kolinfarrel
New member
It's been six weeks since we launched Client Tree.
Client Tree is an app that helps freelancers find clients by word of mouth. It reminds you to stay in touch with people and help them in meaningful ways.
Like any business, getting an app off the ground means keeping at least three balls in the air. You have to build the product, promote it and get feedback from the people who are using it, all at the same time. There are always too many most-important things to do.
To keep it simple, at least on the product side of things, we only track one metric.
Retention
This chart shows you the number of people who have continued to use the app after they first signed up. So 100% of the people used the app in the week they signed up. Only 25% came back to use it again after the first week.
That number has been steady for the last 5 weeks. This is a good sign. This means that a quarter of the people who signed up are still using the app a month later.
Our most-most-important priority is to make sure this number stays steady through week 6 and beyond.
If we can improve it, that would be nice.
Here are some of the things we are doing to try and improve retention:
If the two previous solutions don't improve the situation in the next week then we are going to look at ways to make adding people to the system better. These are the ideas we have so far:
If you have any can think of other things we could do, any suggestions will be much appreciated.
If you've had a similar problem building your side project, how did you deal with it?
If you are interested in Client Tree please sign up to the waiting list, or if you know a freelancer and you think they'd be interested please send them to https://clienttree.io.
Client Tree is an app that helps freelancers find clients by word of mouth. It reminds you to stay in touch with people and help them in meaningful ways.
Like any business, getting an app off the ground means keeping at least three balls in the air. You have to build the product, promote it and get feedback from the people who are using it, all at the same time. There are always too many most-important things to do.
To keep it simple, at least on the product side of things, we only track one metric.
Retention
This chart shows you the number of people who have continued to use the app after they first signed up. So 100% of the people used the app in the week they signed up. Only 25% came back to use it again after the first week.
That number has been steady for the last 5 weeks. This is a good sign. This means that a quarter of the people who signed up are still using the app a month later.
Our most-most-important priority is to make sure this number stays steady through week 6 and beyond.
If we can improve it, that would be nice.
Here are some of the things we are doing to try and improve retention:
- The most salient feedback we got from the first round of testers was that the point of the app wasn't entirely clear. The app exists to help you find clients. To bring this point home we added a hustle meter to the system. Here is a super quick walkthrough of what a hustle meter does: https://share.vidyard.com/watch/bJSUwdhMBByKgZiv9HRyCa
- We set up a series of emails that go out to people when they first start using the app. Rather than sending every email to every person, we only send out the email you need based on where you get stuck. We split our onboarding process into six steps. Every three days it checks to see which steps you have completed, then it sends out an email to introduce you to the next step. If you get through all six steps on your own then you don't get any emails. If you don't make any progress despite getting an email, we won't send you the same email again. Instead, we will reach out, find out what the problem is and see if we can help.
- Based on the data so far it is clear that people stop using the app when they have to start adding people to the system (step 4 below).
If the two previous solutions don't improve the situation in the next week then we are going to look at ways to make adding people to the system better. These are the ideas we have so far:
- We could AB test changes in the UI around this step
- We can AB test a better onboarding email for this onboarding step.
- We can make adding people to the system easier by building an integration to Google contacts (or some other social media platform).
If you have any can think of other things we could do, any suggestions will be much appreciated.
If you've had a similar problem building your side project, how did you deal with it?
If you are interested in Client Tree please sign up to the waiting list, or if you know a freelancer and you think they'd be interested please send them to https://clienttree.io.