6 ms·
I think your app suffers from the same problem my startup app has, which is the empty canvas problem. So basically your app seems to allude to a lot of power an
by mqmouse 16y ago
I think your app suffers from the same problem my startup app has, which is the empty canvas problem. So basically your app seems to allude to a lot of power and functionality, which is paradoxically a little intimidating for a new user. Basically, where do I start? You have a lot of choices in the "what do to next" section.
What happens a lot of the time is the user says:
Wow! what a cool application! Seems powerful! I'll deal with this when I can properly think about it!
...and then promptly never visits your site again.
Somebody from Skype told me that they had the same problem and their solution was to funnel all users into a 5 step program. I would suggest that you "onboard" your users by forcing them into a N-Step workflow where at the end of it, it doesn't look like an empty canvas but a starting point to contribute more.
Edit: Like step 1 should be "Invite your SO". Encourage them to collaborate and plan together :)
- lftl 16y agoAlso, it may help if you fill in the canvas a bit for them with filler info so that they can see what it could look like once they fill things in.
- SilianRail 16y agoGood point. Dropbox does this very well.
- sr3d 16y agohi MqMouse, thanks for the feedback. Do you mind sharing your startup? I'd love to take a look and see how you solves this empty canvas problem. I was thinking about building a wizard to force people into populating their settings, but on the other hand, I want to let users use Marrily at their own pace, instead of stopping them at a lengthy sign up/setup process. I ended up with just one screen to let users create a new default event at the beginning. I guess it's about balancing the flow so that users can feel that they are engaging and not being forced to do certain things to get started. I wonder if there's title for a "web application director", or a "web site editor" like in film to direct how the app would feel like, not just the UI is working, but the whole site can work cohesively and have the right the flow to it. A UX person maybe?
- mqmouse 16y agoWell I planned on posting a rate my startup question this weekend since we're just starting a hackathon tomorrow to squash some bugs, but the way we think we're going is a online interactive walkthrough of the site when a user first logs on to give them an idea of what to do next. We tried to use amberjack but it seemed a little limiting so instead we wrote our own utility using jquery and expose. I would post a link to the library but I'm on my stupid iPad right now so just search for jquery and expose and you'll find the library we use.