Matthew Lang

Work has been a little slow this week, a morning here, an afternoon there.

With the free time in between slots, I should be using that time to get my head round some of my side projects and turning them into products, maybe even start preparing for another NaNoWriMo, or even just fine tuning my programming skills by learning another programming language. Well the truth is I haven't started any of these things this week.

It was time to re-focus again and get my head cleared.

I took a look at my desk and noticed rising piles of paper appearing on the edges. Wireframes, contracts, invoices, tax documents and other stuff. All grouped together, but all of them encroaching my desk space. My work space. While this stuff sits on my desk, I get distracted. So I started clearing my desk. Filing documents away, throwing out old wireframes (in the recycle bin of course), leaving out only the absolutely necessary things that I need to action before the end of the week.

After half an hour I had my desk back, my work space. And I was ready to go again. I scheduled work for my side projects into my calendar for the rest of the day and got back to work on them.

I should clear my desk more often.

We've all been there. You're given a link to a new great product that is going to do wonders for your productivity but when you are done installing it you get a sign up screen that let's you sign up with only two different options.

1. Facebook
2. Twitter

If you're lucky (or not so lucky), you get a third option of Google+. Where's the option to use your email address though?

Opinionated sign ups like this have always been a problem for me. I don't have a Facebook account and I barely participate on Twitter these days, to the point where I am even thinking of deleting my Twitter account. So if I don't have an account for either of these social networks (and yes there are people like this) then what's left for me to do?

It's easy. Give some other product a try that will let me sign up with my email address.

The only time where I will use a product that requires such a sign up is where it allows me to participate on the social network or platform I choose to use.

I've signed up for many products over the years using Twitter, Dropbox and Google. Each time the product was tied to the preferred login that I choose in a way that required a specific login. Journalong uses Dropbox to post journal entries to your Dropbox, Feedly uses Google to sync your Google Reader across, you get the idea. These are specialist products and services that depend on a specific social network or platform.

I will not however sign up with my social network for a product whose only connection to it is to read the list of people I follow on that network and from other networks.

Where a product isn't tied to one social network but offers the choice, I'll always use my email address. If the product wants to connect to my social networks after I have signed up then fine, I'll connect them separately. It means that I can disconnect those social networks at a later date without having to completely stop using the product.

There's a time and place for opinionated sign ups like this but for generic products we should always be given the option of using email.

... Rebel Alliance or The Empire?

I struggled with developing features for Journalong over the last six months. Always at the back of my mind was that I needed Journalong to be profitable. It was this thinking the blocked all development on Journalong. Ideas were put to the side until I could get more paid subscribers using the product.

In time I realized that Journalong as a product was never going to happen. So I let go.

Over the weekend I stripped out all the paid subscriptions from Journalong and it is now a free product for everyone. As soon as I shipped the changes I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. Now with no pressure to build a customer base I can get back to developing a few more features for Journalong over the next few months.

Mmmmmm, shiny!

via FGGT - Photo by Father Tu

Bought myself a couple of books this morning for some light reading. Not the digital kind mind, actual hold in your hand, dead tree books. It's been ages since I done this. For the last couple of years I've bought all my books on my Kindle, but my reading has decreased in the last few months as a result of this.

I put it down to technology wear. I just can't face burying my head in another screen again when it comes to reading at night. Amazon tout the Kindle as a close experience to reading an actual book, but you can never replicate the feeling of reading a book with anything other than an actual book.

I'm not going to completely stop using my Kindle. It's still great for my programming books for quickly looking up something and I've got a ton of books on my Kindle that I read again quite often. There's lots of other reasons why I'm buying books again but the main reason is just to spark my love of reading again.

It's been a year since I started Journalong. It's been a real learning experience. While it might not be the success that I envisioned it to be, the experience of building a product has taught me a few things that I would like to share.

1. If there's no market for it, don't build it

When I first hit on the idea I immediately created a small Google Docs form that asked two questions.

• Would you be interested in using Journalong?
• How much would you be prepared to pay to use Journalong?

Feedback was quite low. Well, really low. Looking back now it was clear that there wasn't demand for Journalong. I should have abandoned the idea and moved onto something else. I didn't though. I wanted Journalong to use for myself so I built it anyway, and added the ability for others to pay for an annual subscription to Journalong if they wanted to use it. Was I building Journalong for myself or others?

