Optimizations 🤖
Or why sometimes it's good to slow down...
You can listen it, up here:
⏳ Current status
👥 Active users: 1381
📝 New Developments: No new development, there is OPTIMIZATION ✅
I think you can already see that there is a pretty serious work ethic within the team. So sometimes we spin harder than an F1 car’s engine.
However, there are side effects of this high revving. Because we are moving so fast, we can ship a lot of new features to you.
But this sometimes leads us to choose quick fixes and not always the most optimal way to go. That's why sometimes 1 or 2 bugs slip into the machinery.
💡 Side note: The guys at Gokart are really tough and I'm terrible at it for some reason... I just don't get it. Anyway Latifi, I might beat him, but that's another topic.
So sometimes we have to stop and look around and think about how we would win more:
If there were more new features that would make the machine a little more rickety
Or if we stop and fully optimize the existing features
We didn't even need to pull out the Decision Matrix because it was such an obvious decision. Plus, we placed a poll on Instagram (such an upvote system) and optimization won by a high level.
💭 The decision has been made
There is nothing left to do but to finally dig deep into the code and optimize the processes! Okay, but what processes are we talking about?
I'll outline them one by one:
📖 Bookmarking
Because there are many times when someone is reading a book in the App and accidentally quits or closes it and by the time, they step back they don't know where they were. Yes, I know... very annoying, it happened to me too! 😤
🎧 Same for listening
We want to make it, so that if someone quits and steps back, they can continue from the same place. And the 2nd level of this would be that you start listening to something in the Web App, but let's say you start somewhere and finish it in the App on your phone! Now that would be pretty cool! 😎
🌙 Focus mode
This would simply mean that when you're in the App, notifications would be muted and nothing could distract you while you're learning. You can do this within the App, but Level 0 is going to be to make an Apple Shortcut for it and show you how to set it up yourself! 🚫
🌞Daily Motivation Widget
Okay this is new. 😅 But we need something fun too! We've had so many requests for this, so we just had to include it. Actually, it means that you could put the Daily Motivation section as a Widget on your Home Screen and receive motivational texts throughout the day! 🍀
And a lot of other things, but I'll explain them in another email, because it would be very long...
📚 Lesson learned: new is not always better and you need to exclude your own insights to focus on your users. It's vitally important that something is not only nice and fancy, but also works well, in every way. On average, it takes 3 failures for a user to leave your product, so we're constantly working to make sure you DON'T reach that magic number!
Yes, optimization isn't the most FUN stunt, but it has one of the highest ROI.
📖 What have I just read?
I'm reading Rory Sutherland's Alchemy in its entirety on my Kindle e-book reader. Rory Sutherland writes about the blending of behavioral psychology and marketing, which is mind-blowingly interesting. I'm realizing more and more that to be a really good Marketer, I need to know not advertising, but Evolutionary Psychology and Behavioral Science. Because that's the basis of everything, to quote from the King Lacis Podcast:
"Every machine has a wiring diagram of how it works, in humans it's psychology, if you understand that, you'll be able to deal with people."
Alchemy is coming soon to BookBase!
I'm trying to get through David Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising in abridged form. David Ogilvy is one of the longest established marketers, a real old biker. Fun Fact Rory Sutherland worked for his company for a very long time. This book is about marketing back in the 1900s, TV, radio and all that. I want to read it just in case there are 1 or 2 golden nuggets of information in there that I could still apply now. So far, it's a bit dry unfortunately, so I'm finding it hard to get through.
🎧 What have I listened to now?
True, this week was more about podcast making than listening, but I did make time for those this week:
BookBase this week focused on Al Ries' book "Positioning". Because in one of the podcasts back in the day, it was specifically highlighted that this is the foundation of branding and if you understand this book, you won't have any problems later on.
A software called RevenueCat has a pretty good podcast and there was a show on there just now where they were talking to a manager from the Branch about building referral systems. I was listening to it now during training, they said one or two good things in it, but it was more of a confirmation that we're really moving in the right direction with these guys, because most of the things that were mentioned, we've already built into the App in the past.
✍🏼 Top quote
"If you can't get along where you are, you might as well not get along anywhere else, because the really big problems are not in our luggage, but in our hearts and minds."