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Show HN: OnAir – create link, receive calls

(onair.io)
263 points bigmicro | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 09:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source

Hello HN community,

This is bootstrapped/indie hacker-ish. Would appreciate feedback.

What it is: You create a link (e.g. onair/yourname), and anyone can call you from it. Caller uses a web browser to make the call (not dedicated app). You can create as many links as you want, and can direct calls to colleagues in a round-robin or escalation manner.

In a way, it's like the "opposite of Calendly"; whereas Calendly is about meetings in the future, OnAir is about immediate meetings.

Motivation behind it: One of our SaaS products was struggling to grow. We believed that if we provide more "hand holding" to visitors on the landing page, it will increase conversion. It's like speaking to the guy behind the counter before making a purchase. That idea/experiment, over time, became OnAir.

Feedback: Identifying the perfect use case / customer has not been easy. E-Commerce store owners, which I thought would be ideal customer profile, are not responding as expected (e.g. "why use this instead of a WhatsApp button?"). The value of branded links, round-robin, recording/transcription, lead capture, etc does not seem to matter much to them. Ideas are welcome.

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nutanc ◴[15 Nov 24 16:28 UTC] No.42148384[source]▶
Had launched something like this in 2016. We had called it as ering.me, so you could have an url like ering.me/handle. Used it in email signatures, web calling etc. It didn't pick up at that time or we didn't market enough :)

Hope the market is mature now and products like this succeed. All the best.

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SoftTalker ◴[15 Nov 24 17:12 UTC] No.42148772[source]▶
I'm not really surprised. The people who grew up with phone calls and who like to "hop on a call" to work out issues are all aging out. They are in their fifties at the youngest, if not already retired. It's my experience that far fewer younger people reach for the phone as a first means of contact. It's not preferred, and they try to avoid it.

And by "call" I mean direct, synchronous, real-time conversation. Whether literally a phone call, or an online voice or video call.

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1. OJFord ◴[16 Nov 24 16:27 UTC] No.42157187[source]▶
> The people who grew up with phone calls and who like to "hop on a call" to work out issues are all aging out. They are in their fifties at the youngest, if not already retired. It's my experience that far fewer younger people reach for the phone as a first means of contact. It's not preferred, and they try to avoid it.

That is not at all my experience, and I'd correlate it more to junior/seniority than age directly. I think perhaps more junior there's a temptation to screen-share (screenshots over pasted code/errors too) to show how confusing something is, where with experience you're more comfortable asking a question(s) in text and understanding & applying the answer(s).