Thanks for pointing out the error. Was it a javascript error? If you have any more details about the error please share (here or support@thetaboard.com).
To be honest I'm not focusing on driving sign ups right now because the project is more a MVProject and not a MVProduct. I actually recommend Trello to people. I'm working on the collaborative portion of the site and refining the UX/UI a bit. When I release a v1.0 I'll definitely improve the copy like you recommend.
I distinctly remember seeing this on HN and, as I generally sign up for things that even remotely interest me on HN (assuming people may not have perfected their pitches yet) I was curious as to whether or not I might have been one of the three.
Then I looked at thetaboard.com, and I knew immediately that I wasn't.
If thetaboard is a project management product, I have no idea how it does that. Compared to Basecamp, which is what I use now, and basecamp's current homepage lets me know that it has todos, documents, projects, blah blah blah. For what its worth, I don't think that basecamp's current landing page is as effective as past pages have been, but it also has a lot more brand recognition and trust than a new startup.
Compared to the thetaboard landing page, and there are literally zero details as to how it makes team collaboration better. Also, its <title> attribute says "Simple Team Collaboration [...] and Product Managment[sic]", but all I can see is "Simple Team Collaboration", which to me at least, is a different product than Product Management.
There's a screenshot that looks like Outlook, and is too small to see. It appears to work on an iPad, but we don't use iPads, so that's moot. Does it work on Android? Is that really a Samsung tablet?
Again though, the main thing is that there aren't any details. There's nothing on the home page that sells me, or even tries to even the least little bit.
In short, it disheartens me when you say that your biggest mistake is not leveraging Twitter. That's not it at all. Your biggest mistake is in having worthless copy on the home page. Your signup ratio is 3/14,000, .0002. If that were even just half of a percent, you'd have a ton more signups.
Having people tweet links to a page that isn't converting means that if every person in the world saw and clicked your link, you still wouldn't have the registration or conversion of the average message board.
I agree with everything you've said. It's really not-ready-for-prime time--I really didn't expect as much traffic as it's gotten at this point. As I'm not ready to really push signups--I haven't put much energy into copy, enumerating features, convincing people to use it.
My goal is to create something that is a process/system agnostic tool that people can use for any number of uses. That sort of flexibility makes it difficult to succinctly express what the product is. When I get it to that point--I'll reread this comment and fix some of the issues you've brought up.
Yeah, lots of us lack time to do these side projects. You'll be a great deal more effective if you constantly focus on the most important next steps in the whole process rather than the particular parts you feel you're best at or that you enjoy the most.
Might I recommend that you attack the above poster's criticism as your very next tasks rather than doing more product development or blogging about what you've learned?
It sounds like you have a product that you can demo and talk about. Stop working on developing it. Switch to marketing/sales. Create a landing page experience that will get conversions.
I'd argue that as a product it isn't there quite yet. There a few deal breaker features that it doesn't have yet. Given the polish of Trello and other PM/collaboration tools I think I need to do the opposite--quit blogging and work on the product. I guess when you are doing both you just have to find a balance.
When I get through this push of development I'm going to launch the premium plans and focus on the points @bmelton and others have brought up (copy, conversion, landing pages, etc.)
It looks like a Trello-type clone, however the interface seems more simple and easy to use. I suppose the site is focusing on development more than marketing right now.
Yeah, Trello came out after I began development--so not a clone so much but definitely a similar product. I won't be able to compete on price (that was the worst part of seeing Trello launch) so I'm going to focus on a few other things. Simplicity and ease of use is at the top of the list.
My goal is to create something worth charging for but there will be a free/personal plan. Whatever you can do now, you'll be able to do for free when premium plans are introduced.
It would make things a lot easier (for me) if Fog Creek was charging for Trello. They are hiring developers for software they are giving away while I'm working on ThetaBoard on nights and weekends and hoping to charge... I think when I'm done there will be enough differences with Trello and I'll be able to get some paying clients on board.
There will always be people who won't pay for products. These people borderline accuse you of stealing if you attempt to charge, or are obsessed with open-source, self-hosted everything.
Ignore them. There are plenty of people who will gladly pay for things that benefit them. If you can build something that kills pain or makes money, you'll get paid.
