The Story Behind LeadSurveys – Part 1 WPCP: 134
The Story Behind LeadSurveys is my first official “Conversations with Kim” episode.
These are going to be a little different than my normal interviews (and obviously won’t be solo shows). It’s a more organic conversation about a topic as opposed to interviewing someone about their business.
Kim: [00:00:25] Hey what’s up everybody. Welcome to the official first conversations with Kim WordPress Chick podcast episode. I don’t know how I’m going to word this or or flow with it so bear with me. This is sort of a new test but this really came about specifically because of this project I’m doing and having some conversations with friends where I’m like I just want to have a little bit more organic flow to to some of the things that I want to talk about that a relative obviously to online marketing to our businesses whether it’s mindset, product development, you know Course creation content whatever. So let me know what you guys think. I would love some feedback today though. We’re going to do a little deep dive with something that I’m working on and today I have Gordan Orlic. Gordan you rock. Thanks for being here.
Gordan: [00:01:13] You’re welcome. A pleasure to be here.
Kim: [00:01:16] All right. So for everybody listening if you’ve not heard this I had Gordon on the show and it was mid-year last year going into summer and it was of course summer summer summer ish. OK. So Gordon runs what factory owners say factory Ltd dotcom and they are software developers and I’m going to link to that episode. But what I want to do is we’re going to fast forward. Gordon and I he had he had asked me they do a lot of white labeling of WordPress plugins and software and had said oh do you have any ideas and I had no idea we were kind of working on playing with it and I just couldn’t get super excited it was a WordPress plugin so. But Gordon has been ridiculously patient with me and I don’t know Gordon. Have you seen the difference between my excitement for lead surveys and the first project.
Gordan: [00:02:04] Oh definitely. Definitely yeah. It didn’t sound like a bad project. I still don’t think it’s a bad project but this one is better.
Kim: [00:02:14] I agree and you know it’s funny because I had a couple of people that I talked to about the first project were like when is it coming in. Like well. It’s on the backburner for now. So this came about because of a massive frustration and I should probably tell everybody we’re talking about LeadSurveys.io. I know which is a web app. And so Gordon and I you know we stayed in touch you know about the project and then one day I was like. So what about a webapp. So before we get into lead surveys and everything that’s going on behind it because this has been a massive learning curve for me and you know for everybody listening if you’ve ever thought about software development you’re going to want to take notes or I’ll put the transcripts in the post because I feel like I’ve got like I’m in kindergarten. Like writing to Gordon. Well what about this and how do we do this and it’s kind of a rabbit hole but it’s been awesome.
Kim: [00:03:12] So Gordon prior to this had you guys done webapps I’m so sorry for forgetting that but had you guys some web apps before.
Gordan: [00:03:21] We only did one. which was a what’s called a semi web app because it was still basically a repressed plugin but the part of it was plucked out in order to keep the code safe. So you still needed the WordPress plugin but I’d say some of the calculations were done on a centralized server. In order for it to be hidden from you know praying eyes.So some sort of a mix between a WordPress plugin and a SaaS.
Kim: [00:03:54] Well and how many plugins?
Kim: [00:03:57] I always tell people I’m like 30 plus. And I don’t know how many white label things you guys have done.
Gordan: [00:04:01] No it’s its boards border lining 1000.
Kim: [00:04:05] Oh my lord.
Gordan: [00:04:07] No no it’s seriously huge amount. I get e-mails from customers from a few years ago. And I seriously do not remember doing those projects until I you know look at the thread in G-mail.
Kim: [00:04:25] O.K.And so for everybody listening can you explain because I think you’re going to do it way more justice. Obviously everybody listening knows what a WordPress plugin is. This is a SaaS product so service as a soft software as a service. All right but well well. Well intro Kim. So but can you explain more. Because I’ve had you know is it funny that I was talking to my sister she said well what is a web app. And obviously people listening to the show are probably aware but can you give a better explanation of what it is.
Gordan: [00:04:57] Well first and foremost I think that people tend to ask isn’t the same thing a plugin and a sense. Or can one become another in 95 percent of the cases it can.
Gordan: [00:05:12] So it’s just a matter of choosing what fits a particular service better whether it’s a plugin or a SaaS. So it’s just the technical thing for to choose what he wants to do. Now if somebody chooses to do a SaaS what does that mean.
Gordan: [00:05:30] It means that they are basically offloading a lot of code. A lot of processing a lot of things that take up server resources onto their servers instead of using your server to do certain things. Now another huge part of this whole thing is there’s this analogy that I like to use. Let’s say that every day your friend drives you to work in their car. No this is great because the sucker is paying for gas and you’re cruising in the back seat. You know you’re listening to some musing music and he’s the one pissed off because he has to drive. So all is good and well for you. You basically have a private driver. But on the other hand if he wants to listen to Nickelback you’re listening to Nickelback because it’s his car. If he decides to make it two hour pit stop you’re making it two hour pit stop. So it’s the same thing with writing a plugin. You’re driving in another person’s car and the WordPress foundation is driving this car. So it’s all fun and games because they’re paying for the gas. You’re in the backseat half of the things are already sold for you. You have this great platform that people know and love. But on the other hand when they decide to pivot when they decide to do something nobody is asking you anything. And this can be little things. I don’t know. They change a color and you don’t like it. You have to shut up. But it can also be big things. Basically they can decide to shut down WordPress one day.
