Group Solve: What's your biggest challenge right now?
To join
DESCRIBE:
- The biggest challenge you're currently facing with your project
- What steps you're trying to take to solve it
SHARE WORK
- Share a link to your WIP
Some etiquette:
- Share at least one idea that might help someone else solve their challenge
My biggest challenge is creating a good landing page, it is almost soul draining how boring it is. However, it is necessary if want to take my saas anywhere.
I downloaded the "ava" template from cruip to use as a base and that's where im stuck right now. Currently im just roaming around looking at other saas landing page and too see what i should add to my landing pages but that is not going well.
Take a loot at this guide. I find it really good! It was the one I used to create the landing page for Apricot.
Thanks, the guide has a more than a few gems in it.
How about you try some landing page combinations on paper?
Maybe note down (also on paper) the relevant aspects and blocks you find in other landing pages, and use them to build up some iterations of your landing page (again on paper), and when you're finally happy start writing code for it.
I was struggling with landing page myself for over two past two weeks. Finally got it done this week. I would suggest that you should start using something and not wait for that perfect page. I know that sometimes we have some image in our mind that we are not able to articulate or find anywhere but we know that something is missing in the current one. I iterated four pages until I felt good about it. It may be waste of time and work but that's better than not moving anywhere.
Yeah, I agree, the page does not have to be perfect but it is hard to stop and not care about small things.
Hey @randomTest what's the nature of your product? What value offer are you trying to communicate?
I strongly suggest listening to the Start With Why podcast on Spotify; in parallel to that, I would experiment with different landing pages, using Google Optimize to A/B test them against each other to see which get the best responses.
DESCRIPTION*
My biggest challenge with wesit.co.za (babysitting platform) at the moment is both finding parents to speak to in order to conduct customer interviews; and being an architect of said process (what do we need out of the interviews, what questions should we ask, how should we ask them, should there be an incentive etc)
Because I'm not a parent myself, I need to find out how to approach this process. I've begun talking to some of my friends and family who are new parents - that way I can be comfortable with making mistakes, work on them and become more comfortable with interviews outside of those circles.
WIP
https://wesit.co.za
I'll make sure to comment when there are new posts in the discussion
if you have any questions, feel free to DM me on twitter @kodeartisan ... I have three kids between 3 and 9 :-)
Hey @kodeartisan, thanks so much! That would be super useful, I'll reach out when I get there :)
Sure thing!
Have you tried Facebook groups? There are probably a lot of parenting groups on Facebook, so that could be a good place to start looking for potential customers. As for structuring the interview, take a look at The Mom Test!
Thanks @joaosilva22! I tried joining as many facebook groups as possible yesterday, a lot of great insight I could've easily missed. I wrote a script that auto scrolls and gives me all the posts in the group just to get the most out of it. Still analysing the data (here's the script if you're interested: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/quick-hack-to-scrape-posts-from-facebook-groups-5ab41284eb)
Thanks a million for that interviewing structure slideshare - solid guidelines, it's going to go a long way in helping me go forward!
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Thanks @thomasm1964 Hadn't considered looking at parent/play groups outside of facebook at all! I'll go into the founders meeting we're having tonight with so much steam :) haha!
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Hey, yes definitely; would otherwise be understandingly difficult. One of my co-founders, who initiated the idea, is a babysitter herself - she's our CEO; I'm the tech lead, but find it equally important to understand all aspects of the business as a founder.
You're totally right!
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I am trying to send data to AWS redshift through kinesis via s3 using the copy command. The data format is ok in s3 in json, but when it reaches redshift, lots of the column values are empty. I have tried everything and haven't been able to fix this for the past few days.
Any help would be appreciated.
Continuously updating my landing page to follow my application updates!
I find in the early stages I am constantly iterating my product and it becomes difficult to keep my landing page up to date haha
https://jotfactory.co/
I'd say you're super lucky to be in a space where you're always going through iterations! I signed up, looks simple and cool so far :) Great job! I usually use Google Keep to save ideas, but the text is too small and my keep has become super cluttered with links and other stuff, doesn't feel like a creative space anymore.
How do you usually go about managing new ideas/iterations? Do you for e.g. start at the value offer and work your way up or follow a different process?
To make my Startup Project Successful (www.gardener.gg)
I'm working hard on that project and I'm listening advises given by the people who are experienced with APIs and Startup in general.
Hey @BibHack, loving your page! What would you say is your biggest challenge you're looking to solve in the next weeks?
Sales and marketing for sure. As i guess is the case for all new products. Particularly i dont have much experience blogging but trying to push one out this weekend
All the best! What has worked for me re marketing, having defined the value proposition, is customer segmentation and marketing persona identification; have you experimented with either? Would be cool to discuss your findings so far
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Yea i dont have a super elegant update system yet and i am still developing a bunch
Honestly probably just getting to work and avoiding distractions like Indie Hackers :). And then of course I am fighting a lot with structure, headlines, including too much or too little (that is, for vpsformakers.com).
@strzibnyj a balance is definitely needed between hard work and discovery! All the best with the book!
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I cofounded HelpMyDev.com, which aims to provide real time Coaching and Support for learners and developers.
Not working out as well as I would like to, it's hard when you're a new player :-)
@omneity Awesome idea!
Re: validation
My 2 cents is that you might have more success with either super large or immature frameworks. Reason for this is their in-comprehensive documentation or small communities that make finding solutions to problems difficult. A framework like Angular is easy to debug because of the great documentation and decently sized community. The more difficult problems to solve have always been due to third party libraries. Not sure if that adds any value.
