Endorsal
Customer testimonials, automated
Twelve months ago today, I revealed Endorsal to the world. The website went live and I wrote about it in various places, including this post on Indie Hackers. Having spent the previous six years designing mobile apps (mostly games), Endorsal was my first foray into the world of SaaS—and a bit of an experiment.
Fast forward a year and I'm happy to say that the experiment has so far been a success. As I write this there are 4,590 businesses using Endorsal, nearly 200,000 testimonials in the database and our front-end tools (review widgets, FOMO popups & Wall of Love) have been viewed over 43 million times.
Not everything has been plain sailing, of course—especially when you throw a global pandemic into the mix—but it's safe to say that for what started as a roll of the dice has blossomed into a business that I'm immensely proud of.
Continue reading: https://endorsal.io/blog/happy-first-birthday
After three weeks of closed beta testing and working with some amazing early adopters/bug hunters, I'm at the stage now where Endorsal is ready for the big, wide world!
It's been a fantastic journey so far and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens over the next few weeks!
Feel free to sign up to the 14-day trial (no credit card required 😊) and have a play around with the product — I'd really appreciate any and all feedback, especially on the UX/onboarding side of things!
Thanks again to those who supported the idea and gave feedback on the initial landing page.
It's been two months since I last posted on Indie Hackers and it's safe to say that they've been among the busiest of my life, work-wise!
I've now reached a huge milestone for Endorsal as the very first customers now have access and are busy setting up their accounts.
It feels equal parts exciting and terrifying (which in itself is exciting 🤪) to unveil something to other humans that has, for a while, only existed within my brain/on localhost.
During the last two months, alongside many, many hours of development, the following has happened:
— Hundreds of people have signed up to the waitlist
— A good percentage of them have purchased my pre-order lifetime deal (which expires tomorrow, Wednesday 16th 😉) and now have early access
— Dozens of insightful conversations have been had with people who've suggested great features
— Two enquiries have been received about buying the company
— I've been working with AppSumo on an LTD due to begin in November
All of this has left me truly floored.
After years of working on projects with varying levels of success (even the ones that did well have been slow-burners), it's been an amazing feeling as a founder to be working on something that you already know people want.
The main lesson I've learnt so far with this project is... validate, validate, VALIDATE!
My next milestone will be the public launch, due to take place early in November.
Thanks to all those who initially gave feedback on the idea as well as the landing page itself, it's much appreciated 😊
Just 3 weeks have passed since I had the initial idea for Endorsal, a platform that automates customer testimonials. In that time I've made good progress on the MVP as well as building a landing page to capture users and validate my idea.
Have a look and let me know what you think 😊
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Oo, smart idea! Very cool :) Might want to use it once I have more users rolling in. Right now, it's pretty concierge. * notes it down *
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Thanks very much, that's great to hear 😊
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Hey, that's good landing page and promising product!
I always feel hesitant to send email asking testimonials. Do Endorsal solve that issue as well?-
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Thanks very much!
I agree it can be awkward to ask! There will be email templates you can use to send out to customers, which will auto-populate the testimonial submission form to make it easier for them to fill it out.
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I really dig the design of your landing page and the way you explain the product. Kudos!
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Thanks a lot! Much appreciated 😀
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Looks great! I'll keep an eye on it as my biz builds!
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Thanks very much! Good luck with building your business too 😊
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Wow that looks really slick, something I can see myself using in the future :) The more I read through the landing page, the more I warmed up to it. Perhaps that is an indication that you can put some more high impact parts at the top? It could be subjective, but for me it was the powerful tools section that really grabbed my attention, and potentially someone will have bounced by that point.
This bit of text "But it's always been long, painful game of back-and-forth." is missing an 'a' between been and long.
I need to implement the 3 simple steps flow on my website also. Is there a tool for that? Or is there a name for what that flow is called so i can search for tools myself? When I was trying to find something, I kept coming up with process flow diagram software :(
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Hi Matt! Thanks so much for the feedback and I'm really glad to hear you're a fan of the idea.
That's a great point about warming to it as you read further, perhaps I could expand the intro to mention a few of the more useful features from the powerful tools section. Which of those features grabbed your attention the most?
Thanks for noticing the typo, fixed!
In all honesty, I don't know if there is a name for the 3 step flow or whether its a "thing" — it just felt natural when I designed the page. In what way would you use a tool for it? Can't you just lay it out on your site in a similar format?
Thanks again!
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yeh i'm not sure what a tool would do apart from providing some templates. Its easy enough for me to put a number for each step and some text, but then the css to position it correctly and and display nice... maybe im being lazy haha but I'm just looking for a quick option! But yeh it would be good if u could choose heading, text and picture for each step, then just cycle through themes and choose one?
The thing that grabbed me the most was the incentivised requests (I'm big on incentives). Setting those things up myself would be very time consuming. I also like SmartAvatars, and the superlinks - I like that it pushes responsibility to the so I wouldn't have to chase it up too, but also makes it very likely for them to actually complete it
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That's true I guess a tool like that would be useful! I just used a simple grid layout and Bootstrap as a base for the CSS.
Yeah I think the incentivised requests could be a good one — everyone needs a little nudge now and then! I'll look into introducing those features a bit earlier in the copy then.
Thanks again!
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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Hi Leo!
Thanks a lot for the feedback, much appreciated! I’ve not encountered the side padding issue you mentioned, what browser were you on?
Let me know once you’ve built your next landing page and I’ll repay the favour!
Tools used for the site: Javascript, Bootstrap, SASS, PHP, MongoDB, Stripe & PayPal.
Great post about the skillset for solo founders btw.
Thanks, Dean
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This comment was deleted 6 years ago
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As they say, the best ideas solve your own problems. While thinking of ways to get more testimonials (especially with customer photos) for my other project, HeyFood, I realised that the way to go is automation 💡
From there everything else seemed to slot into place, from the idea of pre-filling the testimonial submission form using merge tags, through making it easy for customers to import photos from social accounts, to simple embed code that allows anyone to add testimonials to their site in minutes.
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