Gordan: [00:07:20] And what can you do. Nothing. Because all of these years you relied on them heavily to run your business. So you got a great fast start but you have to realize that you’re fully dependent on something that you don’t control. On the other hand if you have SaaS nobody can quote unquote blackmail you in such way because you are independent of other services and you are providing a service to other people. That is mostly independent of other platforms. Therefore And one thing that’s bluntly obvious if you make your WordPress plugin you’re covering 27 percent off the market because they say that WordPress covers 27 percent of the web. If you’re doing a sense you’re covering 100 percent so that save four times the fold. So it’s more money more people because you’re not depending on WordPress and this doesn’t go just for WordPress he can be Joomla or basically any other system anything else that you’re piggybacking on. Again great for a start you’re rapidly growing you’re making money. But one day they may decide to include your plugin in the core and make it free. So all of a sudden you’re out of business as everything in life you know. It’s a compromise.
Kim: [00:08:53] Perfect. I love the car analogy it’s like you know you’re stuck. And that was it. You know everybody listening to this who’s running on WordPress obviously has been there when you go to install a plug in and it doesn’t work with something else. And the stories that I had shared about dipping my toes into plug in development not me developing it but it was just like the support that was required out of the gate with questions about conflicts and this not working in this environment. It’s like there are so many things that you have to do to get right. And so and for me where I was excited about a SaaS product was because there there is which we’re going to talk to you guys about pricing and stuff because I’ve I’ve learned a ton about the actual cost of servers and how this works in this space. But you also then run into the mentality with WordPress plugins and people. It blows my mind when people object to having to renew a license for even a hundred bucks annually. And so you know you’ve got that piece and then you have the SaaS space where people don’t hesitate to spend hundreds of dollars a month a month on a marketing tool that they can use and measure. And so I just thought. I still love WordPress. But out of that that frustration of people wanting everything to be free I thought I would I would rather do this.
Gordan: [00:10:23] yeah I mean things have changed especially in the last year or two. After a few big players step stepped onto the WordPress turf. But there is a certain legacy of WordPress is free. I’m not giving you a bloody dime. I’m not getting into the whole it’s free as in free beer conversation, because it’s all it’ll take hours but sooner or later hopefully sooner people will realize that service isn’t plugins don’t magically materialize out of thin air.
Gordan: [00:11:07] And if not for anything else I have to eat. You know they don’t have to be meat but at least bread. So yeah somebody some hours have been put into this. You don’t have to value my work. This is just fine. I don’t have anything against that but it is just recognize that something was invested into it. I may be the stupidest person alive but just acknowledge that I was sitting down for 10 hours and you know plucking on my keyboard that’s all. So if you acknowledge that in a few years maybe I’ll get into a stage when you realize that somebody had to buy that keyboard. And then after a few years you may give me some money. The problem is that people have to unlearn things. They have to learn that it’s free. While it’s SaaS some how somebody managed to get the thing right from the ground up and tell them yeah it’s free for 14 days or it’s free for this limited tier or limited kind of thing so that you can try it out afterwards. Please pay us something and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a dollar or a hundred. It’s the act of paying.
Gordan: [00:12:33] And you know typing in your paypal address or a credit card that’s a boundary that many people are not willing to cross when it comes to WordPress plugins is because they feel that there are 40000 plugins in the repository. Now a theme for a completely different episode. But at least at least at least three quarters of those plugins are either obsolete or semi not functioning. So it’s no longer 40000 it’s maybe 10000.
Kim: [00:13:12] Yeah. Well you know it and I love your point to relearning things because that’s exactly it. And I think you see a lot of people in the plugin space are shifting models they’re totally shifting models and they may have a free version because they realize that’s a way to get customers in. But the second you install the free version you’re your WordPress dashboard is marketing left and right all over to upgrade. And I don’t begrudge them that at all. But OK so let’s let’s I want to tell everybody what lead surveys is and where it came from. I was frustrated because I found this survey on a site and it was simple and I want to talk a little bit as I as I share this I’m going to share my frustration with quizzes. Even though I’m going to test and deploy a quiz it always came down to me having to come up with a quiz right. And in this space when it comes to blogging and marketing and Internet marketing it’s like all right well how do I come up with something that is entertaining because you need to be able to grab people so it’s got to have quality copy right and so entertaining but yet gives me the data and information I need to keep somebody engaged and then I get the name in the email. It just it was a roadblock for me I’ve tried it multiple times. So I came across this opt-in on the site and it was this super simple survey. It was the first one. It was like download you know there’s a lead magnet attached to it.
