What's the one thing I could do to turn you into a paying customer?
Over at DarwinMail, I'm constantly improving the design and feature set that we offer - almost entirely based on user suggestions and requests!
I find that the best thing about developing in the open where anybody can see your roadmap is the amazing feedback & upvotes you can get on every feature/upgrade/bug :)
I would love it if you could take a look at DarwinMail and let me know what's holding you back from upgrading?
Loose the popup when I visit your site - do you want me to pay or sign up for the newsletter?
Hey Bram, that's a good tip.
I have removed the popup :)
I'm going to be blunt and not being critical for the sake of it....
When I first land on your page, I have no idea what you do. Your headline doesn't talk to any problem I might have or who I might be. "Welcome to Darwin Mail" Who gives a f*ck about Darwin Mail. I want to know if you understand my problem, if you understand me and have a solution to make it all go away.
Your entire above the fold is wasted space. I'd bounce if it wasn't for you asking for feedback.
Below that, just features and not talking to pain and solution. First time on the page you hint at a pain I might have is in templates ("save you loads of time").
Judging by the tweets you've embedded, your product is doing something right. So I think your messaging might be letting you down.
To be honest, I'm not even 100% sure exactly what problem you're solving or how. Is this for Gmail only?
Hello Paul,
Thank you so much for your feedback. It really means a lot to me and has given me plenty to think about. DarwinMail is currently only for Gmail.
Can I ask what above the fold text would speak to you? Genuinely. Your suggestion here would be extremely valuable.
https://trello.com/c/Kl3boHyG/341-upgrade-site
To give you a suggestion of text to use would be difficult without first understanding the problem you’re solving, who for and how. That’s what you’ve got to get in that space with a headline, sub heading, maybe some more text and / or images.
I like how https://kanbanmail.app/ does it. It’s to the point with not fluff and I understand it as soon as I hit the page.
If you want to explain some more about the tool feel free to hit me up on email (it’s on my profile) and I’ll see if I can give some pointers.
Thank you so much, Paul :) I sent you an email!
At first glance, something about being everything they love about gmail with all the annoyances fixed. Maybe...
GMail, but Fixed.
or
Enhance your GMail inbox.
Something like that... basically call out the thing that seems to confuse people (is this different than GMail) directly.
Agreed with @pauldmet and @truedrew. I think using something like the Problem, Agitation, Solution framework would be valuable. Search for the PAS here: https://copyhackers.com/2015/10/copywriting-formula/ (Copyhackers has some great stuff on writing).
Also, maybe just say that it's an email client up top. That would help make it clear what the tool actually is.
Brilliant, just brilliant! Thanks for giving me the link for PAS. That's the kind of framework I needed :) That will help loads. Thank you, Luciano :)
So glad it was helpful!
It certainly was buddy, thank you :)
This is gold. Thank you so much. I love the suggestions and it really puts things in perspective for me. Thank you.
As @pauldmet said, your landing page copy needs to be sharpened up. The landing page is more focused on the features as opposed to the customer.
But I already outlined this process for you in a previous comment I left for you in another thread ;)
Good luck.
-John
Thank again, John! I appreciate your feedback. Between your feedback and the feedback of everyone here I have a solid foundation to work with :)
Hey, from the landing page it's hard to see how your client is different from Gmail.
One thing I'm personally interested in is using the Gmail client with my personal domain.
If you could have that for cheaper than what Google is offering, plus all the pimped up features - I'm sold!
Fantastic tips, thank you :)
You have inspired me to created a comparison table between DarwinMail & Gmail and put it on the homepage.
What would the benefits of using Gmail with your own domain be?
A comparison would be great! Especially when it looks so similar (If I understand correctly, Darwin builds on top of Gmail?)
As far as the benefits of my own domain go:
It's simply my favorite email client (and I would assume many others given the popularity of Gmail).
"Favorite" isn't even the best description - it's the one I'm most used to.
Currently, I'm trying to use Spark for my pine.io domains and I hate it :))
Ideally, I could have Gmail client + Perks of Darwin + Downloadable app. And use it with all of my accounts.
Thanks, keep up the great work!
Being able to access other (SMTP/IMAP) mailboxes in addition to Gmail would be very interesting to me personally.
The number of email addresses I own has only grown over the years. Clients (desktop or mobile) are a non-starter because I end up with the repeated provisioning work as devices come and go.
If DarwinMail could do this, and keep my data browser-side only, that'd definitely get my attention!
Thanks for the feedback, Caleb.. much appreciated :)
We actually currently keep your data browser side - it does not get saved by us! The only piece of info we have to save is the email id's when you snooze emails - so we can sync snoozes across devices for you :)
I really like that DarwinMail keeps Gmail data browser-side. If it could support multiple IMAP/SMTP mailboxes, even if it had to keep my creds server-side that'd get my money for sure.
Thanks for the tip, Caleb ;)
Hmmm, to be honest when using Gmail I personally wouldn't think I really need these features, though others might. (And who knows, maybe I actually would but I'm not to interested atm). However, I like the idea of the custom backgrounds. (Maybe do some research and see if you can make that feature near top of the list).
Especially a set of cool backgrounds like travel photos and animals it goes BAM! make your inbox look cool. I'd be like "hell yeah". Then from that, I'd go what else is added here? Oh neat, maybe i'll like that. Wouldn't mind paying 5-7 bucks for the background version and maybe add the other features later for more premium. Just a thought. The background is really what jumped out to me.
