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Ask HN: How do you tell your users about your new features?

7 points by abuiles ↗ HN
I've been working recently in my first startup and one thing we keep wondering is a good way to let our users know about our new features, until now we are doing it through blog posts (which based on analytics people seems not to be reading), emailing our users (but we don't want to become spammers) and also putting visual changes in the UI so people noticed them.

So, I would like to ask you, which tricks do you use to get your users to know about your product's new features and get them to start using them?

*My cofounder and I are engineers, so customer development/marketing is pretty much a whole new world for us :)

9 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 15.1 ms ] thread
ericcoleman
What about showing each user who logins a summary of what's new? It could be in a modal, or could just be a brief area with a link at the top of the page, perhaps pointing to your blog post?

(Also an engineer)

NameNickHN
I second this. We publish our blog posts on our web app's homepage. Judging from the feedback we receive, people actually read those.
abuiles
We have been considering this, I'll give it a try for our next release, thanks!
taigeair
It depends on the size of the update. From my experience in social gaming and consumer web, we use tooltips and login modals greetings for most changes. For more significant ones, we use blog posts (kind of like doing a press release) and then email all users to let them know. As long as you have a unsubscribe link, you're not going to be considered a spammer especially if they signed up for your service. The benefit of engaging with users (increasing conversions and building community) outweighs the cost of annoying your fringe users (churn).

This is an interesting experiment on emailing users. http://searchengineland.com/extreme-email-experiment-how-muc...

abuiles
thanks! I'd definitely consider this, actually when we sent email we saw a good click/opens rate. We'll experiment more with modals too.
onlyup
What about the way Facebook does it? Short message stating the new feature and a basic tour of what to click.
roseleur
I'd use a lightly blinking notice box at the top of your screen, just below the header. Let it disappear when not clicked within 5 seconds or so. Give a teaser, with a link to take the tour around new features. Only do that when you have several that are worth the time to learn about. BTW - I'm from a marketing/sales background and just getting into IT/Comp.Sc. maybe we can learn from eachother? My email is in my profile.
abuiles
Sounds good, your email is not there though :(.
roseleur
Sorry, my mistake. Just added it.