I haven't written a post-mortem, but last week I had a post on how http://planscope.io (formerly Projector) made me $119.50 in a month. It got crazy traffic - about 40k uniques.
I was really surprised how many people went on to explore exactly what Planscope is. About 20% of people didn't bounce, and ended up checking out the product tour. I netted about 300 new accounts (which was about a 50% jump in user accounts!)
I think the winning formula for a good product blog is: Educate your audience (this is the reason they visited in the first place), have a very clear call-to-action at the bottom of the post ("Are you a freelancer looking to..."), and have an easy outlet to view the rest of your marketing site.
Really like your landing page. However what is your conversion rate is a visitor comes into your site via another page? How long do they stick around for? Do they visit any other pages?
I know it's hard to keep up with peculiarities of every language. But thetaboard sounds like "tit board" in portuguese. Probably not a big problem, but probably doesn't help much either.
Your current niche "PM tools for software industry" has crazy competition including all big guys - Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP - basically any big company that comes to mind has something to offer, smaller guys (37 signals, Atlassian, Assembla, etc). You also get a hundred various project management apps on Google marketplace (140 products) + around 50 on SourceForge.net + plenty of desktop/shareware tools.
You should really think about better niche or sub-niche or start as a plugin/component to existing systems (if you are really into PM).
It is still very good to see some sort of innovation in this seemingly old and very conservative field.
Good luck with your project, I am sure you will figure it out.
Yeah, I went into why I am writing it in a blog post last week (http://www.thetaboard.com/blog/why-im-making-thetaboard?r=37...). Most of the apps you mentioned force you in a very specific workflow. I'd like to build something that is process agnostic. I hope it's also application agnostic so that you could use it to manage software dev or a big catering job.
ThetaBoard is awesome, your landing page just sucks. It's a GREAT todo list. You just to change the UI a bit so it's not in the way in certain places. And then from there on start adding social features like dragging and dropping tasks (don't call them stories, that's just weird) into team mates' panels. That would be AWESOME.
I've been working on a todo list / team manager like that too Tasck.com, But thousands of dollars, 3 developers, and 4 years later my stupid fucking todo list is still incomplete. I learned a lot because I made a lot of mistakes. It was my very first web project / startup-to-be. I'm not pouring any more time and money into it until I can find a local developer within driving distance who's willing to help me out with it.
I think you could use a few of the features from my todo list. I invested so much time and money into it I don't want to just ignore it. I'd rather see it merged or tied into someone elses solution or something. I'm insanely busy this and next and next month but click on my username and send me an email.
Several comments here suggest your landing page sucks, but the real way to boost conversions from blog readers would be to move your call to action up the page. You have the try a demo button at the bottom of your sidebar. Test making that the first thing in the sidebar. You may want to test having it both first and last.
You GA blog post (as well as this one) is a classic example of content marketing, where you lead with something highly useful to the reader so that they become aware your product even exists.
BTW, I love the personal kanban structure of your todo listing.
Thanks for sharing. We are really interesting in this sort of stuff.
We are finding that: i) site driven to specific posts very rarely results in visitors checking out other parts of our blog. ii) twitter drives close to zero traffic.
This may mean that content has to really excite, menu/side links have to drag visitor attention, and the right people need to be tweeting/sharing the message.
We remember reading that some visitors may spend less than 5 seconds on a site before moving on. StumbleUpon visitors especially just given the nature of the platform.
27 comments
[ 533 ms ] story [ 1403 ms ] threadI'd like to see what amount of new users this blog post has generated.
It's always encouraging to see how much traffic a post on HN can generate for a new startup.
- The page does not say what the product does, I don't try demos just for the sake of trying demos;
- Nevertheless, I thought I should check out the demo before giving some feedback... and got an error.
Hope this helps.
To be honest I'm not focusing on driving sign ups right now because the project is more a MVProject and not a MVProduct. I actually recommend Trello to people. I'm working on the collaborative portion of the site and refining the UX/UI a bit. When I release a v1.0 I'll definitely improve the copy like you recommend.
Cheers...
Then I looked at thetaboard.com, and I knew immediately that I wasn't.
