The concept itself is pretty great, though I'm not sure if something like this has ever been implemented before. It seems like such an "of course" product that you'd expect it to already exist (though perhaps not as a really simple API).
Aside from the concept, the page design could use a little work. Here are 3 suggestions that'll improve your landing page big time.
1. You're doing a good job by sticking to (what seems to be) a grid, but you need to tighten the grid up. The last row is just hanging there, and you could definitely benefit from bringing more attention to it.
2. Designers would refer to this kind of padding and spacing as claustrophobic. You should consider padding things out a little more and adding breathing room. In the header area, try padding out above and below the headline. In the lower section with each feature callout, give it some top-padding.
3. Try reducing the contrast of the body text in the features section, as well as lowering the font size by 1px and increasing the line-height by 2px. For example: http://imgur.com/tw8QT
4. Be sure to vertically center the icons with the h3 text. They're off a little. It's nitpicking, but it counts.
5. The 45deg line in the header background is working against you. Your product is dead simple, your landing page is stripped to the bone. Keep with it — don't add needless textures.
i appreciate the feedback a ton, i'm going to see if i can get a few of those changes in here soon! i always enjoy hearing from someone with a better design eye :)
as to the product idea, there are a few places that have pulled it off in niche places (postcards for instance), and few high profile (similar) attempts in the late 90's (Royal Mail & MSFT via 'RelayOne'). we're out to make it easy for other devs to leverage our printing infrastructure with a no-bull approach to this :)
Not sure I agree that normal people need a ton of hand holding, but even that's true, those people will eventually disappear.
As for the image on our homepage — that's our app icon. Pretty funny that it's quite realistic (done by the talented folks at SoftFacade). We didn't think it was a huge contradiction, since it serves as more of a pretty picture than an interface.
That said, we probably will end up throwing it out when redesign our rather outdated external site :)
No, they are born every minute of every day. They are known as kids. Check out kids using iPads and iPhones. Compare that to Android. Kids can figure out how to use iPads and iPhones really quickly. Very, very doubt the same for the Metro or Android for that matter.
"According to various reports, when someone suggested to include a touch-typing tutorial in this intro as well, since many people did not know how to use a keyboard, steve Jobs simply said not to bother as those people would die out eventually."
We actually ran a closed beta program for a month or so with an invite system. We released invites slowly while we got the product up to speed, and then launched.
And, yes — there's more to going fulltime than hitting X customers. How much cash do you need in the bank to avoid cash flow issues? What's your margin like — is it really X users, or is it X*2? What's your churn rate? If you don't know the avg. lifetime of a customer, you may be out in the cold.
