2. Where are the benefits? I see plenty of features listed, but no clarity around why I need this, or who should use it. Think about who has a problem with verifying ID (your Gumtree example is a good start). Replace Register | Share | Confirm with these target groups and the unique benefits to them. E.g. Buying online? Buy in confidence, knowing that the seller is genuine. Selling online? Stand out from the crowd as the most trustworthy seller.
3. Pricing plan. Do I need an ongoing subscription - I understand that you want me to have one... ;) What about one-off or short-term pricing. When I ebay I tend to do a large batch at once when I finally get round to clearing out that cupboard. If I believed this would help my sales appeal to more people, I may want a one month account. No need for it in the intervening months. Plus, if you charge £10 for a one month account, £2 pm looks more appealing.
4. Focus on your target market? You can only think ebay/Gumtree traders, but wonder if there are more applications. What's wrong with focus on this market to get started and expanding in the future? Deciding to be all about trust in online trading would reshape the way you structure the site.
5. Copy. Think about getting it professionally rewritten. Like your design, there is nothing inherently wrong with it, just that it could be more polished. It's amazing the difference a professionally written copy can make.
Is there a market? Catch-22. If OkayID is widely recognised and trusted, then ebay sellers (for example) will have to have it because buyers will expect it. To get widely recognised you have to get sellers to adopt it. You're creating a market; another reason to tightly focus on one market at first.
I chose Assistly to handle our customer contact, after assessing it against ZenDesk. Both are good. I went with Assistly because I found the user experience to be better (ZenDesk defaults to updating the user on every stage of their ticket's progress) and I found Assistly themselves to be responsive (answered my questions quickly and honestly, weren't afraid to admit that they don't have features and say what is / isn't under consideration for future updates).
I'm using the Assistly knowledgebase feature too, and it is well integrated. It's a bit basic so I expect to migrate as we grow. Probably to Joomla.
Do you plan on email support only, or are you looking at social media and phone too?
Relevance: I emigrated to New Zealand in 1999 then Australia a few years later. I'm back in the UK now so have no local knowledge, but here's what I know from going through the process for both countries.
Australia and New Zealand operate a points system for immigration and regularly publish lists of desired occupations. You get points for years of work experience, educational level, field of expertise. If you can prove you match a desired occupation then the requirements drop.
It may be simpler for you to get a visa, rather than your wife. If you get accepted for residency (no need to give up citizenship) you are entitled to work and bring in dependents. From what I remember student visas tend to have restrictions about who else can be admitted on them.
Residency = five years before you have to renew (when I had it, may have changed now). In both countries, if you were still in the country at the end of your residency you qualified for citizenship. So to answer your question, if you get in, chances of staying long-term are good. Australia and New Zealand are actively growing their populations and keen to add the right skills.
No other suggestions for you. I can recommend Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne as awesome places.
Good plan, though you just delay the problem of finding users to test. You will want to test your user experience at some point.
1. Clarify your benefit to the buyer to figure out who your ideal tester is (your zero negotiation and and unlimited deals reasons are a good start).
2. Work out where these people are and go promote to them. So you need people who: are comfortable shopping online, already research purchases online, are cost-concious, are actively considering a car purchase, live in <insert geographic restriction>. Posting to petrolhead forums asking for volunteers and buying adwords for "car comparison <location>" would be a good start.
Sounds like you have some dealerships engaged. They have access to car buyers so can they help you find testers? They may sees a risk of leaking prospects to the competition, but surely you can control who sees applications in your test environment?
3. Offer incentives, or you'll waste time battling the drop-out rate instead of fixing bugs. E.g. Fund your dealers offering a small extra discount for any sale completed through your service with feedback given.
Their model (for members) is to assume that you are going for a special occasion, so they tell you what extras you can expect.
I like your idea to do it the other way around, so you find out what I want then get hotels to put together an offer tailored to me. Feels like I may get a better deal that way.
Daring Fireball, Reddit, Signal vs. Noise, The Brooks Review, shawnblanc.net and a quick skim of Twitter (following people who post interesting stuff).
Google Docs is not project management software, so you waste time and energy setting it up to do what you need. I've just moved to project management software and found that because it is structured to manage a project, it gets out of the way and lets me think about what the project needs.
2. Where are the benefits? I see plenty of features listed, but no clarity around why I need this, or who should use it. Think about who has a problem with verifying ID (your Gumtree example is a good start). Replace Register | Share | Confirm with these target groups and the unique benefits to them. E.g. Buying online? Buy in confidence, knowing that the seller is genuine. Selling online? Stand out from the crowd as the most trustworthy seller.
3. Pricing plan. Do I need an ongoing subscription - I understand that you want me to have one... ;) What about one-off or short-term pricing. When I ebay I tend to do a large batch at once when I finally get round to clearing out that cupboard. If I believed this would help my sales appeal to more people, I may want a one month account. No need for it in the intervening months. Plus, if you charge £10 for a one month account, £2 pm looks more appealing.
4. Focus on your target market? You can only think ebay/Gumtree traders, but wonder if there are more applications. What's wrong with focus on this market to get started and expanding in the future? Deciding to be all about trust in online trading would reshape the way you structure the site.
5. Copy. Think about getting it professionally rewritten. Like your design, there is nothing inherently wrong with it, just that it could be more polished. It's amazing the difference a professionally written copy can make.
Is there a market? Catch-22. If OkayID is widely recognised and trusted, then ebay sellers (for example) will have to have it because buyers will expect it. To get widely recognised you have to get sellers to adopt it. You're creating a market; another reason to tightly focus on one market at first.