Free Product Feedback, #2
My last post didn't get much engagement. Non-milestone post engagement seems super low on IH, but maybe that's because I didn't select a topic? Here goes #2.
Share your startup and some current metrics (particularly whatever you want to improve) and I will give you actionable product advice focusing on increasing growth + retention.
Here's post #1 to get an idea on the feedback I'll give:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/free-in-depth-product-feedback-edition-1-64fea70883
Hey @sobbuh,
Thx for this awesome post!
I'm curious what do you think about https://www.monsterwriter.app/
I've launched the website end of November and these are the stats for December:
I want to increase both number but currently I'm focusing on the download rate.
Great initiative @sobbuh!
Product: Navigator ( https://navigator.bytebeacon.com )
Pitch: Spotlight/Alfred like smart search bar for your website.
Details: Navigating through hotkeys is the preferred way for superusers of any applications (Think hotkeys on Gmail or Spotlight on mac). Companies spend a lot of effort on UX to reduce friction in navigation flows. A "launcher" like widget typically solves this problem on desktop. We're just bringing the same tech on your website. Just visit https://navigator.bytebeacon.com and press 'ctrl' + 'space' to see it in action.
Stage: Early Beta. Currently our team is manually on boarding users. Since we create and constantly maintain website indexes as well, we want control over who we let in right now. We're very close to releasing a web ui to automate the on boarding for users and make it completely self serve and open for GA on a tiered basis (a tier where indexes aren't less frequently maintained (lower cost) .. and a tier where you get analytics reported back on widget usage etc ...).
Looking for: How to get more visibility and early signup interest. Also the proper way to launch and get a good impact.
Interesting product, but I'm not sold on the viability. Will need to think about this one.
How many users do you have right now?
What types of sites are they? What kind of results are they getting?
What are some sites you envision this working on? I.e. who would 5 of your ideal customers be?
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For example, this would be great for roamresearch.com, but they already have keyboard shortcuts.
Could also be great for sites like tailwindcss.com (though they already have "press '/' to search")
I also think it could work really well if you integrated this with shopify -- that might be an opportunity. I know there are search apps on shopify, so that might be a market to explore.
Have you worked with any ecommerce sites?
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I wonder where the ROI is in adding it to my site. I don't think "getting more power users" is likely, so I would have to see some numbers or testimonials about that to believe it.
The biggest thing for potential customers is to see it in action on existing websites, and then to hear about what kind of results those websites have gotten from installing navigator (testimonials and statistics/case studies).
I would really look at drift.com as your source of inspiration for marketing and positioning.
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Even then, I'm wondering how much you could really charge for this functionality (outside of ecommerce, where it would make sense). That doesn't mean it's a bad idea -- if it works and does provide measurable ROI, that means it's an amazing idea.
If you can answer the above questions I'd be happy to look into this more.
Thanks for the reply @sobbuh .. There were a lot of areas you covered. I'll try and categorize them and answer separately.
Current traction:
Traction is low! We published our landing page about 15 days ago and talked about it on IH and Reddit only to get early feedback as we build out more of the MVP, but felt the core offering is ready to be showcased (since we're still building out the backend and web interface for our launch in Jan). During this time we've manually onboarded a handful of customers ranging in various disciples (recruiting platform, rental listing etc ..), but all in SaaS world and all solopreneur projects.
Target customers:
Ecommerce would be a nice area, but our focus wasn't there. ECommerce typically are happy with search and Algolia is already in that market (your suggestion on tailwindcss.com actually uses algolia behind the scene). We're currently closer to hotkeys, but wish to span over search as well. We'd love our longer term customers to come from B2B SaaS apps space. To give more concrete names, we feel Social marketing tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprinklr etc... or in the BI space like Looker, Tableau, would be fantastic opportunities. Even in analytics space (as people swap between multiple dashboard many times) and Developer docs as well (but that's closer to search than it is to easy navigation). We feel there a lot we can do here, but we might need to pick one area and position ourselves just there to prove value and expand over time.
