Flow Phantom
Build upsells and cross sells in Webflow.
What I did / What happened
- Lined up marketing coaching 🙇♂️.
- Planned out first 6 months of 2022.
- Shaped in cart and in checkout upsell.
- Updated the instructions for the new features.
- Got interviewed by Grep Beat!
- Got some feedback for marketing ideas with a Tweet that blew up.
- Shaped next two cycles.
- Attended NC Idea's mentor madness where I got lots of good advice.
- Mitigated a payload issue.
- Reduced my setup steps.
- Implemented an end to end testing strategy with test cafe.
- Took a week vacation.
What I didn’t do
- Get new naming docs out there.
- Make videos about Yummy store.
- What I learned or was reminded
- I reviewed the client first system
- Webflow stores have a really good projections if they keep the - current growth rate.
- Tweeting asking for feedback is very valuable.
- Having a better end to end test suite allow me to ship quickly and with confidence. It was well worth my investment.
What I did / What happened:
-Hired Cory to create a Flow Phantom Cloneable.
-Got really sick 🤒.
-Got marketing coaching quotes.
-Started running advertisements.
-Ran into scaling issues, and solved scaling issues.
- Switched personal and work to omni focus.
What I didn’t do:
-Ship small updates - this has now happened three months in a row 🙁.
What I learned or was reminded:
-Being sick is awful. When I’m out the business needs to be moving forward. It was nice having Cory working on a cloneable.
-Lambdas are great for scaling but I hit a payload limit, which caused scaling issues.
- I live and die by my todolist. I need to keep it in shape.
Next Month
Product:
-Shape first 6 week cycle.
-Naming system docs ship.
-Update install instructions.
Self:
-Do things with intention.
Marketing:
-Start onboarding materials for Forgematic.
-Share my new cloneable.
What I did / What happened
- Wrote a thread on Vlad that totally bombed, but it was fun writing 🤷♂️.
- Vald followed me on Twitter 😀.
- Submitted a new PR for a “on page load” upsell trigger. This will help accomplish upsells in the cart, on checkout, in ‘frequently purchased with’ sections, etc.
- Submitted a PR for many to many upsells.
- Made setup easier - now you see a perfect 1 to 1 representation of what your upsell will look like in Webflow. There is no need to toggle between one and all the items in the product collection list.
- Made setup easier - now you don’t have to assign SKUs to each product.
- Dug into Webflow’s “ix2” and “commerce” client side Javascript.
- Landed on a solid naming system for Flow Phantom data attributes.
- Lined up 2 youtubers for Flow Phantom reviews.
- Got the ball rolling on hiring designers for Flow Phantom cloneables.
- Got a new Macbook. I went from a 2015 dual core i5 with 8 GB of RAM to the M1 Max with 32 GB of RAM. I can’t believe how much a difference it makes 😅.
- Bought my first paid sponsorship with No Code No Problem.
- Attended No Code Conf. Logic and memberships came out (which should be a big upgrade for Webflow Ecommerce!)
- Gave a demo to the Webflow Expert Program.
What I didn’t do
- I planned to ship a bunch of small features, but instead I got caught in a rabbit hole. I discovered that Webflow’s “ix2” and “commerce” client side javascript had some APIs exposed. I decided to explore them to see if I could solve some of my activation problems. While I was hoping for a 10x improvement for activation, I actually landed on a 5x improvement.
- Category upsells.
- Cart number upsells.
- Cart price upsells.
What I learned or was reminded
- I learned a lot about good naming systems, especially from Finsweet’s Client First System. Which was really helpful while building my data attribute naming system.
- I didn’t shape my project well enough, and I broke out of it, which caused a tailspin of work that didn’t have a fixed scope. This isn’t the first time I’ve realized how important shaping is 😣.
- I'm very motivated by todo lists and need to manage mine well.
- I’m most productive in the morning. I can get a lot of work done if I prepare tasks the night before.
- Keep things very simple in programming. I disregarded some code smells when looking at Webflow’s “ix2” and “commerce” engine. It ended up biting me in the ass.
- Be scientific when trying to reverse engineering Webflow. While it might seem like a waste of time to record experiments, it’s actually a waste of time when you don’t remember the results of those experiments.
