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Actually, one of my first actions was to click the demo button in the top nav, then I got the page with the big blue button that said "Start Demo," and at this

by jonahx 12y ago

Actually, one of my first actions was to click the demo button in the top nav, then I got the page with the big blue button that said "Start Demo," and at this point I was already a little skeptical because typically I expect "Demo" in a web app to take me right into some app I'm about to use. But I clicked the big blue button and then saw this page: https://demo.sandstorm.io/ https://demo.sandstorm.io/, which felt like an admin panel that was going to take some effort to understand -- at this point I gave up. This is, of course, totally unfair to you, and was based on assumptions that don't apply to your product, but there you have it. It's even worse, because I'm a developer and with just a little effort could have understood everything, but since it wasn't immediately obvious, I made the assumption that the business model itself was vague, or didn't apply to me, as is often the case with SaaS products. Pretty standard Steve Krugg "Don't Make Me Think" stuff, but accurate to my experience when I'm just casually checking something out.

kentonv 12y ago
Thanks, that's great feedback. Yeah, I guess we need some way to show that clicking "install apps" will be easy and fast.
- jonahx 12y ago
  To offer a couple of hopefully useful ideas, you could: 1. Have the demo take you directly to the page where you choose an app, rather than to the admin page which manages your installed apps. 2. Focus even more on the "like installing phone apps but for websites" metaphor. I think that metaphor works very well as soon as you understand it, and elicits a "Yeah... why don't web apps work like that?" epiphany. 3. Continuing 2., you might consider focusing the home page advertising on the most popular apps themselves (more than you do currently), rather than the conceptual idea that you can install your own apps (which is harder to grok, or at least to differentiate from heroku et al). Ie, "Run your own X in 10 seconds", where X is something I already know and think is cool, might be easier to understand, and more motivating. Just as most users think of their phones as indistinguishable from the specific apps they love and use every day, rather than as an abstract platform for running those apps.

by jonahx 12y ago

kentonv 12y ago

Thanks, that's great feedback. Yeah, I guess we need some way to show that clicking "install apps" will be easy and fast.

jonahx 12y ago
To offer a couple of hopefully useful ideas, you could: 1. Have the demo take you directly to the page where you choose an app, rather than to the admin page which manages your installed apps. 2. Focus even more on the "like installing phone apps but for websites" metaphor. I think that metaphor works very well as soon as you understand it, and elicits a "Yeah... why don't web apps work like that?" epiphany. 3. Continuing 2., you might consider focusing the home page advertising on the most popular apps themselves (more than you do currently), rather than the conceptual idea that you can install your own apps (which is harder to grok, or at least to differentiate from heroku et al). Ie, "Run your own X in 10 seconds", where X is something I already know and think is cool, might be easier to understand, and more motivating. Just as most users think of their phones as indistinguishable from the specific apps they love and use every day, rather than as an abstract platform for running those apps.