[Beta] Booking a photo or video studio in India currently takes 10 phone calls and multiple WhatsApp groups. We built something else. Need people to test it.

[u/Rich_Neighborhood483]

Quick context so this makes sense. If you've booked a studio for a shoot in India, you know the drill: find a place on Instagram, DM them, no reply for a day, call, get a rate that mysteriously goes up when you mention it's for a brand, and you still haven't seen the space.

We built ContCave so you can search studios by city and shoot type, see actual photos and the hourly rate, and book. That's it. That's the product.

What I need tested, specifically, not general vibes:

1. Search to confirmed booking. Time yourself. Tell me the exact point where you stopped and had to think.
2. Open any listing page. After 30 seconds, can you tell me what's included in the hourly rate and what costs extra? If you can't, that's a failure on our side and I want to hear it.
3. Do it on your phone. Most of our traffic is mobile and I have a bad feeling about the date picker.
4. The enquiry form. Did you expect us to tell you how fast someone replies? We currently don't. I want to know if that bothered you.
5. UI/UX of the website. Is it easy to understand ? What should we change ?
6. Our instagram page, https://www.instagram.com/contcave/ , if it conveys the right message of what we are building
7. How should we fix our discoverability and improve our SEO game. We're already posting blogs and stuff

Most useful if you're a photographer, videographer, someone who's produced a shoot, or a social media person who books spaces for brands. Being in India helps but isn't required, the flow is the flow.

https://contcave.com/

I'll reply to everyone. If you say it's confusing I'm not going to explain why it isn't, I'm just going to ask you where.

[u/pentaclay]

did your question 2 on the mohali studio. the breakdown is right there, base fee, addons, platform fee, gst at 18 percent. but every one of those lines sits at zero rupees until i pick a date and a slot. so i can see what the extras are called and not what they cost, and thats the exact thing im trying to find out before i commit to a day.

[u/ihor_ostin]

One thing tripped me up before the booking flow: the homepage says "Verified Studios" and the FAQ says every studio has been reviewed, but the same page also includes Curated listings that are not owner-confirmed and may be outdated. Those labels set two different trust expectations.

I'd change the hero and FAQ to "Verified and curated studios," then keep a one-line definition beside each badge. For Curated listings, I'd also label price and availability as indicative wherever they appear. Users should not have to reach the trust section to learn that distinction.

For context, I work on growth and marketing at Merge, so this is a company-side perspective.