Ask HN: How do I get users to engage? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I get users to engage?

4 pointsDrei01Matt14 comments

I launched my app cronasaservice.com recently to provide a simple API and UI for online Cron jobs. Many people have entered their email address for a free account but very few have ever logged in.

How do I engage users and get them to log in? They are obviously interested otherwise they wouldn't enter their email!

I have tried introduction emails and contacting people directly but no luck.

View on HN

I'm not convinced that "cron as a service" (standalone) is a valuable enough proposition at all.

I would guess if people are signing up, and you're not able to convert them there's a disconnect between your understanding of what that means, and theirs. (That said, you have a demo video (gif?) on the homepage, so I imagine that would help.) From the video it's not clear what you did, you posted a cron expression and a URL, and got back a load of null data in the response, and then the gif went dead at the next prompt, I waited a while to see if anything came up, but it was stuck at a blinking `$ |` prompt.

Full disclosure, I'm working on something http://www.harrow.io, which is a more general CI/CD service, part of which might mean running things on a schedule, we have alpha clients doing just that; however our case is a bit stronger, since we already understand their environments, and have keys and secrets in place to actually do useful work on their infrastructure, and send emails, and integrate with cc menu if things are going wrong.

Thanks. I think people are interested in the idea but the lack of scope currently puts people off.

This Problem do occur in Various fields where people just sign up according to their need but do not log in for miscellanious factors. If you want to engage people for real then be calm and work hard and so the first step would be popularising your app. Popularising: inspite you having your own website, you have to work to spread information about your app in varuous social networking sites +(plus) you have to make an short video with appropriate deacription that reflects your work and publish it to video hosting sites. At first if you don't have ads, then it's your choice to find out the free ones for beginning to list your site aming search engine or try some modification to your work so that dearch engines will list you as much as top. Or you can try some uniqueness with your app or website, for ex: have a unique name for your app or website that no one ever had which could! Bring your work top to the list when they search out. Good luck!

The general term for what you're describing is onboarding. There's all sorts of different approaches but the highest value - quickest thing to do is just sit down with a developer who might want to use your product and watch them try to sign up and use it.

I entered my email in your site and it says: "Thanks! We'll be in touch soon."

This is also really confusing given the "Get started in 29 seconds" thing - which almost seems like I should cut and paste into a commandline? But it doesn't have any directions? Is there an API key?

Hope that helps.

Thanks, I think this might be one of the missing links. The system emails you an API key straight after sign up but it really should be on the next screen I guess.

I also need to make the animation clearer.

FYI - email showed up ~2 hours after I submitted (way, way too long).

I've always been a fan of the metric: "Time to Awesome" - how long does it take for a new user to go from cold start to whatever awesomeness exists for your app.

I chose a 2 hour delay to give the effect of processing information (cashpoint machine effect) and to act as a reminder. I guess it compounds the issue that the thank you page does nothing though. Great feedback thanks!

1) Find out where people who run cron jobs hang out

2) Figure out what they care about

3) Engage them to figure out what problems they have

4) Figure out if/how your app helps them solve the problems they have and show them how you can make their lives better

5) Repeat steps 1-4 indefinitely.

#1 is hard, because it's so abstract. There's no specific problem domain. Suggestion: find a specific use case and build a customized, paid solution for that with an easy to understand value proposition. What problem are you trying to solve? Cron jobs are just an implementation.

Perhaps take a look at onboarding examples on http://useronboard.com

Thanks. A very useful resource.

Are you sure that running cron jobs as a service is big enough market? I can hardly imagine any use cases.

This is a side project. I am not after a massive market or big profits. I had a problem that I have solved and would like to share, learning more about running such a service in the process.

blog

Reply on news.ycombinator.com