Kim: [00:14:41] And the first window was like you know what is your what how would you classify yourself. Blogger marketer or podcaster whatever right. Two questions and it had steps. And then the next one was asking for data about your following and your list size. Social platforms, list size and I forget the third one and that it was an opt and I was done that was like that was beautiful because I could. My brain started spinning last. Oh my gosh. You’re capturing this data. You’re able to segment your subscribers so this whole survey thing is not new but it was a way to keep people engaged because I don’t know about you and tell me Gordan like I think even though people are trained now to optin for stuff there’s a little bit of a blindness that happens with with optins.
Kim: [00:15:33] Do you think it’s not not like bannerr blindness but you know I mean.
Gordan: [00:15:37] It’s getting to the point of banner blindness. It’s it’s difficult to open any site in any niche without seeing some kind of content blocking or semi blocking optin thing. Whether it’s a pre-roll or a pop up or basically anything you have to click the close button or you know try to go around it or just give them your email.
Gordan: [00:16:11] And I think it’s gotten to a point where you’re in this tunnelvision mode and you just see two fields and you assumed that the first one is name and the second one is e-mail and your browser is pre-filing. And you’re just hitting the button that’s below it. You’re not reading you’re maybe even not scanning. So you know just get me through this. I don’t know what’s going on. I just want to read this or down with the PDF for whatever here’s my email here’s my name. Let’s go on. And what happens. OK. Aside from the fact that readers are spending some time on futile things.
Gordan: [00:16:56] You get this e-mail list where quantity is far more exaggerated than quality and then your open rate is low. Then you get into the promotion tab in G-mail then your open rate is even lower and basically mean no click throughs no selling no nothing. So
Gordan: [00:17:22] you have I don’t know ten thousand people on the list and you don’t know anything about them. They’re not going to open an e-mail they’re not willing to click an e-mail nothing’s happening. So I think that although e-mail is still a crucial marketing tool that having a good list will soon be far far far more important than having a huge list because I mean I think that you can get a ten thousand people on your list. Not a problem. But the question is Who are those people and are they actually worth anything to you.
Kim: [00:18:02] Totally. If you want to go you can do ads swaps right. There’s solo ads there’s all kinds of ways that you can build a huge list very quickly. But again it’s like first of all I have to pay for my subscribers so I don’t want you know a crap list and I just think gone are the days of not having a relationship with your audience. I mean you need to talk to them and communicate with them. You can’t just I don’t know. Those BS days are gone. And so when it comes to segmenting people and tagging. I’m going to put on my little swami hat & crystal ball here because I do see the direction of things going to they’re going to tell me what the correct terminology is because I’m making up shit as I go.
Kim: [00:18:48] But there’s sort of like smart tech not smart segmenting in a way and meaning I’m.
Gordan: [00:18:54] Properly targeting not showing you know I don’t know female socks to a 10 year old male. He’s not going to buy that.
Kim: [00:19:04] Right. And so based and everybody it’s funny I was actually having this conversation with my aunt and uncle this weekend and they I was giving him an update on LeadSurveys and because a lot of people get like it feels really creepy like Big Brother is watching you right when you can do retargeting and stuff and when you understand the technology it’s like it’s just really smart. So but beyond the retargeting piece is it’s it’s that it’s that ability to say you were here last week and this is what you answered. Therefore this is what I’m going to show you. And that’s a very surface level generic guys and I’m not making promises about the software but it’s being able to really talk to people that are visiting your site and are interested in your products and services who have already subscribed and doing it in a way that keeps the conversation flowing.
Kim: [00:19:54] I guess like right so you can essentially pick up the conversation from the last time they visited as opposed to like pretending they’re a brand new visitor you have no relationship with them again.
Gordan: [00:20:04] You know making micro content adjustments or suggestions based on previous behavior is definitely the way to go because the information overload is definitely something that’s it’s here it’s been here for years. That’s why we no longer read anything and we have attention spans of a dead horse.
Kim: [00:20:30] Or even hold on…
Kim: [00:20:31] Like even with the reading piece like. And I think it’s taking the I’m going to say average consumer web visitor a little bit longer to catch up but this is why you see more white space on a page you know less crazy ads and all that kind of stuff is because like I love reading on Medium. I get a daily digest from the Web site Medium of things that I subscribe to because it’s literally just content. And which is sort of this catch 22 because I’m a marketer and I like seeing new stuff too. But I agree with you like this this scanning and stuff. And if it’s the I don’t know if it’s being pushed at people they stop reading it they just stop reading. Sorry I don’t know where I was going with that.
Gordan: [00:21:15] Things need to be dialed down so less is more. We used to have like these layouts on most on news sites that would have at least two sidebars left and right and then content in the middle. You can read this. You can’t focus on the content in the middle if you have an animated flash ad to your left and to your right. The eyes just you know wonder about. So that’s why Medium has only one column for the content because you’re there for the content and that doesn’t mean that you can have social sharing buttons and everything that you need. It just means that when you’re focusing on content you are focusing on content and that also doesn’t mean that we won’t have sites the day five column lay out we will but I feel that for me at least, I would like to go with one call him there for dead or at least a few other people that want the same thing as me.
