FlockIn

It's really fascinating to see how nothing becomes something.

This has been an incredible and exhausting time. Working for a few weeks non-stop, tweaking and changing and rushing to make things work. Dropping features to be able to launch by the deadline. Prioritising.

LP rebuilt, tests are written, CI/CD pipelines launched, the deployment is happening automatically. Lots of stuff is still kind of missing (no comprehensive logging, no unified notifications), but a lot of other unexpected things are actually got done.

So, the next big thing is just doing nothing except following the users that join, and asking them what they feel about it. And then iterating further.

So my previous assessment was wrong. The product I was ready to release was absolutely not ready.

The video didn't work properly, the emails didn't go out, UI was very inconsistent, etc. Problems :-)

But now it's all fixed. -Ish. UI is not the best, but tolerable, bugs are probably lurking all around and whatnot. But at least there's a presentable "thing" that people can actually use.

So, next, last retouches on the landing page and figuring out how and where to deploy.

So I had a somewhat short run of a couple of weeks. Family circumstances cut short the work I could put into the MVP, but looking back it came to a decent chunk. It really is interesting to see how all those hours add up, and then you look at what you've done and it's quite remarkable how much you've done.

Anyway, what's surprising in all this, is that even though I've redone almost all work by replacing the platform, I did reuse a bunch of components I've previously completed, and hence, surprisingly, MVP is done.

Done in a sense that all features are in. The functionality is complete, it works. It doesn't look perfect (and won't be), there are bugs (some of which I'm aware of and will fix before launch), but nevertheless...I can actually now see the thing. Work with it. I know how it's structured and where to improve.

So sure, there are bugs. And I need to figure out how and where to deploy. And write more tests. And redesign the landing page from collecting emails to registration, and plan the launch, and figure out how to support those who will actually register, and backup the DB, and.....lots of other things.

But I think I can launch it as it is and it will be fine. This is a great feeling.

The launch is at the end of June. The date is fixed and I'm doing it with what I have for then.

So this is so cool. I've now got 11 subscribers on the email list, which means I'll just go ahead and work on the launch. I had a few conversations about launching and figured it's better to launch a crappy product that nevertheless provides value and iterate improvements than not launching until I get more people signed up.

The problem with waiting is that your metric that you're waiting for might be wrong. Like, what if you don't need 30 people to validate your idea, but only 10? What if you don't need 30 to agree, but find 5 that will lead you to others who like it?

Finally, failing when there's only 11 people using your thing is way ligher hit to your ego than failing with 50 :-)

So, planning the launch next. Wish me luck.

Wow, I've surprised myself with this one. After watching the tearing down of my LP by @orliesaurus and @NxAlessandro I've rebuilt my page with less "fluff" and more to the point. Considering that this is not even the most important part of the project, and only something to gain interest in the possible market, I spend a hell of a lot of time on finessing the small things.

Anyhow, the new page is up, and now I'm going to do some rounds on the other parts of the "marketing", but I'm quite happy with how the new lander has ended up being, it's pretty dope. I think it's better than the one before it.

Publishing more next, and get back to building the real thing.

I'm not a designer, and not trying to be one on the internet. But I kind of find that building good products doesn't require one being a "designer" per se. It rather pushes you to look at the usability of your product as a whole.

So now working on the LP (my product atm), I'm working out the main components of good UX flow, and then trying to improve it.

In my case, getting rid of the words, and showing the "meat" in a different way.

It seems the page got a good review and then not so much ;-)

It's going to be roasted online, so am going to watch it soon. Hopefully, it's not too horrible and is quite possible to be fixed relatively easily.

I'm getting second thoughts about the whole idea as I browse the web and see somewhat similar things in the wild. Should I stop?

Probably not. But it's hard.

The landing page I was working on for the last couple of weeks is done.

Today did a couple of "last-minute" updates: fixed a few spelling mistakes, changed some wording in a couple of spots, and, most importantly, fixed round corners in the email input fields. I know, most people wouldn't notice, but I do, and it bugged the hell out of me.

Next, I've built a new "welcome" email for people registering, so now it's all online and active. SSL certs are working, the site is on for both 'www' and without, so we're game.

Now, waiting for the roast from IH community.

:pray:

Well, this was a bit retarded.

The landing page is going on GitLab for now, as it's convenient, free and easy to A/B test in the future. The problem here was me misconfiguring the Namecheap DNS server so that the redirection didn't work for 2 days. Fuck.

Anyhow, it's now fixed and the page is up.

Emails are collected with MailChimp. Apparently, they provide you with an example form with a bunch of their own crappy CSS styles, which clearly had to go.

Next, fixing up some welcome/thank you email chain in Mailchimp and roasting by IH here.

Still working on this. The layout is done, the copy worked out and reviewed.

Now connecting some email collecting service. Going through multiple vendors to plant their forms. Tried MailChimp, seems to be working fine.

Next step is to make sure this is actually working.

Next is asking here for some roasting.