We're in the process of re-launching our web calendar product. We would
like to get your opinions on a couple of things about our site and
product.

This is a relaunch of an existing product with hundreds of customers. The
major effort of the re-launch is to focus more on the hosted calendar
market. Toward that end, we've re-designed our web site, and changed our
pricing. Essentially, we've dropped the license fee that we were charging
for hosting and now charge only a monthly fee. Our bottom end price is now
$99 per year.

The URL is:

http://www.mhsoftware.com/hosting/

Things we're really interested in feedback on are:

1)The web site design. It's a new site.
2)The hosted trial signup process.
It takes about two minutes to get a working trial.

a) does it work?
b) can you find it?
c) Is it simple enough to follow? Can it be improved?

The target market for this product is business, churches, schools, and
civic group/clubs/non-profit organizations.

Finally, we're interested in your thoughts on price-point. I know there
are a lot of cheaper or free calendars out there. We think our product
offers a lot of features that make it stand out, and justify the slightly
higher cost. High-end things we do include

Virtual host name support within your domain Resource Management
Really customizable appearance
No advertising
iCal/Outlook Import/Export
Best in class security system
Best in class calendar, including exceptions for recurring events,
attachments to events, Email notifications and reminders, Time zone
support, and much more.

We appreciate your feedback. If we get at least 5 people from a.w.w or
c.i.w.a.h who try the trial signup, look at the product, and provide
feedback we'll have a drawing and give away a free year's hosting of our
10 calendar product.

Thanks for your help.

--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/conectdaily.htm

George Sexton wrote:

> The target market for this product is .. churches, schools, and
> civic group/clubs/non-profit organizations.

> We think our product
> offers a lot of features that make it stand out, and justify the slightly
> higher cost. High-end things we do include


If you are having to justify the higher cost then I think your target
market is way off.


--
Brian Wakem
Email: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/b.wakem/myemail.png

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:37:59 +0000, Brian Wakem wrote:

> George Sexton wrote:
> 
> 
>
>
> If you are having to justify the higher cost then I think your target
> market is way off.

These are people who have been buying the product at the higher price
points.

You don't think someone like a church would pay slightly more for a
virtual host in their domain?

You don't think someone like a Chamber of Commerce group would pay a
$99.00 per year for a web calendar that could be made to look like their
site?



--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/conectdaily.htm

George Sexton wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:37:59 +0000, Brian Wakem wrote:
> 
>
> These are people who have been buying the product at the higher price
> points.
>
> You don't think someone like a church would pay slightly more for a
> virtual host in their domain?


No I don't.  Churches are poor.


> You don't think someone like a Chamber of Commerce group would pay a
> $99.00 per year for a web calendar that could be made to look like their
> site?


No I don't.


My point is that you admit it is expensive (having spent half the post
justifying the price) and then tell us your target market is the poorest
people (churches, schools, non-profit..).

It's a bit like selling caviar to Somalians.



--
Brian Wakem
Email: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/b.wakem/myemail.png

Writing in news:alt.www.webmaster,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
From the safety of the  cafeteria
Brian Wakem <no@email.com> said:

> ...
> It's a bit like selling caviar to Somalians.

and why not?   remember wherever there is abject poverty and suffering
there is a scumbag living off the misery.

--
William Tasso

Save the drama
for your Mama.

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005 16:31:42 +0000, Brian Wakem wrote:
 
>
>
> No I don't.  Churches are poor.
>

My church budgeted $15,000 US for a new web site this year.

Out in front of our building, we have a LED display sign that cost $80,000
and we're shopping for $5,000,000 plots of land.

Not all churches are poor, they just all act that way.


--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/conectdaily.htm

If it's 3 AM, and I've got a killer toothache, it would be quite nice
to be able to pencil myself in for the first available appointment - 2
PM - with my dentist, then take some heavy duty pain killer and try to
sleep until noon.

If I have to set the alarm for 8 AM in order to call for an
appointment, I'm going to be in considerably more misery.

If it can handle that, a web calendar would be worth $99 to the
dentist. It might even be worth $99 a year.

But I don't think $99/year is going to fly with most users. It's not
saving them much money, and it's not making them much money.


--
If we're losing 40-130 species a day,
How come nobody can itemize them?
And why can't fruitflies be one of them?