Kim: [00:22:27] Well and I think those like that multi-column tend to be you know content aggregation sites at this point and or news sites and you know it’s um it’s funny as you were saying that I was thinking Can you imagine how obnoxious it would be to read a book that had ads. You know it’s like it’s not the way our brains work but so with this let me tell everybody I played around with, I was just on this hellbent mission like view the page source is trying to figure out you know found some different plugins that could do this survey thing. Then I tried to hack it with I’m going to do a gravity form and put it in a Thrive lead box. But it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to work. So I was like ha I got to talk to Gordon, and so we’re going to jump into some of the pieces involved you guys, because this has just been like I said a massive learning curve for me and will continue to be. But I want to just do a little bullet Gordon of the pieces and you can jump in with where we want to start. So I want to talk about the technical the development piece of this. We’ll talk about the branding the marketing the pricing because all of that has been interesting and pull in if you can for the technical the whole Google material design that you sent me on a massive consistent rabbit hole down.
Kim: [00:23:51] And then obviously deploying a SaaS product so probably makes sense to start with the technical piece of this if you can just give a little insight into you know how this starts and where we go.
Gordan: [00:24:04] Well basically what we’re trying to achieve is that having more users makes us happier instead of frustrated because things are not working. If we get back to the WordPress plugins a sec if you have ten users on on your WordPress plug in or you have a thousand users. The only thing that you may feel here is more support because something’s not working. But it is if we assume that everything is working and that nobody is sending any support request it’s not costing you more or less to have 10 users instead of a thousand or a million is the same thing for you you know they there they are hosting their sites and therefore they are hosting the instance of the plugin that they have.
Gordan: [00:24:58] It has nothing to do with you. You most probably don’t even have a list of sites that are using your plugin. On the other hand when you’re running a SaaS the difference between having 10 users and a million users is staggering because you have to be able to bear a load of all of these people and then specifically in our case because of the technicalities of the things that we are doing we also have to bear the load of all of their websites because as each of their pages load it loads the survey as well to some degree regardless of whether it shows or not. So this whole preparation is us making sure that in a month or two or a year that we don’t have a dead and we want to have the same app that’s working and looking great and supporting as many users as needed. You can’t really do that on a duct tape piece of code with a $5 per month hosting.
Kim: [00:26:07] Yeah that piece of it because when we started looking at this and any Again anybody listening which everybody listening. If you’ve ever looked at whether it’s a product, physical product, whether it’s a service whether it’s software you know you do this sort of backwards engineering. And so we were looking at you know if it was a good week or two but it was like daily back and forth of look at this look at this and we were sharing different platforms that have a similar type of tiered pricing that have calls to the server and I don’t know if that’s a correct terminology, but it was fascinating because so much of the way these things are set up and structured. It’s it’s how I want to say this. It almost assumes the user is stupid and you don’t know better so you’re just going to run with. “OK well you know five hundred views” it’s like well what the hell does that mean to the user. Or you know these are the way things are structured. It’s not clear to the user what they’re paying for but yet the users like well I don’t I don’t really know. So I’m just going to run with it so you know that piece of it and understanding and I think there… Let me ask you this Gordan. Like where do you think the responsibility lies with say for us with LeadSurveys and acts like sharing this like is it too much information to the user or like how do you explain to the user what they’re paying for without getting into you know, it like technical jargon that they don’t really care about.
Gordan: [00:27:46] Yeah.
Gordan: [00:27:47] Well if we are losing money that may seem great to the user but what it will do in a day or a month is that we will be either shutting down the service or upping the prices by 10 times, because there’s only so much time that we can lose money. So that would be us not taking into account the physical and financial barriers of providing such a service. Then we would just sell to the user you know do whatever we want. It’s the same thing if you run CNN.com or if you run you know a local school blog. No it’s not the same. The other spectrum the other the opposite side of the spectrum would be for us to go into these horrible details of explaining what things are. I mean nobody wants to read that. Most people know they even can’t read it. So specifically these page views as I already mentioned whenever. So you put a little piece of javascript on your site in order to run pop ups or surveys or any similar service. So each time the page loads the piece of javascript loads as well. Again it has nothing to do with the fact whether the survey loads or not. Things have to be prepared for the survey to be able to load them. So if you have 10000 page loads or views or call them whatever one per day that means that we have to serve that piece of javascript 10000 times a day.
Gordan: [00:29:36] Now I think it’s blandly obvious that it’s not the same thing for us to do that hundred times a day or 100 million times a day or if we have a thousand users that number gets multiplied by a thousand. So we have to take account that into the pricing and in some way let people know if you’re a big player or you have to pay more. I wanted to stay away from the term page views or visits because it’s quite hard to define. And I feel that people would be worried in terms of oh my god they only paid for 500 visits or if I get a traffic spike or something like that so I like to view it as something in terms of how big is your site. Is it just a small blog.
Gordan: [00:30:31] Is it a little bit bigger blog or are you running a serious site. You know, how many leads do you think that you will get in a month.
