8
18 Comments

Does my messaging resonate with you?

https://www.angstrom.life/

It's my first side-project but I have thick skin, so please don't hold your punches :)

The site is still obviously still a work in progress but I feel I am too close to it, so I need some fresh eyes on it in order to make progress.

Thanks so much in

  1. 3

    Great thing. It's amazing how people around the world think about similar ideas at the same tie - 2 weeks ago I started doing life-goal approach to task management, my execution was using a simple bot that does a daily scrum with me. I missed something where it can be stored and organized in a better way.

    However, must have feature for me is nested backlog items and ability to list them on a full page. Currently, I use workflowy for this but it's not as organized as I would it to be.

    From the description I'm not sure if I could do two things:
    Set some daily habits ie. meditation I see on one screen - and then track them the same way mood is tracked
    And also to have some daily notes for them, for example, I have a habit of sticking to a challenging diet and I need to write down what I ate and how I felt during the day.

    If you don't have a mobile version I would suggest making it into PWA so everybody can access it offline from the start.

    On the message itself - even if you are IS/SF/DM you can't afford "zero collaboration", for me, this is more about "organize your life first, then the world". Life-goal oriented approach is the way forward, I believe that some of the IH would stop being them if they started thinking this way and perfecting the actual goal every day:>

    I keep my fingers crossed for this one!

    1. 1

      Thanks @KrisP!

      Great feedback, I really appreciate the effort you put in.

      Definitely it is interesting how ideas have a time and lots of people get the same ones.

      Let me tackle your points individually.

      Q1. Set some daily habits ie. meditation I see on one screen - and then track them the same way mood is tracked. And also to have some daily notes for them, for example, I have a habit of sticking to a challenging diet and I need to write down what I ate and how I felt during the day.
      A1. Yes you can set daily habits and track them like the mood analysis. You can write notes on all tasks but it doesn’t save the times that you edit the notes in the way I think that you mean.

      Q1. If you don't have a mobile version I would suggest making it into PWA so everybody can access it offline from the start.
      A1. It is mobile “friendly” at the moment but if it gets traction I’d like to do a native app to improve the experience.

      I do agree with you on the “organize your life” type of messaging is probably more accurate. I’m just not sure if it is punchy enough (and maybe overdone by other apps). I really don’t know about the “zero collaboration” thing myself. I do feel though that it might pique some people’s curiosity. I definitely could be wrong on that though.

      Thanks again!

      1. 1

        It seems I hit my free firebase download limit and my video has stopped loading. Trying to change that now. Really sorry about that!

  2. 2

    This looks pretty good; it's something I would use.

    My feedback in rough order of importance:

    • There's no clear CTA. The purple 'Try for free' button is out of the way and doesn't really draw the eye.
    • "Absolutely zero collaboration project management" isn't really a user benefit. Think about something like "Finally get your s--- together"
    • Likewise "For solo-founders, indiehackers and digital nomads." doesn't tell me what you're offering. Combining these into something like "Zero collaboration project management for solo entrepreneurs" might be better.
    • I would loose this: "The biggest difference between Angstrom and other project management tools is the hierarchy of tasks." That's already obvious from the images.
    • The video could use it's own home. It's just kind of floating in space now.
    • I don't love the red/yellow/green color scheme. It makes me think of a reggae band.
    1. 1

      Hey Alan, thanks for that!

      • Good point on the CTA. I'll come up with something more prominent.
      • I'm struggling with the headline alright. What I do like about the "Zero collaboration..." is that is somewhat controversial and the opposite of all the other project management apps that focus on teams and I wanted to make that clear from the first second when you land.
      • Do you think the "hierarchy of tasks" would be obvious to someone skimming rather than someone like you who obviously looked in detail and thought about it from a feedback perspective? You might be right on that though too.
      • Reggae band :) The colours are going. Too many people have complained about it. It's now a no-brainer to get rid of it. And I liked it :(

      Cheers!

      1. 1

        I'm all for taking the contrarian approach with "zero collaboration"; that's largely what I'm doing with Peraspera.io. I would just shift it down from the headline because it's not really a user benefit, it's part of how you get to the benefit.

        I could be wrong about the hierarchy thing, but it seemed pretty obvious to me from the image.

        1. 1

          I'll take that on-board and see what I can do. I got a lot of feedback yesterday from a number of sources. I need to collate it all and make decisions from that.

          I just checked out https://peraspera.io, you and I are going in very different directions :) It looks great! I hope it goes well for you. I saw your post looking for feedback. I'll return the favour later today when I have a bit more time to go through it properly.

  3. 1

    Another piece of general feedback, after I've processed your proposition.

    Focus on the ANGST, literally.

    There are definitely more goal-oriented GTD apps out there. Yours is targeted at solo founders. I am pretty confident to say that one of the biggest struggles that solo founders endure is the emotional one, of dread and uncertainty. And your product tries to address that, with features like "see what makes you tick" (track your mood, associate with the tasks you were doing etc).

    Helping with solo developers' angst IS your unique selling proposition. Make it apparent and design around it. Don't just make a goal-oriented to-do list, but a tool whose mission is to help reduce that angst.

    1. 1

      This is genuinely astute feedback. I think I felt it already with the feature set and hinted towards the "angst" in lines such as "You juggle many committments and need a way to keep on top of them all and not let anything fall through the cracks."

      But, it was more of a subconscious thing rather than explicitly thinking about it. You really distilled it with your feedback. Thank you!

      1. 1

        Happy to help. I have that angst myself, and would really appreciate the tool that could take some of it away.

