My questions as someone learning web development and always searching for new (quality) resources: Who are you? And why should I pay you $200?<p>> Previously I led the software design team at a local startup, but in the last year I have been working independently designing and developing my own apps.<p>After seeing the $200 price tag, I expected to read something along the lines of "My web apps have been used by over X million users", along with a few examples. Or maybe "I built the websites for these well known companies". Since that isn't the case, the next thing I looked for to establish your credibility was reviews. Hmm, also missing.<p>For the price of the book alone ($29), I could watch 100+ hours of tutorials on a site like Lynda or Tuts+ from a variety of developers with similar experience. I'm having a hard time verifying that the value of the resources matches the price tag.<p>Sorry if this seems overly critical, figured you might want the honest opinion of a hesitant customer who could potentially be converted. I may still buy one of the packages after I read through your blog some more.
I edited your site to solve the issues and uploaded to imgur. (The matrix is from CrazyEgg, but take the idea). <a href="http://imgur.com/slYOb" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/slYOb</a><p>Here is my walkthrough of the site:<p>1. Great, exactly what I am looking for: book on designing web applications.<p>2. Oooh look, Facebook, Freshbooks, and MailChimp use this, wait, no they do not. This is graphically implied by their logos and using an established user experience location, not happy about being tricked.<p>3. Jump to packages: $200! Good day, sir.<p>4. Wait, it cannot be that expensive, scroll down some more and find the book. Now I am worried about what I am purchasing as the person trying to sell this does not understand basic concepts of web design, tricked me, and wants a ton of money.<p>5. Head back to Hacker News to determine if anyone knows who Nathan Barry is and if he is a reputable person.<p>Place your layout of prices in a pricing, side by side. The scrolling down through the site is not helpful in making me feel better about purchasing a design book when one does not employ basic pricing structure layouts see this site for examples (<a href="http://bit.ly/lVPfr4" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/lVPfr4</a>). You could skip to a pricing matrix, then scroll down further to see more of it.<p>Recognizing that you are trying to present the highest price first to drive higher revenue, you need to reverse the order in the case of a scroll driven price change. Get the user to the first option, the book, then the user will see that there is more content on the page (scroll bar, images / graphics below book option). This teaches the user that there is more below each price mark and you would drive futher sales when a user sees the added benefit for each item.<p>Another item would be to have a try the book and buy more option later. This could be done in a constant contact format.
The "complete package" gave me sticker shock, so much that I almost closed the page then and there. It was only out of curiosity as to <i>why</i> the $200 price tag was worthwhile that I even kept reading to find more purchase options. It put a bad taste in my mouth, honestly, and I'm left feeling pretty confused by why you won't let me cherry pick my own interview+book package. I'm just having trouble seeing the dollar value in what you've assembled, though I'm sure if I broke out each piece of what you're offering, it'd seem like quite a deal, no one is offering "pieces" of what you're offering, so I just see the whole thing as overpriced.<p>I was excited to follow the development of this through the newsletter, but I'm not a customer now. Maybe if you offered to trickle out the interview content as you developed it, for some kind of $9/mo fee? I would've been on board with that, or a similar approach. Though I guess not being a total squid I might not have been your target, I was really just interested in what those accomplished professionals had to say, maybe also thumbing through the book -- which while I'm at it -- I'm also not convinced provides the kind of value a $30 price should. I was kind've under the impression you'd include some real "how-to" meat, at least periodically, but there doesn't appear to be any of that. I think I'd get more value out of "Don't Make Me Think" or "Rocket Surgery Made Easy", and I could score both in a native kindle format(for $30).<p>I think you probably did a lot of hard work, and I'm still tempted to spend the $200 just for the interviews; but I don't feel good enough about what I might be getting. I saw the early version of the Ryan Singer interview and it didn't leave a $200 impression. I hope you've had a lot more success selling to others who really need a comprehensive resource or don't understand many of the fundamentals, it certainly seemed like it would be more valuable for them.<p>Also, just as an aside, the WordPress favicon feels cheap, and worse, lazy.
Different <i>from</i>, not different <i>than</i>. This is a grammar tic I got from Robert Heinlein, and I'm not even sure why it bugs me so much.<p>That said, your selling page layout is brilliant. By putting the high-ticket options on top, you not only make the prices below them seem trivial, you evoke a sense of loss as the potential buyer travels down the page.<p>Oh, and the content looks good, too, ha. Seriously - I've needed a good design-for-rank-beginners book, and this one appears to be the one I want. I bought the $79 package.
Please remove the Facebook, Mailchimp etc logos. It really leaves a bad taste - it's a practice to show those on a landing when either the companies whose logo are featured, are using this product/service or have said something positive about it.<p>But after reading the line below it, it's just a mis-direction, felt almost cheated. I'd highly recommend removing it.
It's really hard to find good concise help in this area, if Nathan's previous book: <a href="http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/" rel="nofollow">http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/</a> is anything to go by, this should be excellent. Purchasing now.<p>I'm also looking forward to seeing the response from this landing page - Nathan's normally really kind about transparency when it comes to this sort of thing. Great job.
Couple of things:<p>- Get rid of the MailChimp, Facebook logos etc. On scanning it's shady.<p>- The whole site comes across as a bit of a skeezy sales letter. You're a designer, you're better than that. I realise this is the favoured approach from Kalzumeus etc but I find it really cringey.<p>- Make the bundles more easily comparable. I was about to buy but got bored scrolling up & down & up & down comparing the packages.<p>- I'm a designer; will this be something I can still get value from? Are you pitching this as 'design for hackers' (ala <a href="http://designforhackers.com/" rel="nofollow">http://designforhackers.com/</a> ) or is it just 'stuff I've picked up from designing apps that you might like' (which I might get value from as a designer)?
Hey everyone, this is my latest book on designing web applications that are easy to use. I've spent a ton of time not only on the book itself, but also on the video tutorials and interviews.<p>Interviews are included with:<p>Ryan Singer from 37signals, Sacha Greif from Folyo, Trent Walton from Paravel, Sahil Lavingia from Gumroad, Jarod Furgeson from WebWaitr, Brennan Dunn from Planscope, Patrick Mackenzie from Kalzumeus, and Jason Fried from 37signals<p>These are the guys who have inspired me, so I am honored to be able to include interviews with them.<p>I'd love to know what you think of the book.
The whole "these people are experts in CSS/HTML" shtick never works for people who aren't already decent at web design. Instead of listing their companies, mention some of the projects they've worked on.<p>I know who many of these people are, but that's because I have a lot of web design books on my self with their name on them.
Ummm... might be my mistake, but I can't spot any indication of how long your book is.<p>I did quickly look through the sample and the book seems to be very useful, but I'd like some indication of how much of it there is. ;)
Bought within minutes! Even though I don't do iOS stuff, I bought the Designing for iOS Apps book to learn some web app design. I've been all in on a sequel book specifically for web app design.
I will be purchasing this. $200 is nothing for the amount of value that can be created in just one person's life when UI + UX skills are applied. Not sure why all the negativity in this thread.
Hi Nathan,<p>I was following the release of this book and will probably buy it shortly. I think the reason that a lot of people are being so critical is that it's UX. I work in UX and everyone is (or thinks they are) a UX "designer". I looked at your sample pages and web site and thought I could learn some things from you. I also thought it looked great, so I don't think you have anything to worry about.<p>No one is going to do things exactly the same and your book doesn't come-off as being a forceful entity on rulesets, which is nice.<p>I would also like to see some other pricing options - mostly because I want the book and PSDs only, but I don't see anything wrong with your pricing model. It scared me at first but I didn't see/notice all of the extras that you had for sale with the book.<p>Anyhow, good luck, I can tell you spent a lot of time putting the material together. This is a tough crowd but in the end most criticism, even if harsh, will hopefully be constructive.<p>Enjoy the sales and focus on the real UX designers/developers ;)
I think you should take another look at your package overview images. The package for $79 and the package for $199 look about the same from a glance. I see that the packages lists different contents below but I think it should be more obvious from the large images. Nice work though, seems nicely done.
Very bottom "So, are you ready to buy the book now?"<p>But no link/button/call to action - I'd need to scroll back up and parse out which action to take from the visual stuff above. Wondering if you'd see more conversions by putting a purchase link there too (or perhaps you've already tried it)
To be fair, $200 is really not a lot of money. For all the contents, videos, interviews, samples, one can imagine how much effort being allocated for this. Being famous doesn't entitle someone to be able to charge expensively. Likewise, nothing is stopping anyone out there ("nobody" or not) to charge the price he or she wanted to. This is what we call internet, it's completely free market. No government or regulatory body is going to say "Hey Nathan! You are nobody, stop charging people a bloody $200 notes for a piece advice." Let's put some angles of perspective in, if he successfully sells 1000 copies at $200. He will make $200k revenue. Deduct that with the cost of his labor, his lost opportunity to work on his apps, marketing fee and the support time cost. He will probably pocket 30-40k pure profit. What if he has to follow what people say to price it lower at $20. Selling 1000 copies will barely cover his cost. And where are you going to find 1000 people who will believe this $20 crap going to give you top notch advice on delivering amazing web apps UX and design. Charge premium is a good start. Keep improving the content is a sure way to gain you the loyalty of customers.<p>Back to the odd marketing strategy. Why show it here? Why HN, really? Most will simply want something quick and simple to show the idea behind their hacks to the community. We are frequently being shown unfurnished prototype (indeed twitter bootstrap half the time). Anyone really serious about building well designed and engineered UX web applications will probably have a well funded startup with specialist UX designer onboard. Or someone must have been a long time practitioner of UX to be bothered about putting much focus on UX. It's not as simple as reading a book, listen to an interview, you become great in UX. It's only through years of experience, going through iteration after iteration of UX design tweaks, you will have a basic idea where to lead the good UX direction. A long the way, there are still huge chances to make UX mistakes here and there. Too simplified, or too complicated. Too plain, lack of creative input. Too much boring UX treating every users as dummy as they can. I am sure it will be hard for the community here to start bothering UX before getting their hacks done. And worst, the next hacks are waiting ....
I got the newsletter via email and headed to buy the book where I reacted same as the majority of commenters on HN.
After checking the options/prices, I am going to put that on hold for now. Good luck though, I am sure you've put a lot of effort into this.<p>For HN users who are wondering about the author, I came across this: <a href="http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-sold-39k-worth-of-ebooks" rel="nofollow">http://sachagreif.com/how-nathan-barry-and-i-sold-39k-worth-...</a>
It's nice seeing how you actually used the feedback from previous HN submission & made changes(and havent been rementioned here).<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703380" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703380</a>
I would place buy buttons with a blurb about your money back guarantee at the top right of the page. Ideally I want to know most of the information that will influence my purchase above the fold or get to it easily via links.
Nice! One thing I'd suggest for the landing page is a floating bar at the top that allows you to skip around the page and shows your current position - it's pretty easy to get lost on that huge landing page.
Suggestion, add some sort of image/logo beside the main header statement "Are you scratching your head wondering why people sign up for your application, but never come back?". Makes it more believable.
This looks really fantastic, great job. How long will the promotional pricing be available? I want the 'complete package' but won't be able to stump up the cash for a couple of weeks.
It's really hard to find good web app design resources, and Nathan has really come out with great material.<p>And great landing page by the way, there's a lot you can learn from that alone!
I was casually browsing the site, but honestly it wasn't until I came back to the HN comments that I realized there was more than one package with more than one price.
When I see pages I like, I frequently view source just to see how it was put together.<p>Is there a reason you went with all the CSS in the head instead of in an external file?
bought the book. very well designed sales page that is convincing. Too bad the pricing seems abit wonky (50 dollar jumps is a bit weird IMO).<p>Ah well, I prefer reading anyways :D