Building an app? Everyone’s got advice.

It’s like, ‘Hey, why doesn’t your fitness app have a feature to order piazza?’ Because, Todd, it’s a fitness app.

How to Build Consumer Apps

• Why Read: 

  • This article provides actionable, battle-tested insights from an experienced founder on building successful consumer products, covering key elements like testing, distribution, targeting, and maintaining perspective.

• Featuring:

  • Nikita Bier(@nikitabier), Founder at Gasappteam

• Link: 

  • “How to Build Consumer Apps”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

1. The Importance of a Reproducible Testing Process:

   • "A reproducible testing process is more valuable than any one idea. Innovate here first."

   • "Nothing slows down teams more than inconclusive tests. If you're walking away from tests & saying 'maybe we needed more downloads' or 'people needed more friends'—then your biggest priority should be fixing your testing tactics so you can decide to pivot with conviction."

2. Focusing on Distribution and Growth Potential:

   • "You should be filtering your product ideas by whether you have a distribution channel and if they can grow."

   • "Habit formation requires recurring organic exposure on other networks. Said another way: after people install your app, they need to see your content elsewhere to remind them that your app exists (e.g., Instagram photos on Facebook, TikTok videos on Instagram)."

3. Targeting Specific Audiences and Life Inflection Points:

   • "The only way to push through the noise of the App Store is to be unapologetic about marketing to your first users. If your first users are Berkeley students, go ahead & call the app Berkeley Memes. It's hard enough to get the flywheel spinning without being obnoxiously relevant."

   • "Great products take off by targeting a specific life inflection point, when the urgency to solve a problem is most acute."

   • "Audiences that exhibit obsessive behavior tend to be the best beachhead for new products—such as gamers, teens, and hobbyists. You need this obsessive engagement at the beginning to get the flywheel spinning."

4. Avoiding Common Pitfalls:

   • "If your product requires a 'partnership', run."

   • "If it's been 6 months and you still haven't tested on an external audience yet, you're probably in for a rude awakening."

   • "If your product offends someone, it's probably one version away from something special."

5. Maintaining Perspective and Humility:

   • "Every blockbuster product is an outlier, breaks the rules and may have been the result of luck or timing. So all you can do is get to know your user better than anyone else and trust your instincts."

   • "Very few people in this industry have have seen the inflection point of product-market fit first hand. Even for the founders who have seen it, take their advice with caution—including all the suggestions in this list."

How to Measure the Value of “Helpful” Content

Why Read: 

• This article provides a detailed, insider's perspective on how to build a truly valuable, brand-enhancing content strategy.

Featuring:

• Daniel Bean (@danielwbean) , Content Lead at Mixpanel

Link: 

• “Beyond metrics: How Notion measures the value of its ‘helpful’ content”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Here are the main points of the article with extensive quotes in the requested format:

  • Defining the Goal of Notion's Blog:

    • Point: Create genuinely helpful content that inspires and helps readers be more productive.

      • "The goal of Notion's blog is to be a resource for genuinely helpful content. It's a chance to share our points of view on a lot of topics: how we build with AI, the history (and future) of work and productivity, and deep dives on craft. Of course, we want to drive interest in Notion and get more people to sign up and try it out, but our central goal is to provide inspiration and tips to help our readers be more productive."

  • Measuring the Value of Blog Posts:

    • Point: Look beyond website traffic and consider the impact of content on other channels and brand perception.

      • "There are a few different ways we measure value from blog posts. We do measure traffic on the website. But there's more to it than that because a blog post can live on other channels too. For example, when we see one of our branded pieces really take off on social, that's usually a good sign that it's a topic people care about. Or if someone reads something on our blog that helps them significantly improve their workflows—they might not sign up right away, but they might browse, tell a friend, and/or come back later. And the more they come back, the more they're going to see our product and learn about it. There's value for us in that."

      • "There are so many channels and so many places where people live online and consume content. So, yes, content does touch pipeline and revenue, but it can also be immensely valuable to how people perceive your brand, point of view, and values."

  • Tracking Conversions and Template Usage:

    • Point: Monitor conversions from blog posts about new features or how-to guides, and track template duplications embedded in blog posts.

      • "We're definitely measuring conversions from the blog when we're writing about new features or how to do things in Notion. When we write blog posts that include templates, we can go a step further and even track how many people are actually duplicating the templates that are embedded in those blog posts. Templates are really powerful for us—they're a great way for anyone to find a framework and immediately use it in Notion."

  • Acknowledging the Challenges of Measuring Helpful Content:

    • Point: Accept that not all valuable content can be directly attributed to a single metric, especially when the goal is to nurture love for the product.

      • "At the end of the day, content can just be hard to measure. People often try to attribute a single metric to a single type of content, but that's not always possible and there are nuances you have to consider."

      • "When you're creating content with the goal of being helpful, you have to be okay with that being enough of a business case. In many ways, content is a brand game, and the metrics you're measuring don't have to just be direct conversions for it to be valuable."

      • "How do you measure the value of nurturing love for your product? You can't. But sometimes, that's okay."

  • Monitoring a Dashboard of Data:

    • Point: Keep track of blog traffic, referral sources, visitor frequency, and in-product actions influenced by content.

      • "Yeah, in addition to keeping an eye on blog traffic, we do monitor other things. We keep an eye on where people are coming to our website from, how frequently they come back, and their journey on the site."

      • "We have a separate dashboard for the in-product actions we influence, like the template duplications I mentioned or the new workspace signups and active users from things like email sends."

  • Balancing SEO with Content Quality:

    • Point: Find ways to optimize for search while maintaining the brand's tone of voice and avoiding keyword stuffing.

      • "We do think about SEO, but we try to balance that with a certain level of quality we want to maintain in our blog posts. We have ideas and phrases that are more value-forward, but they may not be actual search terms. So we're constantly thinking about how to show up in search while delivering content in our tone of voice. Most of the time, we find ways to avoid typical keyword stuffing."

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