Gordan: [00:30:40] Because if you have a hundred visits per month it’s obvious you can get 10000 leads per month. There are just not enough people. But if you think that you’re going to get a million leads per month that means that you have a high traffic site. So looking at this two leads as the quantifier I feel that it’s a lot less technical. It’s something that people can relate to more without going into specifics and it gives us a chance to calculate things maybe not as precise as we would be able if we would to told you you’ll get X views per month but it’s a little bit more user friendly. And obviously our support will be on hand to help anybody who overpaid or underpaid. But the bottom line is this is a crucial factor for anybody running this kind of a SaaS. That little piece of javascript will be included in all of the pages that have the ability to show the survey. Therefore we need to be able to ballpark the number of requests we have to do per day because we have to pay host our hosting based on that. And it’s not like five bucks. It’s not a hundred bucks. It’s talking about thousands of dollars per month. And at the end we have to you know eat the bread if not meat.
Gordan: [00:32:23] So awesome answer. And at the end of the day the responsibility. It’s our responsibility to make sure that the the way that. And again I don’t want to go into like some crazy long explanation. But but coming from the user perspective like I’ve visited those sites and I was like “What does this mean?” How many page views and the terminology was not consistent across any of these different things so it really like part of our goal when we started talking about this from day one was simplicity because so many so many tools tried to be everything to everybody and they go into such explanations like some of the features are redundant that they start listing. But I think that they take into consideration that the users are not going to know the difference or whatever.
Gordan: [00:33:08] No they just want to have a nice price table.
Kim: [00:33:11] Right. And so again that brings me sort of to, since we’re still on this technical piece. We’ll talk about Kim’s idea of version zero versus reality because you know as we started doing this Gordan was like will “give me a wishlist” and then it’s like this is not version zero. So we’re starting like again I don’t know how you can explain this the best way Gordon but what what to you is.
Gordan: [00:33:38] The idea is to launch in a finite amount of time.
Kim: [00:33:41] OK. So the goal is to get the product to market. I get that. So but from approaching approaching this and I’m just going to give the example and I know you’re probably tired of hearing it as is my audience that I watched as a customer the development of CoSchedule which is very different than anything we’re doing. But yet the way that they started with this and then it’s been a few years right where they iterate and add more value and add more features because that’s the goal I think of any SaaS product it’s like you’re not going to launch the perfect end product from day one. So how do you approach a version zero Besides like at a deadline date like you know I’m saying like how do you decide OK this is the bare minimum that we can launch with that provides value.
Gordan: [00:34:26] I don’t think there’s a correct answer to that. If we can get back to the car selling somebody a car without a steering wheel is not a car selling somebody a car without a stereo that works. Yeah. I mean maybe you think everybody has a stereo. But then again a lot of people really don’t. And you can you know sing while they’re driving. But in a month you get some money you buy a stereo you put it in. But if you don’t have a steering wheel that’s not a car that’s something waiting to be a car.
Gordan: [00:35:07] No we’re determining let’s call it a minimum viable product. Having this state of mind that you want to have everything is very problematic because everything today is not the same as everything tomorrow.
Kim: [00:35:25] And that’s that’s a tweet.
Kim: [00:35:27] Sorry go ahead.
Gordan: [00:35:29] And while you’re building you know the time is not asking you if it can run or not it’s running and the clock is ticking. So it’s a continuous struggle to be on top of things while while you’re building. And if you have more features then you should you’re always one step back because as you finish those features became obsolete. So no you’re again struggling to catch up and add everything new. And by the time you’re done again time has passed. So you’re you’re not going to be able to chase that rabbit. The goal is to have something that solves a particular problem that relieves people of some pain and to have it now, while they actually have that problem. Because in a month or six or a year that probably won’t really exist. You know things are really moving fast especially you know in the niche that we’re in in a year. You know who remembers what happened in a year thousand products get born and die. Yeah. So being quick is in my opinion far more important than having quote unquote everything. And the other problem with everything trying to satisfy everybody tends to leads to satisfying nobody. Yeah. Because if you’re aiming for the newbies if simplicity is the key then obviously you can have 78 options for tuning buttons, because first of all the UI is going to be completely different. That’s a lot of options. And secondly those people don’t know what paddings and margins are. Those are seriously new terms for them. So those two things don’t go hand to hand.
Gordan: [00:37:41] And they obviously expect expected to hold their hand while they’re doing things. Meaning that you have to have videos and tutorials and blah blah blah. So what now you’re basically writing a book on CSS explaining how to do buttons. While the core of your services I don’t know something that helps them sell a house. No they just want to list the freaking house. The button can be blue or red because that’s your market that there’s no need to adjust the buttons just make the button as best as possible and give them that one option. But you know you’re trying to satisfy everybody. And in the end you’re not satisfying anybody.
Kim: [00:38:22] OK. Before I go on first of all I think we’re going to have to do a two parter with this. I’m like looking at all my bullets here and I’m like yeah there’s there’s this is a two parter, not that we’re cutting off now. But to that point so I want to back up a little bit because one of the goals with this and I love the fact that we’re totally on the same page Gordan is that simplicity is key to me and I think that you know, I was having a conversation with a friend and I was at the end of the day you shouldn’t have to hire somebody to use the tools you’re paying for unless you choose to, if that’s if that’s something you want to do then great. But a piece of software that I don’t care if it costs you 40 bucks to 200 bucks a month or more. You should be able to go in to use it and deploy something you know the goal is like in this case it’s how do we capture some data or start segmenting subscribers. And one, we both it has to look good, and but two it’s like if you give too many people options they get they get way too much in their head. And I love this because we had a conversation I think this will probably play more into the marketing piece of it. But you know there are certain features that sometimes you have to provide just because people think they need them.
