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7 Comments

Visual sitemap with screenshots

Hello all,
recently I posted a beta of our visual sitemap and estimate tool www.octopus.do and I must say, you were very kind with product feedback. Right now I’m searching for a product/market fit and I’m here again to ask your opinion. We have a feature that looks like a handy thing, but I just don’t know would it add value to your workflow.

What if you can add images to pages so you can update sitemap during your work and show it to your client. What do you think about it?

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    I don't use for my own product, but it's helpful to use for my client projects. They may really like it!

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    Hey Karl,

    This is pretty cool, I'm not sure if the sitemap is something I'm totally dying for. It would be really cool to have a service that automatically took a screenshot of a page after an automated deploy and posted a comment in GitHub with the output of that screenshot.

    I could imagine using a site map to spy on competitor sites especially for SEO heavy sites.

    Hit me up if you have any specific questions!

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    The sitemap looks neat but it's not clear for me - which problem you are trying to solve?

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      I'm thinking about designer workflow.
      At first you prototype sitemap, then you design pages, so why don't show designs right at the sitemap, so you can show process transparently?

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        That's right but I'm not sure what's the point to show pages as simple as "Header, introduction, news, footer"? It doesn't actually give any valuable information and can be shared with a simpler way like email.

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    This looks really cool. My recommendation is, instead of thinking of cool features:

    • figure out who your target market is, who makes site maps now? Who makes them the most frequently? Digital agencies possibly?

    • once you know that, try find some to chat with. Don’t show them the product right away, but try find out how much they care about the problem area by asking what they currently do. “Site maps are a pain to keep up to date, how do you manage that? How often do you need to make them? How do you make them? Have you looked for any tools that make them quicker to use? When is the last time you looked for a better tool?”

    Obviously, don’t barate them with questions, but the point is have a conversation with people in your target market to try gauge from their past behaviour what problems related to site maps they are looking to solve.

    From there you can come up with more useful feature ideas to solve those problems, assuming anyone had problems around their current flows for building site maps.

    In terms of finding people in your target market to speak with, if possible, try attend an industry meet up, and just ask around about site maps casually during conversation. If you can’t attend meet-ups, I guess cold email or intros would work too

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      hey Ramy. Thanks for a detailed comment.
      I already made some research, and I also work in that kind of company who uses Octopus to estimate projects and prototype sitemaps. But certainly you have to go outside and speak with your target users, It is what I'm doing now :)

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