Wait, that Helen? So that's what you've been up to since college. Nice job. (And you too Christine.) :)
A lot of great features in this thing, even from day one. The right number of different ways to do things. Very strong UI work already. Still a few kinks in the flows - how do I add a venue to my Event without also contacting the venue? - but something I'd feel comfortable recommending to my mother.
It's also clear you guys took cues from airbnb, not letting users get too distracted by worrying about what they can't chose until they've already been sucked in by the sheer imagery and selection of what they can. Heck, I don't even live in San Francisco, and even I found myself on here way longer than expected just looking at the various venues and how it all worked. (A "corking fee"? Fascinating.)
I see your "for ____ people" field only fits four digits. Do you see yourselves eventually letting people search for and select even larger venues (conference centers, stadiums, what have you)? Or is that sort of business a bit too high touch?
EDIT: Ah, you can still type in five digits; it's just not wide enough. Eh, my question still stands. :)
Re: how do I add a venue to my Event without also contacting the venue? You can work around it right now by adding to Favorites first but yes, that is something we're working on changing!
Re: Yes. We are currently focusing on the 20-500 size events but will be be letting people select larger venues in the future (we are continuing to add larger venues even now). We will also be incorporating other new features for the more high touch events - so stay tuned!
As unsolicited feedback, I think the UI is a bit complex on search result and booking pages. Could benefit from doing a lot less there I think. But overall it looks great.
Thanks! We went back and forth finding a balance between the relatively complex constraints some people have in looking for a venue, versus a cleaner interface + fewer features. This is noted :) and we'll noodle on it a bit more going forward.
I disagree :). I think the complexity is about spot on. Pretty standard...users are accustomed to having a myriad of filter options for sites like these. (Plus, the filter options are necessary to allow the user to filter down to the perfect venue IMO.) Maybe how they are presented could be improved, but I reckon looks pretty good as is.
I agree. The search result pages is very busy with complicated options and heavy UI. I would consider splitting up the big grid into smaller, differentiated groups (perhaps by size or price) to avoid the overwhelming "Google Image Search" effect. I would also recommend moving all the complicated search options to the bottom of the page or to a different page.
Like this one alot. As someone who has booked venues before and had to run around searching, this would have saved me tons of time. Combine this with SpeakerGram (for booking speakers) and EventBrite for ticketing and I can plan a conference in a snap :-)
I too have pointed out google and yahoo when people talk about bad domain names, but for all I know those names may actually have made it take longer for people to take those companies seriously.