- I need to measure what matters. I often rush and forget to diligently record metrics - in both my personal and professional life.
- I’m not doing customer interviews right. I need to focus more on my pre and post work.
What I did:
- I won the NC Idea Micro grant! While $10,000 will certainly be helpful, I’m more excited for the mentorship and getting to know the other entrepreneurs.
- Shipped three Twitter threads.
-Lots of networking. I had 11 meetings with Webflow creators.
-Learned more about Chrome extensions.
-I got invited to the Webflow Monthly Showcase for Experts!
What I didn’t do:
-Product took a back seat to networking and customer interviews.
-I didn’t ship a thread the last week of October and I haven’t been scheduling tweets.
-I haven’t been answering questions on the Webflow Forum.
What I learned or was reminded:
-My productivity is ruined if I’m distracted by Twitter or have too many meetings in the day. I turned off my Twitter notifications and will focus on scheduling all my meetings in chucks.
-I heard a marketing story I can’t get out of my head 👉 P.T. Barnum once had a man lay bricks in a line towards his museum. The man didn’t tell anyone what he was doing. People eventually became curious and followed him into the museum, and once there paid for a ticket. I need to funnel customers in, but I don’t necessarily have to mention Flow Phantom. I just have to lead them to Flow Phantom. My way of laying bricks could be making interesting resources for Webflow creators.
-I’m guessing my thread on Webflow JS Snippets worked well because I gave Webflow creators a resource they could both use and share with their audience.
-I need to be more scientific about my customer discovery. After reading Talking to Humans I realized I wasn’t getting as much from my meetings as I could have.
-Twitter is better than emails for cold outreach.
Next Month
Product:
-Improve set up.
-Add in cart and in checkout upsells.
Marketing:
-Film new setup videos.
-Get it ready for the Webflow Monthly Showcase for Experts.
What I did
-Landing page refresh.
-Created a new versioning system. Now I can selectively upgrade customers' sites to different versions without them doing anything.
-Pushed V2 to production.
-New demo video.
-Attended Makers Mark 3 times a week for 3 weeks.
-Created an information capture system in Notion.
-Had a twitter thread that blew up 🚀!
-Was selected as a finalist for the NC Idea micro grant 💪!
-Got into a Twitter thread cadence - one a week.
What I didn’t do
-In cart upsells.
-Frequently purchased upsells.
-Category upsells.
-Total cart value upsells.
-Upsells with a discount.
-Bundle upsells.
-Cart count upsells.
What I learned or was reminded
-Twitter can be amazing for creating connections!
-Again, I didn’t do as much community building. It's a channel that has worked so I need to return to it.
-Writing clearly is super important.
-I had some scope creep. When shaping I need to focus more on my boundaries and rabbit holes.
-I had a huge PR which made it difficult to review. I need to focus on small incremental changes.
Health
-I had a foot injury so my workout routine has taken a hit.
-My fasting has gone really well, but my diet of no sugar is still slipping.
-I went to PT and got a bunch of good advice and tips to improve my posture.
Next Month
Product:
-In cart upsells.
-Frequently purchased upsells.
-Category upsells.
-Total cart value upsells.
-Upsells with a discount.
-Bundle upsells.
-Cart count upsells.
Marketing:
-Community building - one interaction a day.
-Build in public more.
-User segmentation within my dashboard app.
Now you can create many to one product upsells and set which upsell has the highest priority!
This update lays the foundation for a bunch of upcoming features including:
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Dynamic "frequently purchased with" components.
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Upsells based on the number of items in the cart.
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Upsells based on the total order value of the cart.
-
And many more!
Checkout it out at https://dashboard.flowphantom.com/ !
August 2021 Monthly update
What I did
- Set up more feedback channels.
- Learned more about cold email.
- Updated dashboard and backend to account for many to one upsell configurations - multiple products can upsell to the same product.
- Updated dashboard and backend to account for upsell priority - if there is an overlap in display criteria the highest priority upsell will show.
- Updated dashboard and backend to lay the foundation for additional features.
- Updated client side javascript to account for new and future features.
- Applied to NC Idea Grant.
What I didn’t do
- Cold outreach to agencies.
