Cloud-based Excel report server Landing page and product feedback
Would like feedback on the clarity of the public website and using the product. In exchange for your feedback, use the code IndieHacker20 at checkout to get 100% free access to ReportRocket.com for 3 months.
You need to explain how the data gets merged into the spreadsheet. Does it expand out formula ranges to fit the number of rows received, or do you have to make your template as big as you might possibly need?
Can you install the product inside a corporate firewall? It's still the 20th century for a lot of businesses and they're exceedingly wary of exposing their data to the internet.
There are 5 strategies to merge data, based on the target type - (1) worksheet, (2) named range, (3) custom range, (4) starting point or (5) starting point with insert. Data is pulled from the source as either a data table or a single value. For tables, you have the option to include the header row.
For named and custom ranges, data will fan out into the range. If the dataset is either too wide or too long to fit the range, the overflow is truncated.
The 'starting point' is the most popular insert strategy. Data is written starting from the top left most cell indicated and will write as many columns or rows as needed.
The 'starting point with insert' is used frequently to generate invoices. This strategy inserts a row for every row that is written.
We built and are testing an agent that users can install inside of their firewall to allow ReportRocket to pull data from on-premise databases. This is the same strategy that integration tools like MuleSoft and Jitterbit use.
Excellent, that's good information; you could have a section in your website "How to make your report template".
I've done a similar thing many times for corporate clients; using a library called ClosedXML. This DOES expand ranges and formulas, so you can do SUM(C1:C2), insert 1000 rows and it changes it to =SUM(C1:C1000). Something to consider.
In my pre-indie life I've worked in various data teams within large enterprises. The most widely used reports may start with Excel but are transitioned to reporting solutions such as Tableau/Jaspersoft, but we could never move a large number of niche but highly valued reports out of Excel. Such a pain-point for me as data manager/developer, so I think you're onto something here.
My main comment is that I was confused by the demo as I watched the upload run several times. I didn't realize for a while that I could move forward by clicking at the top buttons.
Aside from that - I was momentarily confused by your pricing sheet. I saw "1 user" and thought that was a user of the report, which would be kinda useless. Then I saw report subscriber further down, which made things clearer. Maybe say "1 administrator".
Also - there's a typo on the main page under Step 1: "Generate report from you custom template", should be "your custom template".
Best of luck.
Thanks for the great advice. We changed 'User' to 'Administrator', fixed the typo and are working on a better demo.
Hey Doug,
ReportRocket website looks good. Here are some suggestions -
The top bar could be bigger, with text with bigger font, more visible.
The graphic is great but there is too much space wasted, so the sign up and tour buttons could be bigger, again more visible. Also the colour scheme doesn't match with graphic but that's minor. Also could use a better logo and a better font for the top bar.
I would love to help you with the logo, If you like.