Kim: [00:39:39] Now on the flip side of that I think that the goal is that we a solid enough relationship and provide content and training at it not within the app right but just actually have a relationship with our audience and I have to say, I was surprised how many different tools we looked at that don’t really do that. Right.
Kim: [00:40:00] They’re just a software company in essence.
Gordan: [00:40:02] No and they give you your own. Here’s our thing you know do what it whatever you want.
Kim: [00:40:09] Yeah.
Kim: [00:40:10] And that that doesn’t help people stay. You know stay, first of all inside your app the goal is to get people using it. It doesn’t do us any good if you know you log in the day you sign up or you try it and you get stuck and then you never come back and you know after three months of a recurring payment you’re like oh I’m not using this. That’s not what we’re. We don’t want to be that at all. And so from the simplicity standpoint because again there’s all kinds of bells and whistles but there is this responsibility on our end of saying here’s why we’re giving you templates and not a builder for version zero. Right?
Gordan: [00:40:48] Yeah and something being simple it’s actually much harder to build simple things that work than to build complicated things because simplicity means that you have the knowledge and the data to decide what matters and what doesn’t matter. I think a superb example of that was the first iPhone or maybe the first few iPhones.
Gordan: [00:41:16] Obviously you could use it to phone somebody you can use it to text and you had a lot of apps. But when you went into the options it wasn’t an ever ending and never ending river of things to go through. The options were very limited. You know anybody with any knowledge of technology back in the day was able to configure that because basically the initial settings were such that you didn’t have to configure anything. Now the reason why I said the first iPhone or iPhones is the late the latest iPhone or to be more precise the latest iOS, I don’t really see it as such anymore. Because when you go into the options you can scroll for like five minutes. They actually have the feature of searching the options whenever you have a search option for anything you’ve failed. You know it’s OK to have a search box for icons because you have 10000 of them. But if you have a search box to find an option it means that you just have too many. And that’s when you start losing customers because you’re trying to appeal to everybody or you’re adding options that like two people told you that this option is crucial you’ve got to have it. And then in the next iteration you add that option without actually thinking you know “should we do this” because you’re thinking well it’s not going to hurt anybody. It is going to hurt a lot of people because you’ll be doing this a lot and all of a sudden your options page is not one screen high it’s 10 screens high.
Gordan: [00:42:59] So you need to pivot around the whole concept of how we show options. Therefore simple is much harder to do. But in the end it’s more rewarding for the user because he only has things that he needs and some people get angry you know who are you to tell me why I don’t need a builder. I want a builder because I want a 16 grid layout. Well for those people, our product isn’t for you. No disrespect. Get some other plugin service or whatever.
Gordan: [00:43:33] You will be much happier because we’re not giving a builder that can do 8 or 16 or 24 columns we just believe that you know we’re not a good fit and we feel that our customers want something that’s far more easier to use to customize. And in the end to get that survey up and running in 30 seconds. If you have the questions ready I guarantee you’ll have a survey running 30 seconds. So it’s not a chore it’s next next next. It’s good for me. I’m ready to go. Obviously writing questions takes a bit longer but just the technicality of getting a new survey up and running. I feel it has to be done in under a minute. If we give you a 16 grade builder that’s not going to be a five minute job for you. Therefore lead surveys is not for you.
Kim: [00:44:34] Well in there. That that totally talks to letting them think they’re getting what they want but giving them what they need and with that sounds I don’t mean to be manipulative, but I do like the preqaulifying if you want all these things that aren’t going to actually help you build a quality list of segmented subscribers that you can then continue the conversation with. And we’re not for you and I love that point. And I think too often software products try to be everything to everybody and it’s just it’s not going to work. And again that’s were to me the responsibility comes back of just having this conversation with our customers having the conversation with this is why you do this. And so to your point of having the questions right so we’ll have some survey some templates for questions as well. But how much more exciting is it to be like wow I’ve got this new this new survey up and you can go in and change the questions because you just get to log in your dashboard right. It’s not like having to go in and redo a plug in or whatever. But basically testing a headline in a question is easier. But you’ve gotten it up and that’s that brings me back to my challenge with quizzes. Is it you can deploy a simple survey. And again this is not about you know some 10 page in-depth thorough survey that’s only going to take your customers 10 minutes to complete. It’s like no no no no I want to build a relationship with you.
