I'd also make the one-two-three diagram much larger, i.e. make it the width of the banner. It does a good job of explaining what the original line means. To judge by all the sites out there that can't seem to state simply what they do, that is nothing to sneeze at. If you can get users to read that far until it clicks, you'll be way ahead of most.
Of course you can test all of this.
p.s. One thing remains unclear: how do you get the address to mail the printed photos to?
This is an excellent point. However, I don't agree with your second bit of advice to drop the first line and just use the "clear" copy. Instead, I suggest coming up with a better tag line that maybe even ties in nicely with the name Pigeon (love that name, btw). Maybe something like, "Send photographs to anyone on the wings of a text." OK, that's probably lame, but I think you get my point.
If you figure out how to make this profitable, when you consider printing costs and marketing costs, please share! Long story short, I found you have to give people one for free, and this kills your margins. Send me an e-mail if you want an Excel spreadsheet that proves this :)
I posted some details here:
It may be unlikely for the target audience of the service to read this blog post, but I can only guess what they would think of it.
Small nitpick - Twilio does offer MMS, but you have to have a shortcode in US: https://www.twilio.com/mms
It's a hefty monetary commitment, so for the purposes of this story Twilio does not offer something compelling, but if you have the $$$ it's a solid service.
According to their website, you can get MMS via regular phone #s.
Send and receive pictures over both phone numbers and short codes with Twilio Picture Messaging.
However, this service was recently launched
Can you please elaborate on what you did to get orders? I would think it would be many times harder to get a first order from someone you don't know, than writing the app.
The "boomer age" people I know who want to print pictures and send them to someone go to a kiosk at the drugstore or a copy shop, where they also pick up a greeting card in which they typically like to handwrite a note to the recipient, that was the sort of thing people used to consider courteous.
built it 3 years ago after I had quit my job and came to SF
That being said, you could have tested this idea out without building any tech at all by using your own phone number for texts and manually printing and shipping photos.
Then if the idea took off and you could no longer manually keep up with the orders you'd know you have a winner.
But, for someone who wouldn't be able to get the tech out so quickly, an MVP(here, text messages to your phone and manual printing) is the ideal thing. Even he could have benefitted because the product would be out in like a day itself and he could see if it was popular enough to work on it further.
I wanted to mention a hiccup in the sign up experience. After signing up, I received an SMS which said to reply "Y" to receive messages from Pigeon. Upon replying "Y", in addition to the 2-part welcome message, I received a 2-part message saying that Pigeon couldn't recognize the receiver for a picture.
Was pleased that it turned out so well, sounds like a great idea -- I know there are companies (for example the one that recently was on the shark tank tv show) that are looking in this space, and I think the process that you've just pointed out is way easier than what they offer
It might not be the most logical for an app you have to build, but I think getting something out super unpolished that works is a great way to get to market early. People think you need massive teams, business plans and a strategy, but all you need to do is release something. I made the same mistake on a project I've been building for 7 years and counting, I'm not sure I'll even ever release it.
I was merely trying to make a point of developers needing to get stuff out as quick as possible. Maybe what I did was different to an app (and rightly so) but the fact I executed on an idea from start to finish and didn't get caught up on the little things or having a perfect end result is something I think every developer can take from and apply to anything they do.
Unless I have a high-volume business need for a printer I will never own one again. They are space hogs and money pits. Ink/toner is outrageous, buying paper in small quantities is expensive, and the consumer grade printers are slow and flimsy. The few times a year I actually need to print something I just go to kinkos or break the rules and print it at work. Maybe I'll look at using lob.com or a service like it though.
Plus I can tweak the print in Photoshop before and print direct from there. Each has it's place.
This is definitely a "maybe", you'll have to do the research.
If you just have the recipients phone number and the photo, you can send a photo MMS to the recipient saying "x bought a printed version of this photo with PigeonPic. We need your address to send this photo".
Just an idea, you'll need to work on it, but I know, I don't have people's mailing addresses.
I keep hoping I'll have an idea like yours that just pops into my head and I run with it.
So you may not want to rule out younger users from your market. Imagine it, for example, being marketed to heavy instagram users. The branding is all different, but given that you already have the core product, it would be trivial to buy a second domain and create a new skin of the site for this audience.
Big idea == (big risks, big returns)
most of the time.
(yes I've seen the international shipping, but domestic for us is probably faster and cheaper)