If thetaboard is a project management product, I have no idea how it does that. Compared to Basecamp, which is what I use now, and basecamp's current homepage lets me know that it has todos, documents, projects, blah blah blah. For what its worth, I don't think that basecamp's current landing page is as effective as past pages have been, but it also has a lot more brand recognition and trust than a new startup.
Compared to the thetaboard landing page, and there are literally zero details as to how it makes team collaboration better. Also, its <title> attribute says "Simple Team Collaboration [...] and Product Managment[sic]", but all I can see is "Simple Team Collaboration", which to me at least, is a different product than Product Management.
There's a screenshot that looks like Outlook, and is too small to see. It appears to work on an iPad, but we don't use iPads, so that's moot. Does it work on Android? Is that really a Samsung tablet?
Again though, the main thing is that there aren't any details. There's nothing on the home page that sells me, or even tries to even the least little bit.
In short, it disheartens me when you say that your biggest mistake is not leveraging Twitter. That's not it at all. Your biggest mistake is in having worthless copy on the home page. Your signup ratio is 3/14,000, .0002. If that were even just half of a percent, you'd have a ton more signups.
Having people tweet links to a page that isn't converting means that if every person in the world saw and clicked your link, you still wouldn't have the registration or conversion of the average message board.
My goal is to create something that is a process/system agnostic tool that people can use for any number of uses. That sort of flexibility makes it difficult to succinctly express what the product is. When I get it to that point--I'll reread this comment and fix some of the issues you've brought up.
(I have a day job so development is slow going).
Might I recommend that you attack the above poster's criticism as your very next tasks rather than doing more product development or blogging about what you've learned?
It sounds like you have a product that you can demo and talk about. Stop working on developing it. Switch to marketing/sales. Create a landing page experience that will get conversions.
When I get through this push of development I'm going to launch the premium plans and focus on the points @bmelton and others have brought up (copy, conversion, landing pages, etc.)
It would make things a lot easier (for me) if Fog Creek was charging for Trello. They are hiring developers for software they are giving away while I'm working on ThetaBoard on nights and weekends and hoping to charge... I think when I'm done there will be enough differences with Trello and I'll be able to get some paying clients on board.
Ignore them. There are plenty of people who will gladly pay for things that benefit them. If you can build something that kills pain or makes money, you'll get paid.
Build a great product that solves problems, rock at support, continually provide new value, profit.
I was really surprised how many people went on to explore exactly what Planscope is. About 20% of people didn't bounce, and ended up checking out the product tour. I netted about 300 new accounts (which was about a 50% jump in user accounts!)
I think the winning formula for a good product blog is: Educate your audience (this is the reason they visited in the first place), have a very clear call-to-action at the bottom of the post ("Are you a freelancer looking to..."), and have an easy outlet to view the rest of your marketing site.
You should really think about better niche or sub-niche or start as a plugin/component to existing systems (if you are really into PM).
It is still very good to see some sort of innovation in this seemingly old and very conservative field.
Good luck with your project, I am sure you will figure it out.
Tons of competition tho, yeah.
I've been working on a todo list / team manager like that too Tasck.com, But thousands of dollars, 3 developers, and 4 years later my stupid fucking todo list is still incomplete. I learned a lot because I made a lot of mistakes. It was my very first web project / startup-to-be. I'm not pouring any more time and money into it until I can find a local developer within driving distance who's willing to help me out with it.
I think you could use a few of the features from my todo list. I invested so much time and money into it I don't want to just ignore it. I'd rather see it merged or tied into someone elses solution or something. I'm insanely busy this and next and next month but click on my username and send me an email.
You GA blog post (as well as this one) is a classic example of content marketing, where you lead with something highly useful to the reader so that they become aware your product even exists.
BTW, I love the personal kanban structure of your todo listing.
We are finding that: i) site driven to specific posts very rarely results in visitors checking out other parts of our blog. ii) twitter drives close to zero traffic.
This may mean that content has to really excite, menu/side links have to drag visitor attention, and the right people need to be tweeting/sharing the message.
We remember reading that some visitors may spend less than 5 seconds on a site before moving on. StumbleUpon visitors especially just given the nature of the platform.