How good/bad are these metrics? 🤷🏼♂️ Should I continue?
Dear fellow indiehackers,
After interviewing a couple of teachers I built worksheet.digital, a tool for teachers to build, distribute and evaluate worksheets. Currently I'm just targeting teachers in Germany but I'm thinking of translating the tool.
I find it hard to determine whether my metrics are good or bad. And hence, if I should continue or not. And also, if I continue, what the next steps should look like.
What happened so far:
- interviewed about 20 german teachers
- built an mvp
- cold emailed some sites that ranked for good search queries and asked them if they would mention my tool in their article
- one page said yes. They have quite some reach and the worksheet got mentioned on 4th December 22.
- since then the traffic is decreasing but since January the session duration increases. Some people seem to use the product regularly.
- I also got 140 people giving me feedback through a Google form and leaving their email. I scheduled some interviews with those users.
I don't have anything to compare this against. It feels like a success to me, that the tool is used by about 300 users every day. On the other hand I was hoping that DAU would increase though word of mouth. At the moment that seems to be not the case. Also, the tool is free, which was a mistake probably.
I really would appreciate feedback. Ideally from people who know how metrics of a successful product may look in the beginning 🙏
Hey Malte, had to comment because I’m in the exact same predicament and totally feel the frustration. Let me say some things first: having hundreds of users that use your product daily is great and better than many (perhaps most) will achieve. Your traffic stats look very good as well from my previous experience it is tough getting that many impressions on a web page for free and you did it really fast. My concern would be why out of 50k visits only 300 signed up, that’s not a great conversion rate - could it be your copy? Is the traffic coming from sources where many might not be interested in the tool? Or is it the offering?
Now to the payment validation - The step I’m taking is now to try and make some fake funnels within my product, which give the user to the option to “upgrade” to pro i.e there are some requested feature and I pretend like they are built, but behind a paywall. When the user clicks there, I get notified and they are informed that the feature is still work in progress - hopefully allowing me to see what features would make users convert in an organic way. Hope that makes sense and let me know what you think!
Hi @borzi, great to see another indiehacker from germany here 👍
Thanks for the heads up. I'm currently on holidays. That's always been a time for me to reflect. This time I'm kind of questioning all my projects 😂 So your encouragement really helps me to stay motivated.
About the conversion rate. It's a great point and you mentioning it made my check how plausible (the analytics tool I'm using) counts unique visits. Their documentation says this:
As I don't have an actual signup, it's impossible for me to calculate the actual conversion rate. I hope in reality it's not as bad as it looks in the metrics 😉
Your way to validate payments sounds interesting. Do your users know the pricing before they click? I can imagine that many would click just to know the prices if they aren't communicated upfront.
Good luck with your project! Which one is your most promising one at the moment?
Hey, I am working on albert.so currently, I have some users but my biggest pain is to increase usage, retention and finding out if I can convert users into customers! Glad that my post helped you.
Regarding Plausible Analytics, honestly that sounds like a big problem. I thought about using them (since I still need analytics) but now I'm not sure - accuracy on how many users are on your site, returning etc. is key in my opinion to making good decisions...
😎 I'll check Albert.so out.
Having unique users per day is sufficient for me. As soon as you have user accounts you can track better. Also, I hate cookie banners. If you integrate plausible the right way it may be even more accurate than cookie based analytics as it won't get blocked. But the. Aim benefit for me is, that it's dead simple to integrate and understand. Google analytics was way to complicated for me with all its features etc
Makes sense!
Hi @borzi I just checked out Albert.so
I like how the value is clearly explained on the landing page. Going to try it out. May I know what your tech stack currently looks like?
Hey Victor, cool let me know what you think.
I built it using Django, with some HTMX and AlpineJS mixed in. Bootstrap for the UI design/components!
If nothing else, take what I’ve written below as supportive thinking out loud..
You have some DAU and you still have plenty of potential customers to talk to and a way to reach them. This is (IMO) the number one thing to focus on right now. Don’t sweat the metrics at this stage. I’d also not get distracted by trying to expand the market, yet.
One thing I’d suggest is planning a pathway to a paid product by way of a beta test / early access program on a “new version” (that supports localisation). The details of features, price etc should become clearer the more you communicate with the beta program users.
Switch the current users over to the early access program if you can by promoting the new product to them and explain nicely why you’re doing it, the benefits to them etc.
I can’t speak directly to the metrics and how they stack up against other products, but the description you posted sounds like the road to success to me…
🍻
Thanks a lot for your Feedback @Shaunau!
Do you mean by "I’d also not get distracted by trying to expand the market, yet.", that I shouldn't bother to translate the tool yet? I'm afraid that German teachers are special, and that it will be hard to adjust to the needs of the international market later on. On the other hand, the german market may be sufficiently big…
Currently, I have this path to a paid tool in mind:
The tool currently works without registration. However, many users requested an account to manage their worksheets. I thought it may be a good idea to keep the tool free for 5 worksheets (or so) and require a subscription if you want to keep more than 5 worksheets within your account. Is that too soft? Will everybody just create multiple accounts?
Somehow I'm afraid to start charging for the tool. But I guess that's what I have to do, to verify if it's worth continuing.
Hey 👋
That pathway sounds good to me!
My suggestion was just one possibility and coming from a place of little background information.
Your pathway sounds much more gentle and safe and has come from talking to the users and deep knowledge of the product - now you’ve explained the option, I’d go that way for sure.
With regard to the translation / localisation comment; I just meant that if you can capture a good amount of the German market you’ll probably learn a lot and make a really great product. That market alone might generate enough revenue if the app really takes off and you actually start to charge for it! 😊
I’m not aware of the variations in how German teachers operate compared to others to know if the differences are significant. But be careful not to make the product too generalised so that it doesn’t really meet the needs of any teachers really well.
Charging will indeed show you what really matters to your users.
It’s also clear that the options for you are:
A free but abandoned product, or a revenue generating and improving product.
Asking for money makes the decision a non decision really… it means the users will decide for you. That said, with the right pathway to monetisation you’ll be able to help them make the decision that is the best outcome for everyone - one way or another!
Good luck! 🙂
Keep us updated, it sounds like it’s going to be an exciting year ahead for you!
🍻
PS: Worry about multiple accounts if/when you think it’s happening - but not until it’s a problem.
You can do something like offer 1 or 2 or 3 free worksheets 🤷♂️ which is great as it allows people to try the product, and by keeping the number low enough then the pain of juggling 3 user accounts to get 6 workflows means they’ll just prefer to pay you instead - after all you’re saving them time, so they won’t want to waste that time having to manage many accounts. 🙃
Session duration looks good and some people keeps visiting it. Keep iterating it, mate.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Yes, you're absolutely right. Trying to get actual paying customers seems like the most important next step to me.
Can you tell me when you got a client error exactly? Send me an email if you like ([email protected]).