Thank you so much for your feedback. It's actually funny you say that you like the idea of custom backgrounds - as somebody else told me just yesterday that they have absolutely no interest in them and they should be removed from the features list ha ha!
That's a really cool idea though - thank you so much. I'm going to think about how I can make that feature pop.
Hahah that conflicting feedback is why building product is so tough. It's impossible to build a tool for everyone :( Have to figure out who the target market is and focus on them. Everyone else can be kicked to the curb.
Easier said than done though...
Yes indeed. The quality feedback I'm receiving from each of you is exceptionally valuable to me though, and will certainly help me decide. Thank you :)
no prob. For me, I check my gmail for a few minutes each day to see the 7 unread emails I have. For some people who have 100s of emails a day, I could see them not caring about the background and only concerned with categorizing their emails. But for me, I don't really need something that sorts my emails (as far as I know). But, I could get introduced to the idea via pretty pictures.
Thanks again for the feedback & insight.
What could I do now with the backgrounds to convince you to upgrade?
I'm not too sure, as I only look at my email less than 5 mins a day.
But something that might interest me would be maybe a built in toolbar or icon for analytics. I.e. Demographics of people/companies that send you email, that you reply, etc. Could be useful for those in marketing. Or if you're job hunting, stats on what emails you send produce the best results, which resume files, time of day/week, etc. I don't know if that exists already or how other users would want that.
But again, personally, I just use the barebones minimum for my day to day life. Just the pictures would really get my attention for an extra 30 seconds.
I absolutely love your suggestions. They are exactly the kinds of features that I should implement to differentiate DarwinMail from competitors and provide real value.
Thank you so so much :)
It sounds like the features you like are already in DarwinMail :)
https://trello.com/c/ym72ampa/334-analytics-dashboard
Just took a look at your site. I'm guessing I'm not your target audience because I'm not an "Inbox 0" type of person. (More of a let's see if I can make it to a million type of guy 🤣 ) So take everything I say with a grain of salt....
After reading your copy on your website, it's just not speaking to me. I like GMail, I love everything about it. Especially after being forced to use Outlook for contracting gigs, I can't imagine my life using anything other than Gmail. So when I see words like "Enchance Gmail" it doesn't speak to me, because Gmail already has everything I need. However, it looks like you have reviews and sales so you must be resonating with someone. I'd find these people and double down on them!
I just noticed you had a free plan so I'm giving it a try! One thing that I'd make more apparent on your home page is that this is a web based email client. I thought it was just a chrome extension.
That's such good quality feedback, thank you :)
I'm going to make it more clear that this is a web app :)
I'm going to think about how I can make this more unique. I've also changed my tagline to 'The next evolution of email. Reach new levels of productivity.' How does that sound?
Hey Joey, great job on DarwinMail. I'm using pipedrive as my CMS, and mail is within that platform. Whilst I don't find it the best because it has issues sometimes (they say it's third party driven), I want to keep everything streamlined and in one place. Also as you know there are heaps of options out there... so I would communicate the one thing you do better than anyone else on your website. Ps. I'm a mac user so haven't really used mail within google. I hope that helps.
Thank you so much for your feedback. It means a lot, and is really really helpful :)
Would you mind me picking your brain a little? Could you please give me an example - I have a few but I would love to hear your thoughts as they are much more valuable than my own. I'm the developer but you are my valued user!
Cool. Well I come from the branding world. ;)
What's the one thing that people want the most from their email client? For example it could be privacy. So if this was your purpose and your whole reason for being is to keep everyone's mail private. So focus your communications around privacy.
Then you want people to associate your email with a word like privacy. Volvo - is all about safety, apple - think different, etc, etc.
Also I found this article on tech radar you might find interesting https://www.techradar.com/au/best/best-email-clients
Those are some fantastic tips - thank you so much.
I need to have a good think about it. At the moment, DarwinMail is all about replacing Inbox. However, in the future, I want DarwinMail to be associated with privacy/inbox gamification/something else - this is what I need to figure out.
The one thing that stands out is the pricing seems odd, for the lite version it will cost me $3 a month so $36 for the year but I can only pay this monthly. The Pro Plus is cheaper at $25 for the year but I cannot pay for this monthly. So if I want to pay a small amount a month rather than annually I get less but pay more!
Also I cant tell what the difference between Pro Lite and Pro Plus are as they all say "Includes all features below"
I have not used the product so can't say for sure but if people are using the Free version and not upgrading maybe you are offering too much for free and there is no incentive to upgrade?
The product looks great by the way. Best of luck with it.
Hey there! Thank you so much for your feedback.
It's supposed to be better value to get the yearly plan (pay once a year) than the monthly (pay every month) but they both give you the same features. As does the lifetime plan.
Sorry, that may be a bit confusing. Maybe I should have one plan and have a slider where you can choose if you want to pay monthly, yearly, once?
I can move over some of the free features to the paid plan! Basically users get all of the features listed in the Free features section. And when they upgrade they get all the free and paid features.
Thank you so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it :)
Do all new users of the free version get 30 days access to the Pro features?
They get 7 days if they sign up! :)
Ok thats good, maybe a way to get more conversions to paid is to give them these for a little longer. Let them really get into the product and all its features.... Then take them away!
Ha ha ha! That's so funny. Something to think about.
Thank you very much for your feedback :)
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Does an installable web app count?