Our privacy page opens with the fact that costs us the sale
Second post from us here; the first was the what-we-shipped one. This is about a decision we are fairly sure loses us installs, and would make again.
Beacon's privacy page opens by telling you that the app reports anonymous usage data, that it is on by default, and which switch turns it off. For a page people open hoping to be reassured, that is the worst available opening and the only one we could defend.
Three sentences on that page cost us the friendly version:
- Anonymous usage reporting is on by default, and one switch in Settings → Privacy stops it uploading. - That switch stops the upload, not the recording. The app carries on counting usage and capturing errors on your machine — it just sends none of it. - Nothing already sent is removed by switching off; there is no delete path for it in the app, which is why the switch is worth flipping before rather than after.
The sync section has the same shape. Cloud Sync is opt-in, and its encryption is selective and field-level rather than whole-document: variable values you flagged as secret, auth credentials, credential headers and URL userinfo are encrypted before upload, while names, URLs, non-credential headers, bodies and scripts go up as plaintext — so a token pasted into a body or a script is not protected. The two-word phrase every reader scans that paragraph for is not available to us, and those qualifiers cost us the short version everywhere else: the FAQ, the feature list, every reply about it. That price is charged every time, not once.
What it costs, in the terms this forum cares about: put that page beside a competitor's row of green ticks and ours reads as the riskier product. A feature comparison rewards whichever product's copy is vaguer, and honesty loses that table. We cannot tell you what it cost in installs, because we don't publish install numbers and we are not going to invent a counterfactual. Revenue is still $0, so there is no conversion story to spin in either direction.
Why we take the trade anyway: Beacon is an unsigned indie app you download from GitHub and then point at the credentials you use for work. We cannot buy our way into your confidence and we have no corporate backer to lend us any. A page whose sentences survive being checked is the one thing we have that a better-funded competitor cannot also claim — and it only works if the least convenient paragraph is in it.
The long version, including the parts that still break: The page itself, in full:
https://beacon.quizuncle.com/privacy/
The question: if you have led with the unflattering default instead of burying it in a policy page — did it cost you anything you could actually measure, or only the version of the pitch you wanted to give?
I think the interesting thing to measure here isn't just whether the privacy page hurts installs, but whether the people who do install are more likely to trust and retain the product because of it.
You could probably learn a lot by looking at the install → activation → retention numbers before and after making the privacy details this prominent. The honest version may reduce some installs but improve the quality of the users who stay.
Why do you think that loses you installs? A lot of people don't read Privacy Policies and a ton of websites collect anonymized data via FB pixels, GA, or web apps that use tools like PostHog.
If you do think it is costing users then remove the summary at the top. Having it is just a "nice-to-have" convenience so removing it is not "burying" it or being sneaky.
Interesting that you're bringing back an older product rather than starting from zero. Curious whether the relaunch is attracting mostly existing users or entirely new ones.
Isn't posting twice about the same product self-promotion?" — Two posts, ten weeks apart, both carrying something that is not a pitch… Be in other people's threads in between, or the second post arrives from a stranger who only turns up to talk about himself.