  4. 1

    Not sure what it does, but I am willing to sign up to find out.

    1. 1

      I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing :) I guess it's better than you not knowing what it does and not want to sign-up.

  5. 1

    Sorry for short feedback. It's late, and I know that if I start reading what others have written and composing my own big reply, that will get me up past 2 AM.

    One thing to share though. Started watching the video. Feel free to remove the whole first half of it, which is fluff. You already have a textual value prop saying it's a time management tool for solopreneurs — so no need to reiterate on that in the video. Just record a screencast of the product in action and put it on autoplay, and let me quickly figure out whether it looks helpful for me.

    Do it kinda like a friend of mine did with FontBase.

    P.S. Looks really nice. Will check that out!

    P.P.S. I'd also suggest replacing the value prop wording. "Absolutely zero collaboration" sounds hostile. Consider "Project management for one" :) That will spark the interest just as much.

    1. 1

      Hi Paul,

      You're so right about the fluff. Looking at it again after your comment is kinda embarrassing that I didn't realise it myself.

      FontBase is a good example. I think I will head down that road.

      I've had a lot of good and bad feedback on the heading. I'm still not sure what to do it.

      Your feedback wasn't too short. Thanks for it!

      1. 2

        Speaking of the heading, check out Lesson 2 from this article: 4 unexpected lessons I’ve learned after going through Y Combinator this year

        More feedback:

        • Yeah, remove the colors.
        • Remove the obviously photostock girl. Put a video there, jump straight to demoing the product.
        • "60 second overview" is too much :) Aim for 15 seconds, show only the essentials (e.g. your unique selling proposition aka USP), do editing if necessary.
        • Text like

        You juggle many committments and need a way to keep on top of them all and not let anything fall through the cracks

        — try to avoid. You are making assumptions about my life, and if this doesn't hit home 100%, I stop trusting you right at that point. From now on it will seem to me like you're trying to sell too hard.

        Also it's not a literature contest. I used to write those sophisticated sentences and witty idioms myself. Truth is, those are only hard to read and dilute the message.

        • Generally try to shorten your copy as much as possible. Write, remove, repeat.

        The biggest difference between Angstrom and other project management tools is the hierarchy of tasks. Everything is connected to your life goals

        — I'm sure this can be stripped down to a few words. Besides, I'm not so sure that there are no other goal-oriented planning apps — I had an idea of one a few years ago myself, and I've seen a guy on a local forum looking for co-founders on very hilarious terms for a project just like this. So the first sentence can easily go away IMO. USP is just like jokes: if it's not obvious and you have to explain it, it's a bad USP.

        • In general, the biggest secret to success with products and everything else is to keep it as simple as possible. Took me 26 years to learn that.

        P.S. Here's my landing page. It's not perfect and I haven't updated it in a while, but apparently it's a good example, judging from users' feedback.

        P.P.S., Oh, your website has more sections than just a landing page. There are much more things I'd do differently, but that would take a while to write :) The most obvious ones are:

        • Remove the "testimonials" section. It's blank, and at the moment it looks unprofessional (kinda like those Web 1.0 "this site is under construction" announcements)
        • On the "Product" page, you have "Analyze" in text but "Analyse" in screenshots. Minor thing, but really catches the eye and gives off an unpolished, rushed product impression (I'm a perfectionist, yeah)
        1. 1

          Really great feedback Paul. Thanks again. It's clear I have a lot of work to do to polish it up.

          I'm still glad I posted it here before spending too much time on it without getting feedback. I have a much clearer direction now.

          That co-founder link was hilarious :) Love to know if anyone was silly enough to take him up on it.

  6. 1

    My first instinct when visiting the page was a two-part combination of:
    (a) these colors are so bright in "Absolutely zero collaboration project management" and it felt like you were trying to emphasize one part but wasn't sure which part
    (b) Hmm something is wrong, I don't understand why you'd want "zero collaboration".

    It took me a while but eventually I realized that zero collaboration was a defining feature. In general I think "collaboration" as a positive, so the phrasing makes it feel like a negative thing. I'd consider whether you want to find a way to phrase your features positively. Off the top of my head maybe something like "built for solo freelancers", "organize yourself", "Solo founder project management", etc.

    I really like the desk photo.

    The video's audio is a bit loud. (Actually a lot loud. System volume is set to 25% and video player audio was set to 10% and it was still loud.)

    The next three jumbotrons seem fine -- they look good, describe the product well I think, and give me a sense of what it looks like. When I got to the third one "nstantly see your progress" I realized I hadn't seen a call to action / signup... I look up and of course it's there in the upper right but that's visual clutter that my mind just ignored so I only saw it because I went looking for it.

    "Understand, who you are and what makes you tick." I think you shouldn't have that comma in there. And by this point I think you've actually moved the goalposts on what Angstrom is -- this section is no longer about project management and is what I'd call part of the Quantified Self movement (see tools like http://gyrosco.pe and https://exist.io/)

    1. 1

      The colours are going. Today! People seem to hate it.

      The text of the heading has been splitting people. I have a few ideas for alternatives.

      Sorry about the video volume. I'm not sure why it would be like that. I'll fix that somehow. I didn't change any audio defaults or anything like that.

      A few people have mentioned that lack of a clear CTA. I'll need to fix that before launch. You've just confirmed how bad it is.

      I haven't come across http://gyrosco.pe before. Looks interesting. I'm not trying to go after the Quantified Self space to be honest. It's just a feedback loop on your habits. There are some overlaps for sure.

      Thanks for the feedback Furchin!

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 15 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments