Site Command

I've never really been happy with the landing page I initially put together for Site Command.

Recently I surfaced some customer insights that indicated where the value of Site Command really is, and I wanted to shift my messaging to highlight that value.

For the past several weeks, I've been redesigning the landing page in my head and then spend a couple evenings last week to put pen to paper. I'm happy with the result, although I feel it's still very far from ideal.

Design-wise I've been very inspired by Pitch's 3D illustrations, and as a 3D nerd I wanted to emulate that. Didn't quite capture the same vibe, but progress is progress and I got to model and render some stuff. That's a win in my books, though I want to improve the vibe.

In case you're curious, here's the before and after. Feedback very welcome!

Original: https://share.buffer.com/E0un1vJG
New one: https://share.buffer.com/o0u8w0O0

Site Command got its first conversion and received its first payment! 🥳

This happened roughly 10 months after beginning development, which has been has been sporadic, and one month after "launch".

I've probably put about 100-150 hours in, but am also sharing my time between my day job, my wife and our toddler, and some semblance of a social life – and sleep. If I focused on this full time, think this we'd have gotten here in about a month.

Customer #1 is paying $100/month, which is an amazing data point for us, because our pricing was nothing more than a hypothesis until we had somebody paying it. We were asking $200/month, but I had some transparent conversations with early adopters about this experimental pricing and $100 is where they feel they're getting good value. I also feel like that pricing is more realistic and reflective of the product at this stage.

I will keep the higher price up for a little while longer to gather more data, but expect to drop it and ultimately add a higher-priced tier in the future when there's sufficient functionality.

One interesting thing I've noted is that there is a LOT of interest in the product, but the timing is crucial: Contractors only want to start a trial when they're starting a new project. So I'm trying to capture that moment somehow.

Anyway – we're into revenue and freshly motivated to double-down! Onward and upward to the rightward!

The product is about 90% of the way there. I have some demos lined up next week, and we'll see how those go!

In conjunction with ongoing research calls/emails, I felt I had enough of an understanding of the key problems to start the actual product development.

Enter: Site Command

Actually, I was working with the name "Clarity Pro" - which I really didn't like - until my wife very quickly offered up "Site Command", which nailed the general feeling (and customer nomenclature) I was looking for. On a related note, if anybody wants the domain clarityproapp.com, just email me! 😁

The heads down work has begun, with frequent updates to those who expressed interested, ongoing customer interviews whenever I can get somebody to agree to speak to me, and just generally talking about the idea to anybody else who will listen.

I needed to understand if this was a "my friend" problem, or if this pain was common amongst companies like his. Time to pound the pavement.

I've reached about to about 25 potential customers that I identified through google searches, home builder directories, and even Instagram.

I was fortunate enough to line up about 6-7 research interviews, all of whom independently told me a similar story. The pain was real, and the existing solutions all tended to focus up-market at larger home building companies with dozens or hundreds of major projects per year, and dozens or hundreds of employees.

This last part was key: most of the people I chatted with were begrudgingly using the same software, which wasn't designed for them, but was the only workable solution. It's very expensive and they'll all expressed interest in getting away from it - once a valuable-enough alternative was available.

A good friend of mine owns a small home building company in Edmonton.

On a recent visit, he was telling me about the issues he's been having trying to keep all of his projects on track, his crew informed, and his customers in the loop.

He fields 30-40 phones call per day, largely for status updates. He writes things on napkins in his truck, and sometime loses them. The organization and communication struggle is real.

Having searched for a solution, he was unable to find something suitable and purpose-built for a company like his.

This stood out to me as a problem likely experienced by many or most operators at his scale, and I felt like there had to be a better way.