Charging 150,- € for a webservice beta test
Markus Thielmann — Wed, 2008-04-30
GoodGaze claims that it's webservice is able to predict which parts of your website will get attention, based on neuro-scientific research.
If it works "good enough", you'll be able to safe thousends of Euros for a real test, based on the behavior of real probands.
GoodGaze is operated by the Institute of Cognitive Science of the University of Osnabrück.
While the educational background seems strong, I politely doubt that this applies to the business part as well.
After asking for an invitation to the closed beta service, I was told that there are still slots free. One small catch: I have to pay 187,50 € (including taxes, around 278,- USD) to get signed up for the beta service:
Um bei auftretenden Fragen und Vorschlägen zur Verbesserung des Dienstes
schnellstmöglich reagieren zu können, begrenzen wir die Nutzerzahl und
erheben einen Unkostenbeitrag von 150 EUR (zzgl. MwSt.).
I'm testing quite a lot of services and I'm happy to help improving products without getting paid for it. I can hardly imagine to pay for a service which I never tested before, which I never read a single test report of an independent source and which does not clearly state what services I'm charged for and how long I will be able to benefit from them.
So GoodGaze might want to consult some University department, which has some descend understanding of e-commerce requirements.
I'm still hoping GoodGaze is able to deliver what it claims and will find some successful business model, which isn't based upon charging beta testers.
Markus, I agree that it's
Fabian Stelzer (not verified) — Fri, 2008-05-02Markus,
I agree that it's unusual to charge users for a beta-test, especially in times when literally hundreds of consumer-facing startups struggle hard to convince early adopters like you to give them a try. In this context, it would obviously make more sense for companies to pay beta-testers, not the other way around.
However, from a business perspective, GoodGaze is not a typical web 2.0 startup. We do not aim to attract an audience of millions, that we then display ads to (for free!). Instead, we are selling a service - primarily to other companies, not consumers. The current pricing for our beta-test might seem high, given the minimal computational demands of a lightweight web 2.0 application like a social network / bookmarking service. However, if you consider that a typical GoodGaze analysis takes about 10-20 seconds on our state-of-the-art QuadCore, I hope that it becomes conceivable that two months of unlimited access to our technology is well worth more than what we charge currently - let alone the costs of an alternative eye-tracking study.
Still, part of our future service is most probably going to be free for bloggers/scientific institutions/non-profit organizations.
That said, if you're interested, I'd be happy to send you a GoodGaze analysis of your blogpage.
Cheers,
-Fabian (on behalf of the GoodGaze team)
Thanks for your comment,
Markus Thielmann — Mon, 2008-05-05Thanks for your comment, Fabian.
I guess you missed my point.
I don't intend to challenge your business model. If you read my initial statement again, you'll notice that I'm quite confident that your solution might be a lot cheaper than traditional research methods. So it's fair to charge for a working product.
What I missed in your presentation and in your response to my e-mail, was some kind of defined value or counter value. All you mentioned was support for bug reports, which I consider essential if you need a successful beta test.
In the meantime, I noticed you did add some more information to your site. It seems your charging for a two months period of unlimited access to GoodGaze, which is reasonable *if* it offers valid results. While I have a lot of respect for the University of Osnabrück, I can't find any scientific paper regarding GoodGaze's Algorithms or at least it's scientific relevance. Are you going to publish on that topic?
Thanks for offering a free analyze of my blog, but since I'm not going to change anything on the layout, it's not important for me. If you read my e-mail beta request again, you'll notice that (besides a few own projects) I was interested in showing GoodGaze to a public funded company I'm working with.
While it's still an interesting project, I guess I'll just wait until beta is over.
Good luck to the GoodGaze-Team. Would be nice to see a successful web startup from germany.
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