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29 Comments

Finished MVP

It took 1 week to finish the MVP for https://usehoney.io, an idea I originally had and tried building an MVP for over a year ago. The original seed for UseHoney was simply trying to build something to solve my own problem - namely, I felt like I kept catching myself "re-inventing the wheel" on all my different web projects. Every website would inevitably need a feedback form, a contact form, an email opt-in box, a privacy/terms of service banner, etc. I kept catching myself either rebuilding these same things from scratch over and over with each new web project or digging into previous projects to copy the code from my old project into my new project. So about a year ago I decided I would try to build a flexible widget builder that would help me templatize this. However, trying to tackle all these different components at once quickly resulted in a unmaintainable proof of concept (you can actually see a short video demo of my original proof of concept from about 11 months ago here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKYKjsPxrRw&feature=youtu.be). As a result, I shelved the project and focused on other things. Now almost a year later, over this past labor day weekend I decided it was time to revisit this idea and build a new MVP from scratch. This time around however, I'm focused on taking a tortoise vs. hair, quality over quantity approach. Instead of trying to build a dozen different widgets all at once, I'm focusing on 1 feature at a time. UseHoney currently provides 1 very slick tool - a feedback card that you can fully customize and embed directly into your site. My goal going forward is to focus on making every aspect of this feedback form - the design, flexibility, customizability, integrating it, etc - the highest quality possible.

  1. 8

    This is literally what all landing pages should have
    Great MVP!

    1. 1

      Thanks so much for the positive feedback @Fruzenshtein, really appreciate it!

  2. 4

    Good product, but sounds little too pricy, especially as it's charged per view as compared to per interaction. If you don't track the number of views (which many people would appreciate IMO), and serve static js content, the only database call would be made when a user clicks on it (to provide feedback), which should also significantly reduce the price.

    1. 2

      ☝🏻this. @zayne good to see you taking this feedback and utilizing it. keep going with your MVP and all the best!

    2. 2

      Great idea @swebdev! I think I might adjust the pricing to focus on a count of feedback submissions instead of a view count. Thank you for the feedback!

  3. 3

    Why the name though? First thing I thought of was https://www.joinhoney.com/
    Which has grown massively.

  4. 1

    How do you deal with privacy and storing sensitive data?

    1. 1

      @StErMi Interesting question! For sensitive data at the application level, I follow this approach: https://ankane.org/modern-encryption-rails. Additionally, as I am beginning to integrate 3rd-party providers into this project, a future scenario where form submissions get passed through straight to your provider (Mailchimp, Convertkit, Aweber, etc) could also be a possibility!

      1. 1

        I was not talking about a technological solution but more about a legal one. I'm telling you because I faced the same issue and in Italy (and I think Europe in general) this is a real issue/problem to take care of.

  5. 1

    Absolutely Brilliant MVP! I love this. Learnt a thing or 2 from your approach. Thanks for sharing.

    1. 1

      @progzilla Thank you for the feedback!

  6. 1

    This looks really great. I'm interested in using it. Can we chat further?

    1. 1

      Hi @Michiels, I'd be happy to chat. You can find my email in my account here if you want to shoot me a message 👍

  7. 1

    Nice Job!

    Small suggestion, maybe have the sample widget be sticky on the right side so it scrolls with the left column as the user changes the attributes.

  8. 1

    I love the approach of letting the user configure the feedback form on the landing page which helps in communicating what the product does and how to use it. Well done!

    There are some layout issues with the responsive design though, if you resize the page you can see it.

  9. 1

    I love the idea - simple and modular.

  10. 1

    This is cool man. Nice simple widget :)

    What happens to the feedback once it is submitted? Is there a backend dashboard?

    Be great if this could be embedded in an email. Is that possible?

    1. 1

      thanks @SamWilcox! Yes there is a dashboard, basically you just have to create an account on the site and then all of the feedback you collect is viewable from the dashboard along with total average scores. Currently I haven't been focusing on making it work from within an email, but it's an interesting idea I could look into. I will definitely let you know if it's something I can incorporate!

      1. 1

        If you can get this easily embedded into an email I believe that you could be on to something. Many companies that I have worked for in the past wanted a quick easy way to get an NPS score from their customers but could never find an affordable and lightweight solution like this.

        Also, on the marketing site, maybe add a section about the dashboard with some screen grabs to make it clear how the data is collated :)

        Keep up the good work man, I'm definitely following along on this one!

  11. 1

    This looks like something very, very useful.

  12. 1

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