"Your site just doesn't work."

"The recommendations are utter rubbish."

"I thought you were meant to be different. Guess I thought wrong."

Amidst all of the lovely messages each week, we do get a handful of ones like these.

My immediate inclination is to reach out, to understand where the sentiment is coming from, to troubleshoot, to convince. To defend.

But after a couple of back-and-forths — or no response at all — it's often the same realisation: this person doesn't care and isn't interested in working through anything. 

The energy spent talking to these people is energy I should instead put into improving the product and the business. I need to get better at spotting these cases early and moving on.

After all, even after we fix everything, there'll still be people who just don't like The StoryGraph. The site won't be for them. It won't fit their needs.

And that's okay! If you're building something great, it can't be great for absolutely everybody.

Any examples in your day-to-day where you invest energy in places that aren't worth it?
 

 

Because of an obscure iOS/Safari bug, I had to switch out the software we're using to generate the charts.

This, combined with me updating some of the chart colours, meant that I unexpectedly upgraded the look and feel of the whole of the stats section, delighting many of our users! 🤩
 

I'm in the middle of Round 2 of interviewing people who use The StoryGraph every day.

Analysing the feedback from this round will help to finalise priorities for launch!

Will report back with my findings next week. 🤓
 

While trying to stay calm, optimistic, and happy amidst all of the work I have to do, perhaps picking up Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life alongside Our Women on the Ground wasn't the best idea. 😅
 

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. If you know a friend who's an avid reader or would enjoy following along with this journey, please do forward this email to them! Thank you. :-)
 

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