ROI:
We don't know the concrete measurements here. As you mentioned we either need core numbers here or at least testimonials to show value. We're working on it, but do let us know if you have ways we can get to this or core numbers we should make sure to collect from our customers. We're at a stage where we've had customers tell us this looks cool and I'd like to try it and seen usage of the widget go up over the integration time. However no one has come back to us and said the widget has caused our revenue to go up $XX or XX%. As we rollout, we feel most might not share those numbers with us, but will definitely share quotes to testimonials we can showcase.
Pricing:
For the side and solopreneur projects we're hoping to give out the widget for free and only charge if they're curious about capturing usage stats and insights.
For early stage startups: we're hoping to charge low monthly fee mainly for analytics. This should show them what information are their customers regularly looking for and splits by demographics as well.
For medium to large scale: (on top of what's mentioned earlier) a lot of focus is going around insight and report generation. We haven't done much here, but have plans as our team background is in this area as well. Of course branding and customizations will go in here as well and the pricing would be highest here.
Would love to hear your thoughts on:
Finally we'd love to get your insights on how you'd approach getting the target audiences attention. Given we're in our early beta right now, targeting the big guys doesn't make sense to us. Would you agree? When is the time to get in touch? If not is good, what are good channels to approach them if we don't have a personal connection in?
Hey @sobbuh!
Really appreciate it your offer to help! This is why I love Indie Hackers so much -- members of the community are always so obliging, helpful, supportive, and generous. Anyway let's get right into it.
I launched my Twitter scheduling app, https://zlappo.com, a few months ago. So far I have 1 paying customer (yay?) and almost 100 users. It's slow and steady for now; I still have high hopes for the app, as I have a direct competitor doing the exact same thing, targeting the exact same market, who's doing better.
Currently it feels like my users come from the ether. Since I haven't done any heavy marketing yet, most of them have been trickling in from Twitter itself, where given my small reach I can't get the visibility that I need to grow this further and get the feedback that I so desperately need to iterate on.
What advice would you have for me to grow an app like mine?
I like this -- though I don't really know the market.
I don't like the name or branding, so I would work on those. i.e. look at later.com for a good example
I'm going to give you some landing page advice for now; I'll test the product over the next few days and give product advice as well.
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[1] Who are your competitors right now?
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[2] Who is your 1 paying customer? Who are the 100 users? Have you talked to them?
Start by talking to them.
Do you have analytics set up? i.e. mixpanel or amplitude
How often are they using the app? What are the key features they're using? Are their twitter accounts growing?
Can you help them grow their accounts? How?
Help them and use them as case studies.
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[3] Landing Page
"Game-Changing Twitter Automation App for Personal Brands"
"game-changing twitter automation" is great.
"App" is redundant.
"for personal brands" is confusing. why can't brands use it? What if I am just a person?
So, I would just change it to "Game-changing twitter automation"
Great and to the point.
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[4] Branding
lime green color is too aggressive and feels cheap.
Your logo is fuzzy on my macbook pro.
Everything is a little too large (i.e. button text should be smaller, header bar should be smaller)
These all decrease user trust off the bat.
here's an example that's much cleaner imo - https://imgur.com/a/rUMzTV0
Once you grow your twitter following, add a video of your twitter account/profile growing with the date super-imposed to your hero. Show other accounts and their growth over time as well.
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[5] Content marketing
what is the best content you can find on growing your twitter account?
Can you make an ultimate guide?
How do I grow my twitter account and how does zlappo fit into that?
Create that content and share it. Share it on twitter as threads, made using zlappo. Try using twitter ads -- sharing the best advice for how to grow your twitter account from 0-1000, or something like that.
I would buy twitter followers (not sure where to do that, tbh). People will look at your followers to see if you actually know what you're talking about.
Grow your twitter account and share how you did it (including buying followers, if you do it). Be upfront with your audience.
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[6] Pricing page
Change $9.99 to $9.
$49.99 to $49.
Change the names to something a bit more professional.
Later uses "free/premium/plus/starter/brand".
You could make it a bit more personal/opinionated/hype.
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[7] Affiliate program :
Find influencers on twitter.
Ask them if they'd be interested in using your app for free, and if they like it you can set up an affiliate program.
Make a list of 100 and email/dm 5-10 a week, something like:
"Hi, I made zlappo for twitter automation and easy threading.
You can use it for free (just sign up with code '[personalized code based on their twitter name]'). It would be great to get your feedback on it, because I made it for people like you"
Test a few different messages. Once they respond, tell them if they like it you'd be happy to set up an affiliate program for them. Give them a big % of sales.
(don't worry about setting up the program until you've found people interested in running it).
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Hey sobbuh, thanks for the detailed response! Sorry I haven't been able to respond through the holidays. I'm taking into consideration seriously all that you've said, they're all legitimate suggestions for improvement, and I even got started right away with 7 (affiliate program), as a few influencers have already hit me up on their own accord asking to do affiliate deals, so it seemed very natural to get started on that first.
One of them was even willing to promote my product in exchange for my product's subscription. Although I'm thoroughly willing to do that, I don't know how to structure the deal. How long of a subscription should I give away? What should I expect from him in terms of promotion: a single tweet, a testimonial, case study, etc.? Should I tie the former to the latter with some metric so that I give a longer free subscription if he markets it better?
My opinion is always to focus on your relationship first, and then worry about the results later.
This is a chance for you to get in depth feedback from someone who needs your product and who has the ability to spread it. So I would go with that angle first. Create a relationship with them, see what works for them, what doesn't. Talk to them, establish a good relationship, and then afterwards worry about the results.
Your goal with the influencer is to get them on your side and to get them really excited about sharing your product. You don't do that by setting guidelines and asking for results, IME, you do it by building a relationship and doing the things that make your product share-worthy. (i.e. bug fixes, feature additions, listening to the customer, working with them to make them successful) and then asking them to share it.
You're absolutely right. This is excellent advice. At this stage I'd rather really win him over 100% and get him rooting for me genuinely first before I tell him what's what. He was very generous with feedback, and I'll work closely to create a better product, a product he can stand behind fully before he recommends it to his audience.
Thanks so much for doing this, @sobbuh!
We launched Hero35 (https://hero35.com) a couple of months ago. We want to make it the best place to discover & watch developer conference talks.
So far, we have 1k total registered members, and 18k pageviews in the past 30 days.
What we're trying to optimize for, is:
Most users land on either the home page (https://hero35.com), or a specific talk page (e.g. https://hero35.com/full-stack-fest/2019/were-gunna-program-like-its-1999).
I'm trying to shuffle things up and surface more talks in the 'topic' pages (e.g. https://hero35.com/topic/react), but these are not primary destinations. I'm contemplating whether to apply the topic page UI, to the home page.
Looking forward to your—and anyone else's—feedback!
18k pageviews -- how many videos have been watched?
upvoting talks -- let people upvote without signing up. But give more upvotes based on time spent watching the video I.e. I can upvote once, but it's only worth 1 upvote. but for every minute spent watching the video, that upvote counts for more (maybe reverse quadratic, i.e. 4 minutes = 2 upvotes, 9 minutes = 3 upvotes). User doesn't need to see this, but it gives you inflated numbers which still matches user behavior and doesn't get gamified as easily.
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[1] Homepage
[a] Colors: green / yellow / blue are a bit too aggressive and compete for my attention
[b] Nav bar: Consider adding a drop down to let users select a topic (i.e. react, testing, etc). See pluralsight for an example.
[c] hero text:
“Watch the best developer talks to follow the latest trends and elevate your skills”
I would remove the checklist — show, don’t tell. You have the videos hiding underneath the fold and are telling the user about them.
[d] Sign up CTA
Too early — users are not likely to sign up before getting some value. Users still don’t know what the product is exactly.
[e] video list
Use a Netflix style discovery screen.
Videos should be organized by category, i.e. “recently added”, “most upvoted”, “react talks” — you have this on your topic page, which is good.
Remove the sidebar so that the focus in on the video discovery section.
Make curated talks more apparent. The small yellow dot is too small/not noticeable.
I would test having the descriptions visible, but maybe that’s just me.
More horizontal margin/spacing between videos.
