I was tired of paying late fees on my parking tickets, so I created a system to detect new tickets and email me weekly reminders. The site can also automatically pay the tickets for the truly forgetful, if the user sets it up.<p>It's only for San Francisco right now, but would love the wider HN community's feedback as well. Is this something you'd find helpful? Worth paying for?<p>http://www.sticket.net
I'd put a big disclaimer in there somewhere that you're absolutely not responsible for late fees or anything else if your service fails. Not just for legal reasons, but because there are many non-technical people that don't understand the possibility that a service like this could fail (not to mention the small group of dummies who will undoubtedly think that your website is sanctioned by the state of CA).
Design: I like your simple design for one reason - your call to action is up front and straightforward. That is ruined by the bright yellow box right next to it. I can't stop looking at it! Take it out or tone it down a lot. The design needs some obvious work beyond that, but the fundamentals of your site are better than most.<p>Marketing: You aren't selling a "Parking Ticket Reminder/Payer", you are selling a system that ensures your customers will _never pay a parking ticket late again_. Benefits, not features. Focusing your marketing message not only helps increase conversion, it also forces you to outline who your customers are. In this case it's obvious - people who get lots of parking tickets. Write your copy to those people!<p>Idea: definitely interesting. I know a handful of people who would uses this -today-. Also, thank you for thinking about revenue up front! Not enough people do this.
For marketing, you could possibly "disguise" flyers as parking tickets, and put them on cars parked in areas that are highly ticketed (downtown, college campus, etc). When a potential customer opens it up, it could have a link to your site and a small call to action.
On <a href="http://www.sticket.net/request/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sticket.net/request/</a> if I type "denver, co" in the first field and hit tab, the field gets blanked out. Safari 4 on OSX 10.5.
Interesting. Side question - is it economically rational in San Francisco for a person to repeatedly acquire parking tickets rather than seek out parking or pay for a monthly spot somewhere?
Is clicking the back button the only way to get from the FAQ page to the home page?<p>I like the word sticket, but I don't like the ellipses afterward. It sounds weird in my head with that pause. The other thing is that maybe the "to the man" part should match the S (because you add both of those parts onto the word "Ticket").
Cool idea!<p>* Would I find it helpful? -- Yes.<p>* Would I pay for it? -- No (with a "perhaps yes" if the charge was per ticket, and relatively small)<p>And I am terrible with design, but it seems to me that you need to work on the UI a bit.
...In SF in the 80s if you had outstanding parking tickets on your current car (car A) and then sold car A and bought a new car (car B), car A's tickets were no longer tied to you via the city's database. ...I had a friend who knew he was going to get a new car within a year, so he parked where ever he wanted (right on the sidewalks at times) and had a stack of tickets a foot tall within 10 months. He bought a new car and drove happily ever after!
Whoa how relevant to my interests, not 15 minutes ago I went to my car to find an orange red envelope waiting for me (however I didn't get as excited as I do when it comes from a Redditor) Unfortunately I live in Somerville MA, so your app doesn't help me (yet?)