Letterbase
Simple, fast, and privacy-friendly website messenger
Really excited to share that I recently got my first paying customer for Letterbase!
This customer is actually a fellow indie hacker! Shoutout to @csotherden and his product NullBox - the Letterbase messenger is on the bottom left corner 😄
I've been working on Letterbase for a couple of months now, and it's great to see that people are starting to get value out of it. It's been difficult competing in a space with a lot of free competitors; my differentiation strategy involves targeting small, privacy-conscious companies, which I believe are part of an underserved market.
Some things that I've recently done:
- Added a bunch of new features, including the ability to customize text and change the position of the messenger
- Added an annual plan for $84/year
- Added a public roadmap + changelog
- Added a Twitter account
I'm working on a lot of things right now, including the ability to customize the launcher icon, adding support for an optional email address field, and more. I'm also planning on starting a blog soon to establish a more recognizable brand, which I hope will accelerate customer acquisition.
This is just the beginning for Letterbase. Now on to the next goal - five paying customers! 🤞
I've been working on Letterbase for about a month, and I'm super excited to launch it in early access now.
It's been hard work building this out -- it's definitely the most ambitious application I've built to date. Here's a few things that I've done differently with this project:
1. I started collecting emails from day one
It was hard for me to come around to this at first. I like jumping in and building the product first -- landing pages aren't really my thing.
But with Letterbase, I started with a landing page and an email form. So now I'm not launching early access to 0 people.
2. I'm getting people to use it as quickly as possible
There's no substitute for getting real people to use your product and provide you feedback. That's the best way to iterate and achieve product-market fit.
It's incredible to see people already using Letterbase on their website. It feels like your hard work has paid off.
Of course, the disadvantage of getting it out in the wild as quickly as possible is that the app tends to be a bit barebones in the beginning. For example, Letterbase does not have multi-user support at the moment -- I'm focused on nailing down a great single-user experience first.
These are features that can always be added later on. Better to have an imperfect release than no release at all.
3. I'm making it free in the beginning
This is a tradeoff that I've thought about for a while, and I ultimately decided to make Letterbase free during early access, at least for the first few users.
People always say to charge early for your product, which I think is generally good advice. However, I wanted to get as much feedback on my product as possible, and the best way to get people trying out your product is if it's free.
I hope this ultimately pays off and I'm able to iterate more quickly on my product than I would have otherwise. I think it also builds goodwill if you're willing to provide value to people upfront before charging them :)
If you're interested in trying out Letterbase, feel free to sign up on the website!
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Hi Richard,
I just signed up for Letterbase, and it was super easy to get up and going! I figured I would pass along some feedback as a user. The most significant thing that I think would have an impact on my end-users is having the contact popup dismiss when you click outside of the popup. Right now, it's kind of confusing that the only way to close it is by clicking on the speech bubble icon. The second issue is being able to change the notification email address. When I signed up for my account, I used my email address, however, if I had realized this would be the notification address, I would have signed up with a distribution list email instead.
Overall, this is a great start. I'm looking forward to using Letterbase as it continues to evolve.
Thanks,
Chris-
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Chris, thank you so much for your feedback and for trying out Letterbase!
I'm working on building out more configuration settings, and being able to configure the notification email address is one of them. This will be coming very soon!
As for the issue with closing the messenger, do you think it would be better if the icon changed into an X to indicate that you need to click it to close the messenger?
I'm a bit wary of having it close automatically when you click outside because users might be composing a message and interacting with your website/app at the same time. I've noticed that other customer support tools also follow this pattern of not automatically closing when you click on the webpage.
But let me know if you feel strongly about this, and I can make it an option!
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I don't want to monopolize your feedback, but if you're looking for any additional feedback around customizability I have a couple more items. Being able to change which corner of the screen the messenger icon displays in would be helpful. I realized earlier today that it overlaps my "return to top" button by displaying in the bottom right corner.
I'm sure the other comment is already on your customization list, but being able to change the title and subtitle text in the messenger would be really nice as well.
If you're looking for any testimonials or another example site in the wild to point to feel free to reference my site https://nullbox.co
This is an awesome start, I'm looking forward to being a long time user, even after you start charging!
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Hey Chris, just want to circle back here and let you know that I've added both of your requests! You can now customize the text in the messenger, as well as change the messenger to display on either the left or right side of the webpage.
Let me know if you need anything else!
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That's awesome! I've already started taking advantage of both. I'll let you know if anything else comes up.
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No worries man, keep the feedback coming! 😄
I've taken note of your requests. Should be coming soon!
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An X to close is a good option as well. I agree about not wanting to lose messages in progress when you close the messenger. If it's reasonable to just hold on to the draft message when you reopen the messenger pop up then closing it by clicking outside the pop up wouldn't cause you to lose a message accidentally.
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I just added the ability to configure your support email address, and the icon now changes to an X when the messenger is open.
User messages should persist in the messenger even when it's opened and closed. However, full page transitions will delete the message.
Cheers, hope this helps!
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That's fantastic! Thanks for making such quick updates.
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Letterbase is a customer support tool with three core values:
- It's simple to use
- It's focused on thoughtful, asynchronous communication instead of live chat
- It's privacy-friendly
A lot of customer support tools out there are bloated and stuffed full of unnecessary features. They are difficult to use, slow down your website, and annoy + track your end users. Letterbase is intended to be the antidote to these problems.
