Re:Ask HN: Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice?
by auston on Thursday September 11, 2008 @07:27PM
(#301889)
Would you mind highlighting what features you liked from harvest that were unavailable in different apps?
Re:Ask HN: Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice?
by mechanical_fish on Friday September 12, 2008 @11:42AM
(#302481)
I wish I remembered the details. Seriously, it was subtle enough that I've forgotten.
The Dashboard widget for recording your time was one -- Harvest's is nice, especially because you can easily switch from client project to client project with the UI. But the thing which ultimately switched me over was the ability to fully customize the line items on invoices -- I was able to get the style I wanted with a few clicks, and I can easily edit and merge line items if I want to. For me, it hits the sweet spot between doing things automatically and allowing you to edit things.
Of course, once I switched over to Harvest I gradually became subliminally aware of other reasons to like it. I haven't found myself wanting to try out anything else.
Re:Ask HN: Beaten to the punch by a competitor, advice?
by jon_dahl on Friday September 12, 2008 @11:22AM
(#302464)
I'm not mechanical_fish, but Harvest just felt right to me. It was easy to use; gave easy, flexible reports (important when I'm billing clients for my hours and my employees' hours); easy, private access for employees; reminder emails that I could trigger ("Get your hours in!"). It wasn't a clear thing, but the right mix of features and the right feel.
So maybe something intangible. Is that a cop-out answer?
Web apps are easy for users to try out for a while. So build a couple of differentiating features and see if a subset of the (apparently lucrative!) market tries your site and sticks with it.