Kim: [00:45:58] I want to find a little bit more and then make sure that I’m providing value to you based on how you answer the questions. And so these these options and this version 0 you know for what it’s worth it just having these conversations with you Gordan has totally made me step back and come back to basics. This is a quick story. I got an email this weekend from somebody who had downloaded I had I’ve done this in a one page marketing plan and it’s 10 things. And then I did an accompanying audio and the whole premise of it is go back to the basics, get the fundamentals working you know get a solid user base. And to my point like we’re like I’ve got clean up on my side it’s like don’t go doing a bunch of bells and whistles get everything running tight and lean. But this woman she e-mailed me and said thank you for this because I got so caught up in all these other tactics of Facebook ads and webinars and doing this and I’m feel like I’m going blind from reading newsletters and and I need to come back to creating content and having a conversation with my customers. And so it’s that same thing. And it was simply through the ability to communicate because I had little be nine years this March when I started my business had I put the energy and effort into the fundamentals content, copy, email marketing. You know even five years ago that I do today life would look very different. No regrets but that’s part of what LeadSurveys. You know it’s like we want to be that we want to help them do it right. So it’s not just here’s a solution.
Kim: [00:47:35] Here’s a technical solution. So from that perspective you know what are can we give like a little bit of a teaser because like I said I think we’re going to have to get into the branding and the voice and all that. And another episode. But can we talk about some of the features that we’re going to be launching version zero with.
Gordan: [00:47:55] Yeah, sure. Just a quick sentence before and I just want to ensure customers that if there’s a place in our web where you only have a blue button and you would also like a red button Please note that the decision to only have a blue one didn’t came out of laziness. We actually decided only to get a blue one. Now you may be pissed. However you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Why you’re thinking that you’re paying us to code something and to host it and to give you support. But you’re also paying for years and decades of cumulative knowledge. So somebody that has a bit more experience in this field decided that the button needs to be blue. I know that you feel that it should be read but please give us a chance and let us do our job. And actually you’re paying us to do this to think for you so that you don’t have to because we never split that or we read a book or we had a psych and believe us the buttons should be blue. I mean again if this is something you can’t live with and you need a red and an orange button there are other services out there out there that will give that to you. But knowing that you’re not only paying for the software itself, you’re paying for the know how behind it. And for the years of making bad decisions so that you don’t have to, because if somebody else ran their head through the wall while there was no need for you to do the same. Now back to the question OK.
Kim: [00:49:44] I’m in I have to you know because the question was the features because if we want to talk about the sort of it more. But this whole Google material design. So I want people and you know you’re if you can give a better explanation of that pressure than I can. But what I will tell everybody listening and hopefully based on my site and if you you know go to Gordan’s site that you see we both have a desire for this to be clean and current when it comes to design. And so this is not about you know I don’t want to say a dated because there’s still a lot of pop ups and boxes and stuff out there that are starting to look dated even though they’re current technology because design trends and what not change so much. So the goal is that our templates are going to be something that everybody can use because it’s going to look clean it’s going to look super current and fresh. So can you just explain Google material design a smidge before we get into features.
Gordan: [00:50:42] Yeah sure. So Google caters to basically everybody. I think the toddlers Google these days and senior citizens as well, and they are serving things to you on your desktop and on your mobile and on your tablets. So you know it’s a plethora of different interfaces. What they did is they wrote. They’re not. There are simple rules but there are a lot of rules in saying how should an interface look in order for it not to be fugly, but not to be just bells and whistles. One of the great examples of that is their buttons are flat with a little bit of shadow. But if you click them you’ll get this little animation this tactile feedback that you actually did click it. So if they if there wasn’t this effect of clicking you would never know if the computer understood your command or not. But on the other hand it’s not overwhelming. You know there’s no sound playing or anything like that. It’s just this micro interaction that told you that you did click. So these set of rules for the material design explain how things should look. And if anybody of you has an Android phone basically you’re looking at Google material design all day long. And it transcends mobiles it goes into desktop it goes into everything. Now it’s not a revolution it’s an evolution of building better user experiences through standardized interfaces so that when you’re jumping through various Google interfaces you always know how a login or a logout button looks you always know what happens when you click on it.
Gordan: [00:52:46] I don’t know input field or a drop down field. This doesn’t mean that this is the best thing since sliced bread. It just means that by standardizing you will be losing less time on learning new things that are basically not new. It’s just pardon my French some designer jerking off and trying things that he thinks that are cool but are basically not cool because it takes you five minutes to find a logout button. So by having this Google material design I say workbook or road that leads you to somewhere. We are standardizing things.
Gordan: [00:53:30] And once you open the LeadSurveys everything will feel like you’re at home. You won’t need to search for things it’ll look familiar. And we just saved you while maybe 10 seconds but maybe we saved you five minutes but you should really feel like at home because you have already seen this interface on numerous other devices. For those of you who are running businesses and thinking Wow this shit is not for me because I want my things to be branded. That doesn’t mean that it’s not branded. You still have a place for your logo. You still have a place for your colors. But for instance the color scheme has to go by some rules. You can have 76 different colors which is a primary one and then choose a palette based on that. So you can definitely brand it can to look you but at the same time follow certain directions that make users feel like they’re at home and that they’re know what they’re doing.
Kim: [00:54:35] That’s a beautiful explanation. And thank you because it helped me. And at the same time it’s it’s obviously because it’s Google. It’s going to work across devices and windows and browsers and all of those things so you know that’s another an added bonus to that. OK I’ll let you run with the features and then I’ll wrap up and we’re going to have to do a part two or we’ll talk about the branding and the marketing and all that stuff.
