Magic

Simplify Google Analytics.

No Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
Analytics

Because Google Analytics is so damn confusing.

December 13, 2020 A tiny lesson in idea validation

I was pretty naive...

I posted a milestone earlier about how I was conducting user research. I've changed things up since then, and learned a small lesson, thanks to the feedback from this community!

---

BEFORE:

My waitlist signup form looked like:

  1. What's your email?
  2. What problem are you trying to solve with our product?

And then I would personally hand-craft an email to everyone who responded, with a pretty low response rate.

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AFTER:

Now, the form looks like:

  1. What's your email?
  2. Do you use or pay for an analytics product/service outside of Google Analytics? (If so, which one?)
  3. Briefly describe your use case. (e.g. "I run an e-commerce store with 3 employees and I'd like to track metrics easier")
  4. Would you be interested in chatting about the analytics problems you're facing?

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LESSON: Ask questions upfront

I realize now, asking more questions upfront during signup is much MUCH better than deferring it to personal email afterwards.

I originally thought "I hate long forms, so why force friction on new potential users? I'll just personally email everyone, and they will appreciate the personal feel to the product."

Sounds nice in theory, but it's actually best to just make the upfront.

Why?

Because they MOST feel the problem that you're trying to solve when they're signing up. They were reminded of the problem so strongly that they decided to fill out your form. Thus they're most likely to give you precious datapoints IN THAT EXACT MOMENT.

You spent so long crafting your landing page to point them towards the thorn in their side, you have to strike while that iron is hot!

When they check their email later that evening, they might have completely forgotten about that problem, AND your solution.

And yes, you might think, "I'm missing out on all those potential users that want to put an email quickly and leave! There might be people who quit the form halfway!"

And my response would be that especially early on, you aren't looking for those kinds of users. You're looking for the people with the most pain. They're the ones who will provide the most valuable feedback and not give you half-hearted compliments.

Hell, you're trying to get paid!

If a user isn't even willing to fill out a few questions on a form, there's no chance in hell they'd fill out your Stripe checkout!

Thought this was gonna be a small post... but rant it is :)

December 5, 2020 Am I doing user research wrong?

TLDR; I got 10 waitlist signups yesterday, personally emailed 8 of them, and only got 1 response so far. Would appreciate some thoughts about my process of validating this project and doing user research..

After my app got approved by Google, and users could safely use the live demo of my app, I posted here on IH and on Reddit.

My landing page has a link to a waitlist sign up, which asks two questions:

  1. What's your email?

  2. What problem are you trying to solve with our product?

Then I get notified when I get responses, and then I handcraft an email to everyone who signs up.

The email looks like:

Header: "magic: thanks for the interest!"
Body:
"""
Hello friend!

Jonathan here, building magic. Thanks for the interest in our simpler GA dashboard!

You mentioned your problem "getting simple analytics for less tech-savvy managers".

Does our live demo solve your problem to some extent?

Cheers!
Jonathan
"""

My goal was to make a small ask, for feedback on our live demo, to kick off a conversation, so that I could get to know the person and their needs better.

I felt like asking them for a 15 minute call was too much up front.

I got 10 signups. I've sent emails to 6 so far, and only got 1 response so far.

Although it's been less than a day, I am worried that I am doing this process of user research or problem validation wrong....

Am I?? Or am I just paranoid haha

I even just read "The Mom Test", so I feel like I should be better at this now 馃槀

December 4, 2020 Approved by Google!

Happy to say Google finally verified my app!

So anyone can safely access the live demo without seeing a sketchy consent screen.

My app (magic-ga.com) is a simplified Google Analytics dashboard.

It aggregates all your GA-tracked websites into a single dashboard so you can see the most important metrics at a glance and quickly.

(10x faster than going to analytics.google.com and tabbing through your properties imo)

You can use it for free and without an account!!

(no data is being stored anywhere, I don't even have a db/backend setup yet haha!)

For a quick preview of what it looks like:

I'd really appreciate feedback/thoughts!

December 1, 2020 TailwindCSS + TailwindUI is Amazing

Just came on here to give @adamwathan some praise for one hell of a framework that I was naive enough not to use until now.

TailwindCSS + TailwindUI (free components) have literally 10x'd my frontend work productivity.

Built the landing page in lightning speed.

Plus, if you want to use TailwindUI with React, I'd recommend this chrome extension to convert the HTML to JSX.

I could not recommend Tailwind enough. Stop using vanilla HTML + CSS.

November 29, 2020 MVP Done-ish

Magic is a simpler Google Analytics dashboard.
See metrics for all websites in one place, faster, and simpler.

I had been thinking about scratching this itch of mine for a while now.
Forced myself to "launch" within a week, it's a landing page, signup form, and live demo of the dashboard.
Check out it out here: magic-ga.com.

(Holding out on the domain purchase before further validation!)

I've only tested it with two of my Google accounts, so I'm not confident in the live demo's capabilities.

Here's what it is supposed to look like:

It's pretty much two minimal features:

  1. Aggregate dashboard (all websites)

  1. Individual dashboards

You can see if it works for you 馃槀

Pretty sure no-one will read this, but if you're reading this, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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Because Google Analytics is so damn confusing.