Minimal viable onboarding

The past few weeks have been pretty busy. I’ve started to onboard the very first users to Branch and seen a lot of feedback explicitly and implicitly coming in. On top of that, a WordPress update partly broke WP Pusher, my other product, which took some time away from Branch development last week.

In addition to that I’ve moved out of my flat, put everything into storage and started preparing for a 2 month trip to the US.

What did the Maker do #

Even though it’s been pretty stressful, having real users try the app is the fun part. I’ve let in a tight group of users (~20) and has tried to be as responsive as possible fixing and adding features based on feedback. I keep thinking I might have started this process a little bit too soon, but then again the feedback has been invaluable. This is where the learning really begins to happen. The #1 thing I have realized is that I have the absolute core features pretty much working. That’s what I thought of as my MVP. However, I’m starting to realize that I also need an MVP for onboarding. It was pretty obvious that most users were pretty lost when they first got access to Branch, because I hadn’t built much onboarding. Without onboarding, an MVP is useless because no one gets to actually use it.

I implemented a few small tweaks which immediately helped. This included some strategic alerts and a screencast:

However, this is far from enough and this coming week onboarding remains my main priority. I think of the above tweaks as step 0. Next step is what I think of as the MVP. I’ve realized stickiness is pretty important and I have some pretty good ideas around it I hope to work on soon.

What did the Manager do #

Mostly talking to users. I’ve also had a lot of administrative work to do, incorporating new company for Branch.

Finally, I was featured in the Post Status newsletter last week: Read the interview here.

Want to try Branch? #

If you want to give Branch a spin, send me an email or sign up on the website.