#79 - From Early Adopters to Mainstream

#79

                            December 7, 2020

                #79 - From Early Adopters to Mainstream

                        (Potentially) Breaking up with your early adopters, fixing the new recommendations page, and big, scary tasks still outstanding for launch!

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#79 | 7 December 2020

Breaking up with early adopters

...said the text I received from Lauren, one of our earliest, keenest beta testers, after we had, yet again, changed the way that recommendations worked on the site.

And although I was confident that the development was a vast improvement, I still found myself affected by this.

I was sad that Lauren didn't love it and a little (only a little!) frustrated that she couldn't see that it was better, especially after a longer discussion.

And maybe my confidence did start to falter a little...

On-demand recommendations based on your preferences and whatever you select in the filter menu — how can anyone not like that?! 

But I was also a little disappointed in myself for getting caught up in it.

When you're building a new product, sometimes you need to move away from fulfilling all of the needs and wants of your early adopters in order to effectively serve a wider market.

You can't keep everyone happy, and the people most likely to be let down are those that have used the product for the longest, played a huge part in shaping the foundations, and are now used to how things are.

While you definitely shouldn't ignore those who've been fundamental in helping shape your product, it's important to spot cases where the feedback might not be in the best interests of something that's trying to cater to a more mainstream market.

Last week

Luckily, that wasn't the beginning of the end of my customer feedback relationship with Lauren. 😆

Turns out there were a series of infrastructure issues and bugs in the code that meant the feature wasn't working well at all. 😅

The recommendations you see now should be very similar to the ones you were getting last week. Some have said they're even better!

We also had the last Editor call of 2020!

It's been fantastic having a small group of heavily invested users who know the ins and outs of the product and essentially serve as a monthly feedback focus group.

From strangers who wanted to try out a beta book app to a new circle of friends! 🥰

Given the discussion at the top of this email, I'm surprised, but also so incredibly delighted and thankful, that they've stuck with me and The StoryGraph for so long!

This week

There are two big, scary things left on the list for launch: editions and a redesign.

Looks like we need to prioritise those as a matter of urgency! 👀

What I'm reading right now

I've been hearing wonderful things about The Brown Sisters. I'm finally meeting Chloe!

Have a great week,

Nadia

P.S. Know somebody 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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