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005, George Sexton wrote:

> We're in the process of re-launching our web calendar product. We would
> like to get your opinions on a couple of things about our site and
> product.
>
> This is a relaunch of an existing product with hundreds of customers. The
> major effort of the re-launch is to focus more on the hosted calendar
> market. Toward that end, we've re-designed our web site, and changed our
> pricing. Essentially, we've dropped the license fee that we were charging
> for hosting and now charge only a monthly fee. Our bottom end price is now
> $99 per year.
>
> The URL is:
>
> http://www.mhsoftware.com/hosting/
>
> Things we're really interested in feedback on are:
>
> 1)The web site design. It's a new site.
> 2)The hosted trial signup process.
> It takes about two minutes to get a working trial.
>
> a) does it work?
> b) can you find it?
> c) Is it simple enough to follow? Can it be improved?
>
> The target market for this product is business, churches, schools, and
^^^^^^^^
> civic group/clubs/non-profit organizations.
[snip]

If you are targetting religious organizations, it may be worthwhile to add
two more features:

1. Built-in calculation of religious holidays for *all* religions and

2. an option to use other calendars, especially religious calendars
(Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Bahá'í, etc.) with appropriate conversion.

(How would you handle a calendar for a company with branches in
India, Israel and Saudi Arabia?)

For calendar conversion, check out the book, _Calendrical_Calculations_
by Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold, Cambridge University Press,
ISBN 0-521-56474-3  (My copy cost me CDN $31.95 in July 1997.)

All of the code they give, however, is in LISP[1] so some code conversio
n
will probably be necessary.  See:
http://emr.cs.uiuc.edu/home/reingol...book/index.html

[1] LISP: (Lots of (Infuriating (Spurious (Parentheses))))
--
Norman De Forest      http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~af380/Profile.html
af380@chebucto.ns.ca   [=||=]  (At the Sign of the Flashing Cursor)
"Oh how I miss the days when it was easier to catch gonorhea than a
computer virus."       -- Big Will in alt.comp.virus, March 9, 2005

Norman L. DeForest wrote:
>
> For calendar conversion, check out the book, _Calendrical_Calculations_
> by Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold, Cambridge University Press,
> ISBN 0-521-56474-3  (My copy cost me CDN $31.95 in July 1997.)
>
> All of the code they give, however, is in LISP[1] so some code convers
ion
> will probably be necessary.  See:
>     http://emr.cs.uiuc.edu/home/reingol...book/index.html
>
There is another edition, "Calendrical Calculations, The Millennium
Edition", 2001, isbn 0-521-77167-6 paperback (or isbn 0-521-77752-6
hardcover). Same authors and publisher. It comes with a CDROM that has the
code in lisp, Java and Mathematica.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

George Sexton wrote:
>
> Things we're really interested in feedback on are:
>
> 1)The web site design. It's a new site.
>
- HTML 4.01 Transitional was only meant for transitioning pre-v4 pages to
v4 HTML.
Use HTML v4.01 Strict:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

- Font sizes in px (or pt) are not necessarily scalable. Use % or EMs instea
d.
- Fixed width design. Not very friendly for small screens like handhelds.
- Use of <br> to create paragraphs. Use <p>.

- No top menu without Javascript.
- The :hover in the top menu links looks different from other links.
- The top menu does not fit in the banner area because I have minimum font
size set in my browser. It has made the text larger and clips the bottom
of the background image. It also covers your company name/logo.
- The right menu does not fit in the banner area because I have minimum
font size set in my browser. It has made the text larger and pushes the
text and images below the background image.
On the Features page the right side extends waaay past the background,
and that has nothing to do with font size.

- The preview images are fairly poor quality. I'd expect more than a
slightly larger blurry image.

- The PDF brochure describes a product that runs on a local server at my
site. Oops?
- Does "gas-fired generator" mean a gasoline-driven unit? Or propane? Or
natural gas? Or methane? Do you have a regularly rehearsed disaster plan?
- I may have missed it: Is the communication link with the calendar server
encrypted (HTTPS)?

A feature question: For how many weeks can I set the weekly view?
Most calendars show 5 weeks with the preceding and succeeding days
faded. That is, they have a month fixation. I work week-to-week; I'd like
to see 8 or 9 weeks so I can easily view what happened last month and what
is planned next month without a lot of flipping back and forth.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)