

I went through your site and your demo. I'm thinking that if people are telling you that your product seems to simple what they are really telling you is that it doesn't solve enough "pain" for them to want to buy it. Sure, it can arrange note 17 ways to Sunday. It allows you to index and sort and arrange. But, is this the problem students experience when studying - that they can't find and/or arrange their notes so they can study efficiently? It could be your product is a solution looking for a problem. Before you designed it, how many target customers did you survey to understand their needs and how much the "pain" they are suffering costs them?

Phil makes a great point of clearing up misconceptions up front. And even before that, it takes analysis of the market and its needs before creating a product. Their input also enlightens you as to what the user interface and functionality should be so they accept it as meeting their needs. You need to be able to meet the needs better than the competition - as Jodi says, one main competitor is paper and pencil. As you point out on your website, a word processor is a competitor. Is the market clamoring that these are not adequate and they are willing to pay something greater than nothing for a stand-alone indexing text editor? Before you go further with your Readme and your site and your product, these are questions that you should ask a significant representative random sample of your target market.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Don't tell me that it looks too simple. Tell me instead of all the amazing things it can do FOR me, and how well-designed it is so even a 8-year old (or 80-year old) can use it without any instructions.

Actually the Read Me page is just going to be confronting to any non-technical people - it will put them off. It doesn't clarify anything at all about functionality.

Reading through the website, I get two thoughts:

1. This is a product that replaces my pad and pencil. So why do I need it?

2. There are absolutely no reasons at all why I need this product. It seems like a solution in search of a problem I don't have, and cannot envisage ever having. You should scrap it and look for a real problem to solve.

Maybe I'm wrong, and your product is actually the next best thing since MS Office or sliced bread. If it is, you should hire someone like David Ogilvie, Jay Hamilton-Roth, Michael Goodman, Wayde Nelson, JKaplan, Phil Grisolia, or R White - to figure out how to communicate the benefits to the buyer - because your website is failing, badly, on that count, to put it bluntly.

If you truly believe there is a need for your product and it fills that need uniquely, professional copywriting and marketing advice will be well worth whatever it costs.

Good luck.

ChrisB