Gordan: [00:55:01] Yeah. OK so the features in a nutshell. Within a minute. You can have your survey up and running. That has all of your standard types of questions from single select to multi-select to click on an image to select something later on.
Gordan: [00:55:22] You can even ask them to upload a file. You can separate your questions into multiple. Well we call them steps in order not to overwhelm users so you put like three maybe four questions on one step. Then the second step or step and they’re done. You are able to collect their emails. That’s your well, the crucial piece of data but you can’t really look at things only to e-mail. That’s why we put a lot of emphasize on other pieces of data for instance what kind of behaviors can we see your users making on a site. Is this the first time they came to you or the fifth time everything is recorded. But there’s nothing for you to configure. You can only you should read the data and draw conclusions out of it. Once you gather that data and you have it in your interface you can also push it to other services such as MailChimp or aweber or any other auto responder in order to send e-mails out. However again this is not the only thing that we want you to do or that you should do. Our goal here is to give you the tools to learn more about your customers and to show them things that they really want to see. For instance you will be able to show a survey after they scroll a certain amount through your content because if somebody is going to leave your site after reading the title there’s really no point in showing him a survey. You’re not doing anything you’re just frustrating.
Gordan: [00:57:11] But if he spent five minutes of reading a long article. And you know he’s at 75 percent. This is a good user for you, show him a survey or perhaps you want to show it when they reached the end of the page not a problem. We also give the option to trigger surveys on the exit intent.
Gordan: [00:57:36] A lot of people have found great success with that. If you see that your users like that please use it. As Kim already mentioned there’s not going to be a drag and drop builder but we guarantee you that you will be able to match the style of the survey to your site. You will be able to brand it. It will look like yours.
Gordan: [00:58:01] It will not look like somebody you plucked out of some random design and just glued onto your site. We know that that doesn’t look good and nobody wants to fill those surveys so it will look good.
Gordan: [00:58:14] Obviously completely mobile optimized and it follows the latest Google guidelines on pop ups. So your site will not be downgraded or banned on Google because you’re having Surveys on them. For version 0 what else is important. Pretty stat’s that’s important.
Kim: [00:58:39] Well I think so.
Kim: [00:58:41] I was just going to say I was going to say when we were talking about the in terms of e-mail because you know this is not to replace an auto responder. Your other sponsor should pick up where LeadSurveys leaves off. So we’ll start. And I’m not we’re not going to quote anything but we’ll start with some native integrations and then they’ll be added over time. But our goal with this also. And I hope I’m not I’m getting this right that the goal is not to require you to go pay for Zappier. In addition you know obviously there will be as Zappier connection at a certain point for first services that we’re not we don’t have a native integration for. But you know truly our goal with this is to help you collect quality subscribers that you can segment so feature wise. I think you covered most of that.
Gordan: [00:59:32] For version 0 right thing that’s it. And obviously after day after your users finishes survey you can get them a PDF you can thank them you can do all of the regular stuff that you’re used to. So we are not cutting down things that you really need, but we are cutting all things that are fluff that are just feeding people’s ego because they think they have to have something or something like that.
Kim: [01:00:05] Exactly. And to go along with everything is we want to teach you how to do this. I want to do case studies I want to see how it’s working. And you know because that’s half the fun of having a relationship with your audience is that they probably you know you guys will come up with stuff that wasn’t a template we had thought of or wasn’t a feature or whatever. And I mean even just in terms of questions for your survey,so it’s going to be a journey that we go on together.
Kim: [01:00:35] That’s that’s the ultimate goal.
Gordan: [01:00:37] We will be listening to our customers no doubt about it. But if one person requests a certain feature unfortunately that will probably not get added because that would mean that they’re doing custom development for every single user.
Gordan: [01:00:58] In order for us to add a feature it has to fit into this edition that we have and it can’t be a bother to all other users. So definitely if you have ideas please do send them over. They’re not getting ignored. But you know we need some critical mass of users demanding something in order for us to implement.
Kim: [01:01:29] Okay I think that’s going to wrap up part 1. Gordan that was pretty in-depth I think I have to tell you.
Gordan: [01:01:35] Time flies.
Gordan: [01:01:36] It totally does. And we will have so part two and I’ll publish these back to back. In terms of you know one episode to the next and so we’ll have some dates and links for you guys for webinar are for a Facebook group. Obviously they’ll to sign up. You can you know sign up at lead surveys I to get early invite because we we will limit the launch in terms of founders and get that it’ll close and to tweak and scarcity whatever you want to call it we want to make sure the platform is working correctly. But there’s not going to be a huge window between founders getting in and it being open to the public. So any final notes Gordon are you good.
Gordan: [01:02:16] No I think I’m good. Besides we have episode number two so we can ramble on.
Gordan: [01:02:21] All right. So everybody thanks as always for listening. This is again kind of fun that conversations with Kim that we get to the Cayman Gordan show for a couple of episodes so you know please reach out whether through the site. Leave comments on this post and just feedback feedback feedback we really want it guys as always. Thanks so much for listening.
