I came up with a better way to communicate with users

I don't understand how it can be a widget in the webpage and in the app. Are you shipping two versions? Which framework do they use?

Email has the advantage that it can be send to people that didn't visit your site and perhaps forgot about it, in spite they may mark it as spam.

It's usually better to wait to post it here until it's available, and it looks like you are only building a waiting list. But IIUC the thing of the right is a live demo, so it's not yout vaporware or an idea without any implementation.

What happens if I press the button "Subscribe to Launch"?

My second thought was when Microsoft used to integrate feedback in their desktop apps.

But, it's an integrating concept to use radio buttons for quick engagement is a great approach. Compared to the previous two examples, this seems much more focused. Seems like a great way to get quick feedback!

Biggest doubt for me is that, I think this would require a lot of moderation, since surely there will be people advertising something, or recommending competitors. Or people impersonating as customer support agents and scamming your users

Users don't necessarily wanna join or know how to join a discord server/forum just cuz they're using a particular software/product and need help from time to time.

An alternative to Taku would be forums hosted by the official group/co. in-charged of the product. These are a hit or miss. They usually require a sign up as well.. so now users need one account per good or service. (On Taku, a user could have a single account that spans across products).

Also, nothing stopping Taku from offering different kinds of chatting services in a single solution: Forum, Q&A, instant chat.

I suspect a selling point would be increased user engagement in terms of helping other users out... in the past, as a user I might come across a question on a forum i kinda an help out but I'd be too lazy to create an account just to post.

[1] https://www.discourse.org/ [2] https://forum.airgradient.com/

Something to dig into more might be the developing PLG software space. This idea is not dissimilar to PLG in general, though I think most PLG cases are for larger implementations. PLG covers a lot more but might be worth diving into a bit.

PLG, Product Led Growth, is similar to your implementation in that you are trying to observe how users, not buyers, are utilizing your software so you can sell/expand to them.

At the moment, my site has a comment box for users to leave messages on individual pages. But I've no way of sending a message to all pages.

I also like the fact that it doesn't send people off to a different site (like Slack or Discord).

My big question is - where are the messages stored? I'd prefer to keep them on my server rather than yours.

I love that I can post a comment anonymously and don't need to sign up. Makes for a very low friction experience.

Some feedback for the landing page - it wasn't clear to me at first that the Taku box that pops up there is a live example. Maybe you can make that more clear with some copy change. For example:

"This is a Taku Box. All users receive this message. You can even chat with them in the comments below. Scroll down!"

Another small design feedback - it wasn't clear to me at all that "Yodelling R2-D2" (currently the top comment) was a user. I thought maybe it was a caption for the image, or an example product name, or something else. I found it confusing. Maybe a small auto-generated avatar or even just an icon of a profile next to the names would help, something to signal to me that it is a username. Or maybe even get rid of the names altogether, since they are all anonymous.

Good luck!

If this is more a one to one chatbot, this is similar to existing chatbot solutions in the marketplace but you could evolve your own spin on it. It seems to be positioned for early stage websites/apps where you can keep up with a low volume of active users.

How about not talking to them? Have you considered that they don’t want to engage in a communication-level relationship with every single app they use? How about respecting their time and emotional energy and not bombarding them with communications?

1.How is this different than a chat window popup? I see these everywhere. What sets your product apart?

2.For me, popups like this are annoying if they are too intrusive, and they almost always are. How are you going to prevent this from turning away users like me from your clients software?

3.Are there going to be notifications sitting somewhere in the screen? This also is a turn off.

4.Most of the time as a user, I prefer email. Nobody is going to bug me, but support is there when I need them. Perhaps you could structure it more like that. Make it voluntary, rather than intrusive.

The problem is that there are too many options for people to choose from. You have to go through the whole process of signing up for an account, which can be time-consuming for some people.

My solution would be to make it easier for people to sign up, so they don't have to go through all of that trouble.

I tried to replicate that recently with Discord, but Discord doesn't feel anonymous enough.

I would actually love to have something like that again. Just a public chat widget suited for mobile, without needing to learn XMPP or integrating IRC or setting up my own server. Actually an old school chat room would do. I just don't want reacts and profile pics and all that junk.

I'd be quite willing to pay for it too. Not $5/month, but something.

plain polls in itself had their issues - people answering polls arent people using your app, unless poll is nagged in the app/app settings(so a/b running in parallel to poll can help evaluating user feedback - remember google chrome bookmark page fiasco),

if someone resorts to searching apps site they usually either evaluating if app has something that they need to accomplish with app; or if there's a workaround or a way to do something they dont understand how to accomplish with your app - so if they didnt find a way they will try another app or do it other way.

there's much simpler live chat/search forum(Discourse)/discord all in one approach:

allow users to create topics(akin to discord rooms) relating some aspect of your app. create flat not nested, not collapsible live chat in each topic.

allow user either post new message in topic or reply with a button to existing message - creating a thread this way. allow people to subscribe to threads, maybe in side panel. auto color user messages and threads background - the way google wave did it

allow to +- rate messages in threads if user posted a message inside; if message rating is below threshold visually change it's backround - like paint half of message backround into different color, but dont hide it. allow marking messages as offtopic - color them differently too.

for single messages without thread allow rating it only to people that answered at least a few times and doesnt have much of their replies as completely off topic. this way you wont need much moderation besides removing obvious hate speech or creating topics not related to your app.

allow indexing every topic - either page them by day (hour if very chatty), then group day-pages into week pages, allow fulltext+exclude search.

no need for fancy discord/slack like webapp chats, their sole purpose is to limit outside access. your goal Is outside access - to make every aspect of your app(or its abilities/features) as discoverable and explained as possible, and to allow discussing user wants and approaches.

the main key is to make it as findable, searchable, readable(people often dont wat to fight search and just skim read) and approachable(by not having echo chamber hate community) as possible.