What I should have done was simply build Journalong for anyone to use for free. Interest in the product was so low anyway that it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway. With the focus taken away from trying to market the product to customers, I could have focused on delivering a better experience in using Journalong for myself and others.

If there's no market for your product, then don't build it and put a price on it. Of course you can build it for yourself, just don't expect to profit from a personal project with low feedback.

2. Measure user interaction

The only way to know if your product is being used is to measure key activities in the product. I didn't do this, so it was difficult to see how often Journalong was being used on a daily basis other than looking at page views provided by Google Analytics.

Decide on key activities and interactions you want to measure and build the monitoring of these straight into the product.

For Journalong I should have measured one thing:

• How often were people writing to their journal?

As Journalong writes journal entries straight to Dropbox, I didn't have any record of how often journal entries were being written for each user.

Building metrics like this into your product is just as important as the features your product has. Metrics like this can provide you with data on in-frequent users of your product. You can then survey these users to determine what's stopping them from using your product more frequently and possibly taking a higher tiered plan if you have them.

3. Gather product feedback frequently

Getting feedback using surveys on your product is critical. It let's you find out what's not working, what's attracting users and what's missing.

When I say survey I don't necessarily mean a 10 point questionnaire on the users experience with your product. Bogging users down with surveys like this can turn them away.

A couple of questions would do or you could do something as simple as a 'like' button beside a new feature. A simple button next to a feature could prompt the user when they use the new feature for the first time and ask them if they like it. Once they click it, the response is logged and the button disappears. If they don't click it for a few days then simply remove the button to stop the user getting annoyed.

Using the metrics that I mentioned earlier, you should also survey users that don't use the product very often. The feedback may turn out to reveal a missing feature or an obstacle in your product. You want to convert as many users as possible to using your product

The last place to survey your users is when they delete or cancel their account. This is your last chance to find out why your product isn't to their liking. Is it too expensive? Does it lack something?

Getting the feedback from the customer here, allows you to refine your product for the better to stop users cancelling their accounts for similar reasons.

4. Iterate often

This is important in the early days of your product. After I built Journalong I sat back for a couple of months and watched the activity on Google Analytics. Looking back it wasn't a wise move.

Metrics and surveys will point towards missing features or changes you could be implementing. Getting these in as quickly as possible will mean that less users stop using your product and will attract others. Be selective of the features you implement though. You don't want to burden your users with changes to the product every day. Common sense prevails here. If 90% of your surveyed users are asking for a specific feature that falls inline with your product, then implement it and ship it.

5. Adjust your price based on facts

I've made three pricing changes to Journalong over the last year and making it free next week (that's another blog post) will be a fourth. Pricing products is difficult. I arrived at my initial price based on the value that I thought Journalong would be offering to users and on how much people were offering to pay for the product from my initial survey.

Three pricing changes later and there's still no bite for Journalong. These pricing changes didn't come from any information I had though. I simply thought that reducing my price might spark more interest in Journalong. A stupid assumption to make and one I advise you don't do.

Adjusting your price isn't a big issue. In the early days of your product you should be continually refining the product based on the feedback from your customers. The pricing of your product is no different. Adjust your price based on feedback from customers. They use your product, they'll tell you if they are getting value for money from it.

6. Set a product trial period

Don't flog a dead horse. I've spent far too much time on thinking how to get customers for Journalong when I could have been using the time to build other products. After six months I should have called it a day for Journalong and moved onto something else but I didn't.

Setting a trial period for your product gives you the chance to review if the product is heading in the right direction. Are you getting sign ups on a daily basis? Are you converting enough users to paid accounts in order to be sustainable?

They say Rome wasn't built in a day but that doesn't mean you should continually hold out for a stampede of new users after you deploy that new fancy feature for your product.

After six months ask yourself:

Is it worth investing another six months of my time into this product?

If you have a number of paying customers using your product then it might be worth pursuing the product for another six months. If not, then I say stop working on that product and move onto something else. Six months working on a product is a lot of your free time taken up. If you're like me and have a backlog of other ideas, then it might be better to leave your product and pick something else up.

There's no secret formula

I started this product with the full realization that it could end up like this. A handful of customers and sign ups that bottomed out three months ago. Not all products end up being successful, but there's no rule to say that your product will definitely be a success. Coming to terms with this fact will make the day you give up on your idea a lot easier.

It's not the end of the road though. There's always that next product idea!

... are you going to take at the fence?

... with Nicholas Bate.