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0 pointsferal9y ago0 comments

>You never really explain how you can set that up easily and use it efficiently.

Conesus, apologies if I'm wrong, but I suspect you might not have understood the core issue Daveguy is raising here. I don't think its about pairing devices.

When I watched the video, there was this huge awkward tension I felt: "How can all this functionality work with just 4 buttons?" which made me think "This product is probably a waste of time, I should close the video."

This is just one guy's gut reaction - although I see a couple of posters here saying something similar - but I really suspect this is a big part of why your campaign didn't work.

The value proposition is unclear:

You are selling a beautiful remote to control my home. But while it is clearly beautiful, it is not clear how it works as a remote. It looks complicated and like it probably won't work, because its not clear and never explained in the video how four buttons will suffice.

I did eventually scroll down far enough to read "Are four buttons really enough?" where I finally realized it was designed to be programmable but even this wasn't convincing (do I have to re-program it between doing all those things showed in the first video? reprogram it each day?), and I'd have bounced long before then if I hadn't come across this in a HN comment. It wasn't until I read that section multiple times I realized the bit about 4 different app profiles, where you hold the corresponding button to activate, and I was long gone by then. The fact that there seems to be a dedicated go-to-bed and wake-up button only confuses things more.

Strongly would advise you to go deeper on this, e.g. show people the video and afterwards ask them to describe how it actually works etc, ask them whether they think it has enough buttons, probe for confusion on that point that would have made them bounce etc.

You even seem to acknowledge in your comment that this is a stumbling block for folks:

>Ah-ha, we hit my area of expertise which is talking about how four buttons is all you need.

(I.e. you know this is something that is unusual/surprising and hence requires explanation)

But the video doesn't explain this at all, and I think that might be causing you to lose a lot of folks early on.

0 comments

conesus9y ago

I'm glad I put myself out there for feedback because it was your comment that caused me to see my campaign in a new perspective.

I actually shot two videos. The founder interview at the end cost $4k because it was originally a longer video where I explained how the remote worked. But it didn't have any of the action shots, so I re-shot it, eschewing an explanation in favor of demonstrating its use, relying on people to be intrigued and then read on to see how it actually worked. It seems that didn't work, as I repeated this technique later on in the campaign itself.

Here is the original video (1:20) if you're interested to see what I rejected in favor of committing $18k to another video: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/nsvfn7n3l8phbi3/TurnTouch_CC.mp4?dl...

daveguy9y ago

Feral nailed it. It is not a pairing issue. It's a question of whether it will be a pain even after it's all set up.

This 1:20 video is definitely better. For the sole reason that you include the fact that four buttons are mapped to four buttons. One press for the app and one for the function. Personally I think you should simplify the operation or only explain how it works for 4 apps. Let people who are intrigued find out you can program it to do a special sequence of functions across apps with a single special touch.

Those 1M+ campaigns all had a very simple functions and operation and with knocki you easily know what the 2-3 different knock types do because your knocki is in a very specific context (kitchen table, bedside, bathroom, etc).

yabatopia9y ago

> relying on people to be intrigued and then read on

People have an extremely short attention span these days . You have to grab their attention right away and strongly guide them through the buying process. Intriguing doesn't work. It's a sales pitch, not an artistic short film.

You can't expect that people figure it out for themselves why they should buy the product, how it works, why it's something that they need. You have to communicate that very clearly and right away.

And honestly, whoever produced the video should have told you that.

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