The majority of places I've worked where schedules were 'posted' and I would 'trade shifts' with someone else have been retail and food service jobs, not 'office' jobs. Yet the signup page only talks about different sizes of offices ('small','medium', etc). Might want to reconsider that wording ("organization"?)
The hardest part about making a complicated schedule is making sure all the posts are covered. Do I have six editors, four designers, two rewrite, one reader and three runners in on Sunday? And if not, who is available -- they haven't worked six days in a row, aren't due off that day or on vacation and have the right skills -- to cover?
When your app can answer this for schedulers you've got something great. Otherwise I fear a spreadsheet is "good enough" and free. Good luck!
I think you'd benefit from replacing the screenshot of the "my office scheduling" page on the homepage, with an explanatory graphic. The text there is too small to read, but I found myself squinting to make it out to try to glean the features I could expect from the product. As an example, I cite Highrise's homepage: http://highrisehq.com/, where icons and descriptive text are used to better present what I can do with the application.
I think that having two metrics of plan/pricing levels is confusing. I'd like to purchase by users in my office, but I don't care how many gigabytes of storage space it costs you. It's also not clear exactly what counts towards that storage quota. Will you be tallying the space used by my calendar events in your database? Will there be a feature where I can upload large files to share with appointments? I couldn't find an explanation of why I'd want to pay for storage space anywhere. Once this is defined, maybe an add-on of 'n' gigabytes of addon storage can be purchased for those requiring the additional space- but right now it just appears to be one more thing to confuse someone about to make a purchase.
The market inhibitor for scheduling software/app is usually the mixed needs factor.
Offices have very little requirements for scheduling and the product would have to so much "better" than stubby pencil or excel that it is hard to drive usage.
On the other hand service industries with volume concerns are so in depth with regards to scheduling that the product must integrate projections and production demands. The problem being that what those two words mean to each company is different. How each company employs the basics of volume projections are not standard.
I have spent a decade vetting software and products to make scheduling easier but in the end the main inhibitor to adoption is ease of use. If it isn’t substantially easier to use and just as accurate and communicative as the original practice then adoption is a negative.
Sorry for any typos.
I noticed pedalpete actually mentioned my staff scheduling business (http://www.helloscheduling.com), Hello Scheduling in his compete metrics. A few important things to think about:
1) Those compete metrics are really far off compared to what I am seeing in Google Analytics.
2) You have to remember that Excel and paper schedules are REALLY flexible. If your scheduling software is rigid, people will sign up, but then abandon returning to what feels comfortable to them.
Since we launched our application in mid-January 2011, we have consistently had sign ups but then high abandonment. As we've release features that made the product more flexible and addressed more unique scheduling needs, we've seen usage increase.
This is a really tough space, but don't lose heart.
I run a payroll site (http://smallpayroll.ca). I could see some small businesses that rely on shift work like this, especially if it could push hours into their payroll software.
There aren't enough features for a call centre to use it, but I could see convenience stores and restaurants loving it.
What's the storage space used for? I looked at the pricing page and the storage per level really stood out. 1GB is a lot, what am I storing? How do I know I have enough storage?
Some sort of graphical representation of hours covered would be awesome and I don't see it. That's the hardest thing about scheduling people in public service, making sure there's alway (x) people there. Maybe create a graphical representation of coverage. Also support lunches because that's important for the scheduler to know.
I built a similar project last year, but abandoned it due to lack of business.
Just around the time I got my beta out, I discovered shiftplanning.com (they were in beta about a month before me) - I would say quality wise, my build was very similar to shiftplanning, much better than schedulefly.
The reason I ditched it was that after working with a number of local businesses, I found they always had excuses to not use it. They would say stuff like 'if you can show us our monthly labour costs, then we'll start using it'. But they weren't able to get monthly labour costs the way they used excel, so an online solution would have been better. Another request was holiday scheduling, which I did add, but still, no increase in usage. It was excuse after excuse, so I clearly think this is an area where people recognize a pain, but don't seem to care enough about it.
Along with that, my heart was not really in it (I was convinced to build it after mentioning to a friend that it was crazy how businesses were still scheduling with excel and paper, etc.etc.).
The problems aren't technical. There are LOTS of scheduling sites. I hadn't seen any of quality until I built mine, and then saw shiftplanning. Your site looks pretty good, but schedulers should be able to select a shift, rather than entering a time, as most businesses have standard shifts for their business, and then need the ability to just edit the time for specific cases, stuff like that.
In the end, I'm happy I didn't dedicate too much time to the project. Looking at the compete scores http://siteanalytics.compete.com/schedulefly.com+shiftplanni..., this just doesn't seem to be an area of interest to businesses.
ShiftPlanning is free, and they still can't get a large number of users. The problems are multiple.
1) You can likely only target small businesses or branches of a larger business. I spoke to a few chains, and they all said (surprisingly) that they don't dictate an online schedule service for their outlets.
2) It is an add-on service option for large operations like call-centers,etc which is already offered through their pbx or other systems. One business I spoke to had an add-on which came with their ERP system.
3) along with the groups I mentioned already, here's another 3 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/fendza.com+helloscheduling.... some of these guys have been at it a long time. I'll admit that I think most of these are poorly designed, but that can't be the only problem.
I don't expect you to read this comment and just give-up. That would be lame. But I do hope to open your eyes a bit, maybe you'll see another opportunity in a related space, or this comment will help you somehow.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Signing up:
Timezones drop down is not tab-able, and stops at GMT-5?!?!
Speaking as a European, this is the sort of thing that really pisses us off!
You might prevent the last person removing themselves from the project. After creating a project, I was able to remove myself. The project now has no one to be administered by.
A feature you should strongly think about is around MI functionality. Smaller organisations, who I presume you are targeting, would typically use Excel for their MI needs.
If you could automate the generation of pretty and useful MI, perhaps through a dashboard on the site, it would be a great route in.
Better still, if you have paying customers how about meeting them and understanding first hand what they would find useful.
I'd ditch that green header image you are using. It looks washed out on my machine. Love the concept though. I had to write auto-scheduling software for a call center in college so something like this would probably have broad appeal.
How do you plan to reach customers? (without giving away your secret sauce)
This is a question I will ask every "Review my app" from now on.
Where can I email bugs/support? looking for an email address, so I can attach video. Thanks.
Good luck man.. it's a tough field to break into. Tons and tons of competitors (like me) and few businesses who would actually use it.
- James F. Founder, Fendza.com (http://www.fendza.com)
This has been my side project for a bit over a year now, working on it nights/weekends (I do Rails consulting full time). I finally thought it was good enough to get out there. There's definitely more I'd like to add to the app, such as shift trades, but I thought it was good enough for an MVP and would love any feedback.