Show HN: WhatsNew – Show your users new features since their last visit | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: WhatsNew – Show your users new features since their last visit

whatsnew.io

58 pointsgnufied22 comments

When I come to a website and see a pop-up box in the middle, I reflexively delete it without reading it. Is it possible to have the feed go directly in the main web page instead?

Hey cabalamat! We will be rolling out our next version in a couple of days which will have different options for showing the updates. One of them will be to embed an inline widget in your page to show the updates. That can be put up on the main page.

Nice idea. One piece of feedback though: I'd rather see a list of actual features, rather than a list of blog posts.

In this implementation, I'd have to click through to each individual blog post to figure out everything that's changed.

From what I can tell, this is just a script that presents whatever RSS feed you throw at it (for a fee, no less! ;)

So presumably the solution would be to point it to something like "rssfeed.php?category=newfeatures" or some such custom concoction.

Cool idea and it looks very nice. After scrolling for a bit the first things I wanted to know were "How much?", which you have covered, and "Can I see a demo site?", which seems to be missing.

It would also be cool to have options other than an immediate modal, like a what's new link with a red circle containing the number of new features. Click the link and then show the modal.

I like how Meetup does it: http://www.meetup.com/whats_new/?offset=80

Submitted 9 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5773895

That was by a user, not the team itself. Now they are ready to launch.

Love the idea. But I prefer to implement it myself to tailor it myself using some implemented functionalities.

But thank you!

Do you have anything specific in mind that you find missing? We just launched and we are hungry for feedback to improve.

Also, we have a JS API that lets you customize quite a bit - https://whatsnew.io/docs. Thanks!

You should be able to query for just the data with the JS API. Not everybody wants to use an overlay. Maybe I want to show it inside a box in my layout. Or maybe provide different preset templates for displaying the data.

We have plans to open up the API more and provide callbacks to handle these requirements

For me, it would be a great help if I just got array of message objects. One function call for new features and and thats it.

Can you just release a library? (even a paid one if you feel the need)

This is silly to have as a service.

Probably a typo: the large plan on the pricing page shows "10,00,000", was it supposed to be "1,000,000" or "10,000,000"

Thanks for pointing this out. It was supposed to be 1,000,000. We have fixed it now.

I get an "undefined is not an object" TypeError in Safari on OSX.

This a great idea! I just wonder how users will react.

I had same reaction about users. If they see it a lot, it sure looks like ad. I prefer tooltips for introducing users to new features.

Thanks for checking it out. We show updates only if there is something new since you last visited so you will not see the widget on every visit. Also, if you don't want to see it anymore, you can unsubscribe in one click.

Also with analytics you can see how your users are reacting. If you guys have any other ideas, we would love to chat more.

Personally, if I see a pop-up then I close the page.

"Download our mobile app."

"Give us feedback."

"What's new."

No. If I want to know what's knew, I'll click a "What's new?" link. Put it at the top of the page and make it obvious, but not so obvious that it feels like it wants to move in with me.

Hey coherentpony! This is a direction we want to pursue. We will be adding this very soon (and let you pick between a few styles). We have some big ideas and this is just our MVP. Thanks!

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