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Launching a product in just 3652 days

medium.com

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Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#41

Post by kyriakos »

shubhamjain wrote: post #21

The point in the article that deserves more attention is how creating a landing page was the most useful tool for the author. Sometimes I feel, before writing the first line of code of the project, the more important thing to do is to create a landing page and market it to the concerned audience. This solves three problems - 1) You won't build something people don't need. 2) You get into touch with people who actuall…

Although I agree with your points, there is something about this that bothers me every time I start on a project and think of making a landing page. My concern is, what if I take too long to launch from the day the landing page goes online? Won't that mean I lose any of the potential customers that found my product idea interesting in the first place?

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#42

Post by roel_v »

benediktdeicke wrote: post #33
raverbashing wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate more? Does the CMS has things like /news, /bio, /photos etc and then the designers/front-end work on top of that? Great project btw! I am a fan of these bands as well

The websites don't have a fixed structure. As a front-end developer/designer you're able to define templates with a set of elements (text, image, datetime, concerts, twitter integration, collection of other templates, …). The schema of the templates define the forms in the content management section of the CMS. I hope this screenshot helps to clarify things a bit http://drif.tt/1KfpfoI :)

Right, so that UI (which I presume is the admin backend), did you do the design yourself there? I'm having a hard time getting something coherent together for my own projects, and templates (also paid ones) only get you so far.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#43

Post by benediktdeicke »

kyriakos wrote: post #41
shubhamjain wrote: post #21

The point in the article that deserves more attention is how creating a landing page was the most useful tool for the author. Sometimes I feel, before writing the first line of code of the project, the more important thing to do is to create a landing page and market it to the concerned audience. This solves three problems - 1) You won't build something people don't need. 2) You get into touch with people who actuall…

Although I agree with your points, there is something about this that bothers me every time I start on a project and think of making a landing page. My concern is, what if I take too long to launch from the day the landing page goes online? Won't that mean I lose any of the potential customers that found my product idea interesting in the first place?

Even if you don't convert anyone from the mailing list, you're still better off than without it. You know that there is interest in your product and that there will be more people looking for a solution like yours. It's very unlikely that all potential customers ever will sign up to your mailing list long before your launch.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#44

Post by benediktdeicke »

roel_v wrote: post #42
benediktdeicke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The websites don't have a fixed structure. As a front-end developer/designer you're able to define templates with a set of elements (text, image, datetime, concerts, twitter integration, collection of other templates, …). The schema of the templates define the forms in the content management section of the CMS. I hope this screenshot helps to clarify things a bit http://drif.tt/1KfpfoI :)

Right, so that UI (which I presume is the admin backend), did you do the design yourself there? I'm having a hard time getting something coherent together for my own projects, and templates (also paid ones) only get you so far.

Yes, that's the UI I did.

My tip to improving your design skills: Try to replicate designs you like. Pick one and analyze every pixel (literally!) of it and try to build it yourself. The techniques you learn in the process make it easier to come up with a nice design of your own eventually.

It's a great exercise and helped me a lot in the past.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#45

Post by aytekin »

roel_v wrote: post #29
aytekin wrote: post #15

Complete rewrites are bad. An approach we follow is to rewrite a small section of our product and release that to our users. With React, we can separate everything (repo, tests, architecture) from the core product but still integrate the new version within the app. It is like replacing the parts in a car one by one until you have a completely new car.

If it's written with React it's at most 2 years old - sure anything is easy to replace within such a young product.

The product is much older. It is not written in React. We are rewriting in React piece by piece.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#46

Post by devbug »

DodgyEggplant wrote: post #16

I just launched my product in just 2190 days. The interesting thing is that only a handful of key decisions, maybe 3-4 decisions, would save 80% of this period. But this is the (now) expert hindsight. It's not easy to spot it in real time.

What's your product? I couldn't find it via your profile.

What are (were?) those those few decisions? Are they generalizable?

