back
42 comments
We built something just like this in house, but of course as with any internal tool no one ever has time to update and maintain the damn thing.

Would be fantastic to switch over to this service if it works well. Ping me at mike at tophatmonocle.com if you have room in the beta.

Hey Axiom, we certainly will. Thanks for your support.
It needs a way to stop the user messing with a demo - by temporarily disabling certain elements for click events etc?

(I expect this is already an option, but wasn't enabled on the demo on this page.)

We actually don't have that feature. The point isn't to hijack a user's experience. We are thinking about the best way to get out of a users way if they want to escape a tutorial. But thanks for the feedback.
This is smart. If there is anything I hate more, it's thinking to myself "get out of my way there is a good chance I can figure it out"
Well here's one reason you might consider disabling certain UI elements.

If you hit the left arrow button on the slide show at 0:12 you end up with this in the end.

http://imgur.com/a/ZqiYs

Yeah it's definitely not perfect! Our goal is to ship early to demo our progress and there are some rough edges showing. We will definitely get this cleaned up ASAP. Thanks for the screenshot.
No problem. Just something I noticed. Good luck.
If it doesn't already, you could overlay a transparent div on top of the entire body to capture all click events.
or for browsers that support css3

  *{
    pointer-events: none;
  }
Nice! I didn't know about this one. I'm still scared about taking too much control away from the user. That might be nice just to let the user know the tutorial is running and allowing them to 'quit' if they want.
What is the pricing for this like? needs more upfront pricing info imo.

That said, I'm thinking of using something like this on Strangersfordinner.com and edgeyo.com too so I'd keep you guys in view.

(again, pricing!)

We are working on pricing. It will be a monthly fee at a reasonable amount and our goal is to grow with you. We know startups aren't flush with cash and you should only start paying for value when you are really getting it too. What would be your ideal payment model?
Tiered CPV.
Great thanks for the feedback.
What is CPV ? Thanks
Cost Per Value.
It's a beautiful site! Nice to see something that doesn't look too Twitter-Bootstrappy. I like the blue highlighting around the cursor. I'd make it more clear that you really want the user to enter an email address (instead of just demo a hypothetical site asking for that). I was a little confused when the tutorial abruptly stopped.
Genwin,

Sorry about the confusion. It's a hard thing to demonstrate and I understand how moving from hypothetical to real is a little jarring.

Thanks for the kind words about our design!

This is awesome and I would totally use it if the price was right. When are you guys thinking of launching?
Hey sunwooz, we are launching with select clients slowly and we will have a more general release by the end of summer. Check out http://verold.com for an example in production. (Click Getting Started after signing in).
I just watched the tutorial. I just want to point out what happened. I started watching the tutorial and continued to eat my dinner. I had a feeling that it was more like a video than an interactive walkthrough so I ended up being stuck at the project creation page not realizing that I had to put input some information. The woman started talking about some stuff that were not visible on the screen so I got a little confused and started looking around to see if I missed something. Otherwise, the technology looks cool, but I don't want my users to be confused as I was.
Hey sunwooz,

There is an issue with the audio getting out of sync that we are working on. Understandably that would be confusing.

This looks incredibly cool. If you guys have room in your beta I'd love to try it out. (ian at segment.io)

This is the kind of thing that companies won't have a second thought paying lots for as soon as they can prove that it's increased retention X times.

Ian - whoa that's too kind. We can definitely work something out to get you on board. I'll reach out over email.
It does look pretty great. But I have to wonder what happens when the first marketing guy sets it to autorun and disables the backspace key ;<).
We will ban them.

:)

I liked it and all, but the submit button on the last screen (where I'm actually supposed to convert and sign up) isn't working.
Signup didn't work for me either. It kind of makes me nervous to consider them when their own site doesn't work. :-)
I'm sorry sign up didn't work. What browser where you using?
I'm using FF 13 and the submit didn't work for me either until I hit 'Enter' in the text input. After that I was able to click submit.
Thanks I'll investigate.
I love the product, it has great potential. I would pay $10 to create a tutorial personally and $50 as a company.
Thanks tadruj. This great feedback. Is that Monthly? Yearly? Would you consider paying based on how many users watched your tutorial?
Uncertainty in pricing is terrible so in my view avoid the how many users watch your tutorial pricing. It can also inhibit usage which you don't want.

I'd charge based on number of tutorials. For upto 3, it's free but your branding is there. For upto 20 tutorials on your site, it's $30/month or something. You get the idea. This ensures if some massive site is using you for hundreds of tutorials, you get paid for the value you're delivering.

Of course, pricing is a dark art so take these thoughts with a grain of salt.

Really appreciate the advice. I agree we don't to introduce unnecessary uncertainty. Thanks especially for the hypothetical tiers that is great to have from an outsider.
If I click "See an example" nothing happens. Chrome 22 on Windows. There is an uncaught TypeError in the console.
Thanks for the report, we'll get on it asap.
Thanks so much for the kind words!
Ouch. No volume controls.
And there is no way to skip over the marketing pitch at the beginning. A tutorial should be friendly and impart useful guidance, not be a marketing tool.
Hey there,

I do appreciate the feedback about fast forwarding and the comment on the volume control, good ideas. Please keep in mind I'm demoing a marketing site. We have more 'functional' tutorials inside the app :)