Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Software | Hacker News Reader

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Software

blog.idonethis.com

23 pointsrguzman13 comments

I just read about this the other day in The Slow Web [1] by Jack Cheng:

"iDoneThis is a part of the slow web movement. After you email us, your calendar is not updated instantaneously. But rest up, and you’ll find an updated calendar when you wake."

I like that it can be used as the opposite of a todo list. Instead of a list telling you what to do, you tell it what you've done.

1. http://blog.jackcheng.com/post/25160553986/the-slow-web

Something that the FAQ doesn't answer, but probably should: If for some reason my company decides we no longer want to use this service, is there any way to export all of my company's data in a usable format?

Yes, there is an export option for every account. [Speaking as a user and not representative of iDoneThis.]

Good point that we should mention this in the FAQ. You can export in plaintext and PDF easily.

(And I know you can export your personal entries as CSV but I'm not actually 100% certain about companies -- but you definitely should be able to and it's something we'd help you with.)

It's absolutely our belief that the data is yours.

Thanks to gsmaverick to answering as well.

I'd suggest adding this piece of (important) info in the FAQ in https://idonethis.com/accounts/register/, as an additional sentence to the answer for Do I have to sign a long term contact?

Congrats on your product. Looks great!

I love the idea of a morning email that reminds you of the things that were accomplished the day before. I've read a few articles recently about the importance of the first activity of the day. This positive reinforcement strikes me as empowering; do that and then follow up with accomplishing a discrete task and you'll feel productive for the rest of the day.

Definitely. Many of our members tell us that they read their morning email on their phones in bed, and it gives them a little boost to go out into the world and accomplish great things.

My habits with iDoneThis are a little inverted compared to this. The last thing I do each day is reply to my "what did you do today?" email (seriously the last thing - I get into bed, reply to that email, and then sleep). I find the thought of wanting to have something worth putting in that email drives me to do more throughout the day, it's a great motivational tool.

The other big advantage I have is that at the end of the week if I'm feeling like I haven't really achieved anything, I can look back through my calendar and get a nice overview of what I did - it's a good pick-me-up for the perceived-lack-of-productivity blues.

That's awesome to hear.

I suspect you're using the "personal" iDoneThis. With the business iDoneThis, we have the same evening email, and in the morning, we summarize yours and your team's achievements in an email digest. It hopefully has the effect that you describe of looking through your calendar, except that it shows up in your inbox on a daily basis.

You should make it possible to sign up without credit card. It's a big barrier to cross, as the potential customer not only has to leave his comfortable chair or sofa to find his cc details, but also has to remember to unsubscribe if the service is uninteresting. I personally pass on trying out any service that has this requirement (unless it looks extremely interesting right off the bat, which is quite seldom).

Look at it the other way: requiring a credit card up-front gets you less unqualified tyre-kickers so the people who do sign up are probably far more motivated by the pain you're solving, and so are much more likely to become a paying customer. Ideally, after reading your sales site your potential customers should be begging you to take their credit card details ^

It's a choice between a higher throughput into the funnel, or a higher conversion rate. Neither is necessarily wrong.

^ My one problem with the upfront credit card system is the <$1 test transaction which is usually applied and then instantly refunded. This makes the anti-fraud systems at my bank go into meltdown and puts a block on my credit card until they can confirm the transaction with me.

That's an interesting point, and it makes me wonder if our decline rate is higher than average because of it.

Yours and the OP's points were well-made. I think it's ultimately empirical which works best for your product. We haven't quite gotten around to testing that, so for the time being, we're sticking with upfront cc because it's simpler.

In the realm of web-apps though, unqualified tyre-kickers i.e. people who just try the demo, have an almost non-existing cost (a bit of traffic and a few system transactions).

So I can't see why you would sacrifice more potential customers (higher funnel throughput) for an artificially higher conversion rate.

I mean the conversion rate is just a metric. A conversion rate of 5% of 1000 is better than 10% of 400. The goal must surely be, at least as long as the cost of serving a tyre-kicker is almost nothing, to get as many to try as possible.

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