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#47

Post by roel_v »

benediktdeicke wrote: post #44
roel_v wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so that UI (which I presume is the admin backend), did you do the design yourself there? I'm having a hard time getting something coherent together for my own projects, and templates (also paid ones) only get you so far.

Yes, that's the UI I did. My tip to improving your design skills: Try to replicate designs you like. Pick one and analyze every pixel (literally!) of it and try to build it yourself. The techniques you learn in the process make it easier to come up with a nice design of your own eventually. It's a great exercise and helped me a lot in the past.

Yes, I should pay more attention to things I like and clarify for myself why I like them. I tend to only notice things when I don't like them, a great design tends to do its magic in the background.

Did you design it from scratch, or did you use a framework that you customized? And do you design in Photoshop first or straight away in code? I have one project in mind right now where I basically started with bootstrap, put all the components for the functionality in, and now it looks like such a mess that I don't even know where to begin in cleaning it up any more.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#48

Post by goblin89 »

benediktdeicke wrote: post #35
steveridout wrote: post #32

Thanks for sharing this! I checked out your pricing plans and the way you differentiate plans based on visitors / day jumped out at me since it goes against advice I read recently from the UserVoice team. They used to price based on number of users who can vote but (in their own words)... "This was a huge failure. It created what I call a success penalty: the more successful you were in activating your users to give…

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the pricing isn't perfect, yet. I'm currently segmenting by visitors/day as it seems to be the only way to separate bands into the different plans based on their popularity and success. It's also directly bound to the costs on my side (more traffic -> more server resources). I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make sure a band making tons of money doesn't end up on the smalle…

> I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make sure a band making tons of money doesn't end up on the smallest plan

I can’t help thinking that coarsely segregating customers into plans and overly streamlining the sign-up process might not be the optimal choice in your case. Why not just drive everyone to contact sales directly like, for example, landing page for Ellington CMS does[0]?

You can still market a cheap newcomer plan with low specs, limited support and only basic customizability, strongly implying that it’s the choice for young poor bands. Anyone above that is probably better off working with you directly so that you can estimate the costs and price the solution for them individually. Your highest plan is €199/month—would you bill Metallica that much if they come?

[0] http://www.ellingtoncms.com/cms/, a CMS originally built for small-ish newspapers, also where Django framework was born.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#49

Post by gabemart »

benediktdeicke wrote: post #35
steveridout wrote: post #32

Thanks for sharing this! I checked out your pricing plans and the way you differentiate plans based on visitors / day jumped out at me since it goes against advice I read recently from the UserVoice team. They used to price based on number of users who can vote but (in their own words)... "This was a huge failure. It created what I call a success penalty: the more successful you were in activating your users to give…

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the pricing isn't perfect, yet. I'm currently segmenting by visitors/day as it seems to be the only way to separate bands into the different plans based on their popularity and success. It's also directly bound to the costs on my side (more traffic -> more server resources). I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make sure a band making tons of money doesn't end up on the smalle…

I would suggest you add "average" somewhere to the "x users per day" messaging, seeing as in your FAQ you make clear you won't charge extra or take a site down for a one-off spike in traffic.

Re: Launching a product in just 3652 days

#50

Post by benediktdeicke »

roel_v wrote: post #47
benediktdeicke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's the UI I did. My tip to improving your design skills: Try to replicate designs you like. Pick one and analyze every pixel (literally!) of it and try to build it yourself. The techniques you learn in the process make it easier to come up with a nice design of your own eventually. It's a great exercise and helped me a lot in the past.

Yes, I should pay more attention to things I like and clarify for myself why I like them. I tend to only notice things when I don't like them, a great design tends to do its magic in the background. Did you design it from scratch, or did you use a framework that you customized? And do you design in Photoshop first or straight away in code? I have one project in mind right now where I basically started with bootstrap,…

I usually design directly in code without a CSS framework.
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