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[2] Topic page: i.e. https://hero35.com/topic/react
Bookmark button doesn’t work when not signed in — easy way to get people to sign up, this should open to sign up modal.
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[3] Video Page: i.e. https://hero35.com/full-stack-fest/2019/were-gunna-program-like-its-1999
Again, make bookmark and upvote button lead to a sign up modal instead of having a separate “sign in to vote and save talks” button.
Let people upvote w/out signing in, but need sign-in for bookmarking and to comment. Add a ‘share’ button.
When not signed in, I can’t see that there are upvotes on the video, which decreases engagement (on the list screen for this video, it shows 9 upvotes — but I can’t see that when I’m not logged in)
I would make the description a bit more tidy. Remove labels and make it more clear, copy existing examples (i.e. youtube) that people are used to using.
See my example before/after here: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I would add comments and interactivity — as a speaker, it would be cool to be able to answer peoples questions and continue the conversation. This is a good way to get people to engage with the site more, and to create more organic growth.
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[4] Event page i.e. https://hero35.com/full-stack-fest/2019
I want to see what are the top talks from this festival. How many upvotes does each have?
For people who attended a conference, have a quick upvoting page that lets them upvote all of the talks they liked from that conference.
What about following speakers? This might be an opportunity to get people to sign up to see which events a speaker they like is going to be speaking at?
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[5] Growth
Your “top 27 react talks” is a good idea, but 27 is too many. Do top 5, or something more accessible.
[a] Focus on leaderboards
Twitter posts weekly, tagging the speakers for the top 5 Most watched/upvoted talks this week.
[b] Focus on events
Hashtag events and share the leaderboard for that event
Hashtag future events and share the leaderboard for the previous year’s event (i.e. when I’m looking at whether I should go to an event this year, I might want to watch the talks from the previous year)
Target conference attendees (just search for hashtags on twitter and find relevant convos) and get them to upvote the talks they liked at that conference (have a specific page for this as mentioned above)
Target conferences and get them to spread your site for attendees and future attendees. This is useful information for conferences to have.
[c] Comments
(If you add comments) : when people add a comment to a talk, manually copy and paste that to twitter tagging the speaker and adding a link to the comments.
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How do you plan to monetize the site?
Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed feedback. I will review and respond to all your questions. May I ask what do you expect to gain from this? I’m genuinely curious :)
Practice, helping others and networking.
This is where my talent is and I really enjoy doing it, and I can help others while getting better at it.
Working on a startup now which limits my exposure to different problems and challenges; this is a good opportunity to keep practicing & getting better.
And hopefully it will create some relationships that I can use once our startup is ready to launch.
It's a little easier for me to give deeper feedback if someone shares their roadmap, but I figured I wouldn't get much of a response if I asked for more information. So hopefully in the future the feedback will get progressively deeper and more interesting.
Would be happy to do a deeper dive into your site once you respond on the first round of feedback.
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Hey, this sounds awesome!
I launched Pine on PH a week ago - http://pine.io/
It got some great feedback and I started making first income, but the traffic dried out now and there are barely any new sales.
The app is still only a web app, and by function it should also be on mobile and desktop. The initial release gives me hope that mobile and desktop releases will be much more successful. But I'm also looking for some more traction in the meantime.
All tips would be awesome!
Thanks!!
Hi Henrikas,
I've started going through Pine. Great start. A lot of interesting features already.
Some questions that will help me:
What do you do that is unique to pine vs your competitors? What is the main problem you are trying to solve?
I get the feeling that you are trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people, which will be a little difficult.
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I currently use two note-taking apps that would compete with this:
[1] Bear
what would make me switch from Bear?
[2] Roam Research
I've also tried notion, but wasn't a huge fan (though liked the concept).
Have you used either of these? I think they can inform your product design a little bit.
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I'll use the product a bit over the next few days before giving feedback.
First issue that I see is that this is an app where I give a lot of personal data, but there is no mention on the company that owns the site on the entire site, not even in privacy policies, but this is related more to conversion rates.
For the visits, I just think you need to have a really good product and work hard on marketing, as there is an abundance of similar apps.
I think content marketing will help in the mid term. Creating blog posts about self organization, self improvement ...