Re: landing page
Landing page is pretty clear! I liked the
/#support-channelspage, the framework logos communicated better with me than the text on the landing page. I would add a strip of your most common languages and frameworks and mention that it's a slack community (that was quite important for me) - but I would probably also A/B test it using a tool like Optimize.Hello @igitresethard, and thank you so much for these valuable suggestions!
You're raising an interesting trade-off that I didn't pay so much attention to. Basically, providing help for the established actors that everyone uses, but for which there's significant help outside https://HelpMyDev.com, versus going for a long tail of niche stacks which might have way more demand than offer in terms of help.
I need to think about it in more details and the implications of each.
Now, I was just reading through Julian's book, reached the A/B page and started to write down what are the possible variations I could try to increase traffic, so this comes just in time 👌
I'm still trying to find a way to communicate the frameworks without occupying so much space but your idea of a strip is very intriguing and I'll try a couple combinations based on it.
re: Slack You're right, it's a blatant omission. Thanks for the heads up!
Thank you again for your time, it was very helpful :)
Amazing, keen to see how it looks in a week or two :)
Just made an update to the landing page, adding a "How it works" section and revamped the "Support Channels".
A slider turned out a bit too heavy to show all the frameworks, so I went with a sort of hybrid approach. I'm very keen to hear your feedback @igitresethard.
You can also try it on various screen sizes, notably on a mobile device.
I'm hoping this approach allows to quickly skim while still providing a large amount of information.
What do you think? https://helpmydev.com
Amazing work! Looks so much more informative. I like the typing effect in combination with the slack illustration below it. Much more descriptive.
Have you tried trimming the subtitle text to "We help developers ship faster by answering technical questions within 5 minutes in our dedicated support channels" - and perhaps making support channels smooth scroll to the support channel section?
The section is looking amazing by the way - I'm a big fan!
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Hey @thomasm1964, I just posted an update. Check the sibling comment for more context.
I basically added, reordered and revamped some sections, notably adding "How it works".
What do you think of the new formula? Does it do a better job at answering your initial questions? https://helpmydev.com
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Yep! Gonna play around with that. I'll post an update with the changes here.
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Many valid points, thank you @thomasm1964 for taking the time!
We provide a few specialized support channels, and each one of those has a dedicated support officer and one or two secondary coaches.
We have yet to test this system against real "traffic", however the assumption is that a support officer will reach out within 2-5 minutes once you ask a question in the relevant channel. There's always the possibility that we're swarmed and slow down in our answers, in which case we'll probably staff up and/or revisit the business model.
This mainly depends on the complexity of the question. We're making an internal assumption that 30 minutes would be the upper bound to respond to a question (that could be 30 minutes of debugging an issue interactively with the requester, or 30 minutes of research, or a mixture of both).
We're mostly targeting junior developers and learners and thus we're expecting mostly entry to intermediate level questions, which should fit within that time. However like #1 this is a hypothesis and we might revisit our business model based on real-world events.
All in all, our spirit is to achieve first-class experience for our clients. We'll see how that holds against reality when there's more activity.
I'm in the middle of revamping the landing page and I wanted to include aspects like this, and a How it works section (from question to answer).
Potentially it could be one and the same, for example:
1- Ask your technical question in the relevant support channel
2- A support officer from HelpMyDev reaches out to you within 5 minutes
3- We work through the issue with you until we resolve it
4- Your problem is solved in 5-30 minutes, subject to the complexity of your request
What do you think of a formulation like this?
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Genius. I hope you don't mind me stealing most of it :)
Now about classifying / clarifying the questions, my thoughts were to create a slack bot that any requester can invoke to ask a question. This bot will inquire the user for the necessary information, and then automatically dispatch it to the relevant expert. I didn't expect to need this bot so early on but I think it might be a necessity to reduce the effort per question for the support officer based on what you're surfacing.
It doesn't solve the need for a human check for whether it's one or two questions as you said, and that's a big unknown for us right now. I think it's best to leave it to the officer's judgment until patterns emerges.
As for the knowledge base, we maintain a database of who asked what, what was the answer and how long did it take. We do it mainly for reporting purposes, but it's only a few switches away from being a proper knowledge base, so your great suggestion is definitely in the pipeline.
May I ask, are you technically inclined yourself or do you perform different roles?
If your activity requires technical support (either for you or someone working with you), what would prevent you from signing up for https://HelpMyDev.com?
I hope this doesn't come accross as a sales tactic, I'm more interested in your perspective as a potential customer. Your blunt feedback here is totally welcome.
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I very much appreciate you sharing your background to such a level of detail.
I think I get a perfect idea now, and your perspective makes total sense.
In fact, I identified in my competitive analysis what I called "Selp Help" as a potential alternative for prospective clients. Time is indeed the biggest factor at play here, and when it is not the main constraint, HelpMyDev might be less attractive.
For this, I have thought of adding a learning oriented section in the website, to provide support resources and learning material for the various technologies we support. This is planned further down the line as it's not exactly our core offerring as of now, and more like a content marketing strategy to support it.
I'll make sure to take this into account in my marketing targeting. Thank you again @thomasm1964 for the valuable data point and for your time.
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I recently launched a new product Guestie (http://guestie.in/). We are aiming to partner with wedding planners, venue owners etc. to take this product to market. My biggest challenge this week is to onboard at least one planner.
We revamped our website, our email template to send to planners, and also have a plan to aggressively cold call them until we get our goal achieved. I am not so good at cold calling so it is to be seen how much can I push myself in getting this done. I have create many calling scripts to help me do better.
Hi there!
I'm a performance marketer at heart, cold-calling is as well not really my thing. The more you do it - the better it will eventually get, pretty sure.
To get the ball rolling:
I could imagine for your kind of product, which has a very social and engaging touch to it, did you consider promoting on Facebook?
Also - Google Ads has some rad options to drive App Installs.
Cheers
Florian