- Fixing segmentation within the app.
- Cadence for social media updates.
- Email free users.
- Landing page shape and ship.
What I learned or was reminded
- People are confused by my demo and landing page.
- People want to get in contact with me but there is nowhere on the landing page to do so.
- I didn’t do community building and I had a big drop off in traffic and new customers.
- I set up passive ways to get user feedback. I need to be more aggressive and go get it.
- Writing is way easier with someone giving me feedback.
- Having a deadline is helpful. It makes me ship faster.
- I’m moving faster because I’ve established patterns within my codebase that I’m repeating.
- Checklists are powerful tools.
Health
- Sitting forward (with the Herman Miller focus tilt) has been helpful for my wrists. I need to “sit with my tail out” and sink the weight into my armrests.
- I’m getting in better running shape. My goal is to get to 8:45 min / mile pace for a 5k.
- Diet is slipping. I’ve missed multiple no sugar days and I’ve not hit my quota of fasting twice a week.
- Focusing on stretching the middle part of my forearms has been super helpful. I got to remember to do stretching at night and in the morning.
- When I hit a stress point I often reach for food. Instead I should say I will eat in ten minutes (a trick I learned from the Knowledge Project Podcast).
Next Month
Product:
Small features I can quickly push out and advertise around:
- Non-triggered upsells or always present upsells (such as frequently purchased with).
- Category upsells.
- Number of products in cart upsell.
- Total order value upsells.
Marketing:
- Push out small features updates and share with newsletter and social channels.
- Shape and rework the landing page.
- Polish demo video.
- Agency cold outreach.
- Segmentation within my app.
- Get in a cadence for publishing social media updates.
What I accomplished:
- Made 4 new Webflow Cloneables.
- Implemented Userlist and Lemlist.
- Segmented my users, with Userlist, into free and paying.
- Started a cold outreach campaign for Webflow ecommerce stores.
- Made a youtube video on how I made a Webflow upsell popup.
- Shaped and broke ground on advanced upsells.
- Made 16 Webflow forum posts.
- Implemented email password sign on.
- Was listed on the Webflow Plugins and Integration Library.
- Implemented a chat bot on my dashboard.
- Shaped a Userlist activation email sequence.
What I didn’t get to:
- Cold outreach to agencies.
- Implementing a “How did you hear about us” form.
- Implementing a Userlist activation email sequence.
- A cadence for social media updates.
- A new landing page.
What I learned:
- I did a poor job estimating how long and how difficult marketing efforts would be. I need to apply the Shape Up principles, or schedule time for planning, to have a clearer path and prevent scope creep and rabbit holes.
- Writing copy is a lot like design. First look for inspiration, then iterate until you get what you want.
- Checklists are powerful. I made a mistake when migrating to Userlist, which sent an errant email out to all my newsletter subscribers. Checklists should limit mistakes and boost confidence to ship.
- A customer requesting a specific feature gave me energy and focus that allowed me to accomplish something quickly. If I implement more feedback channels I should be able to recreate that same energy and focus.
- Stay within the constraints of TailwindUI. Everytime I try to break out and do something custom it ends up not being as good and taking longer than I expected.
Next Month:
- Push hard to have advanced upsells implemented by the end of month.
- Study up on marketing in order to improve current efforts and expand into other efforts.
- Lay groundwork for marketing that will take place in September and October before the holiday season.
- Iron out cold email sequences to ecommerce stores.
- Implement cold email sequences to agencies.
- Implement activation email sequences.
- Shape a new marketing strategy.
- Have my landing page updated.
- Get in a better cadence of posting to Indie Hackers, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Reddit.
My Alpha customers started using my product out in the wild! It was a pretty cool experience seeing your software used around the world. After launch I spent the next two weeks fixing bugs that had come up in production. I learned so much from shipping early, and I had clear insights on what I needed to fix.
I put up a landing page with a sandboxed demo of Flow Phantom enabling upsells and cross sells on Webflow. The landing page had a funnel the led to a Zoom conversation with me. I convinced a handful of customers to prepay an annual plan before the MVP existed. They also agreed to do user feedback calls while I was building the MVP, which was super helpful for product development.
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