It's the start of a new project, and I'm excited to see where this takes me!
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I’m definitely with you on this. There are dozens of customer support tools in the market that are bloated with unnecessary features and eventually are priced a lot higher than others. For someone looking for easy-to-use and affordable tools, I would recommend ProProfs Help Desk. Small business owners might want to give it a try. Good luck!
Checkout here: https://www.proprofsdesk.com/
35 Comments
Congrats! Looking forward to that feeling myself.
With an open roadmap and changelog, have you thought about also doing open metrics and (now) revenue statistics?
Yes! I'm working on that, and I hope to make them public soon :)
Great idea @alex_portabella
@richardchu let me know at Open Startup List when you make that move so I can add you to the list :)
I love Open Startup List! I'll definitely let you know once I make my stats public :)
congratulations to you Richard
This looks like a great product Richard, congratulations!!
Thanks Monik!
Awesome! Keep it up.
Thanks Greg!
Well done Richard!
Thank you!
Congrats! The widget looks so great!
Thank you Damon! :)
Congrats! What was the impetus that led you to Letterbase?
Thanks! I'm actually writing up a blog post about my motivation right now :)
But long story short, it's because all of the existing customer support tools out there are super privacy-invasive from the perspective of a website visitor. They track your keystrokes/mouse movements, they set third party cookies, they send your IP address to third party services, they let the website owner see what pages you've visited and what exactly you're looking at, etc.
It seems to be an industry practice to collect as much data as possible in the hopes that it might help you provide better customer support. At the end of the day, though, that data comes at the cost of user privacy and is often not even used.
Letterbase is a pure, privacy-friendly version of customer support tools out there. It collects the minimum amount of data and does the only thing anyone ever wanted a customer support tool to do - help you talk to your users :)
Hey Richard, this is great - congrats!
I totally think user privacy is super important and this is a good problem to solve for. However, in this case, how is a website visitor going to understand this difference between other support tools and LetterBase?
Mayybe companies want to be responsible nonetheless. But if there is a way to showcase the fact that they are a "responsible" and user-privacy respecting company through the usage of LetterBase, it might speed its adoption. Just thinking :)
Thanks Karthik!
You're right in that superficially there isn't a big difference for website visitors between Letterbase and other customer support tools. If a visitor cares a lot about privacy and wants to learn more, they can always follow the link in the messenger to Letterbase's website. Otherwise, I'm not really sure how companies can showcase that they respect users' privacy. Other companies like Simple Analytics have a badge that people can put on their website, so it's possible that Letterbase could do something similar, although I'm not sure if people would actually use it.
Once Letterbase starts getting more brand recognition, hopefully visitors will start to recognize it on websites and be assured that that company cares about their privacy. Then the Letterbase messenger itself can serve as a way to signal to the user that their privacy is protected :)
Sounds great Richard :)
Totally agree that as the brand grows privacy would be come implicit. But I guess that's a bit of a chicken an egg. Because, the way I visualize it you are actually selling user privacy not a customer support tool. So, there has to be a way to entrench that into everything-related to LB. Probably do make the badge - it is a low-investment option. If companies try it, that would be great .
But, here are some ideas I thought of:
Make a template first message which you can suggest your customers to use (the kind that pops from the chat boxes when a user lands on a page). Something like "Don't worry, no one is watching you here. We like our privacy and we respect yours :)." OR something similar. If I were to land on a website and see that, that might actually make me stay longer on it.
Make some side-pojects around privacy. Like people declare they are an open startup, they should come forth to declare that they don't track any user actions, etc. You could build a simple website that lists such companies.
Search companies that have said they respect user privacy but are using other chat systems. Call them out politely on Twitter, saying that you would be happy to talk to them.
Detailed exposé on how each popular customer support tool tracks people. Then you could again tag relevant people (the original customer support product as well as some of its customers).
These are just some thoughts I had. Wish you the very best in this journey :)
I really your ideas, especially #4.
About #2, here are 2 indie projects, that do exactly that:
Privacy first products
Open Startup List
Those are some great ideas Karthik! I'll definitely consider implementing them as I move forward :)
Hey Richard,
That is really cool! Congratulations!
Since you are rolling out new features, I would recommend you to install Browsee (https://browsee.io) to watch session recordings. You can make a segment around your new features via a URL or event in Browsee. You can then subscribe to the new feature segment where you can see how users are interacting with a new feature. This will help you in quickly iterating on new features both in terms of UX and bugs.
Let me know if you need any help.
Thanks @cool_chaps! Browsee looks like a cool product, but it unfortunately doesn't align with my privacy focus for Letterbase, so I likely won't be using it. I wish you the best of luck, however!
Thank you and no worries! :) Good luck to you too!
Congrats!!
Thank you @gdi3d!
Congrats, getting that first paying customer is an amazing feeling. Had that with ServerAuth.com a few weeks ago. It did wonders for my motivation for the side hustle! Especially in these tough times with the quarantine!
Definitely! It's a nice boost to help keep you going :)
Congrats! 🙌
Thanks @PeteRamsey!
Congratulations @richardchu Curious to know the story behind landing on your first paying customer. 🥳
I believe he found out about Letterbase from my early access announcement. He left a few comments there and I implemented his feedback. It's important to listen to your customers and show them that you care about them!
Congrats!
Thank you @shyamady!
Congratulations, good niche market strategy to differentiate yourself!
Thanks @dagorenouf!
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