UX Insider: Product Hunt Roundup - E. 14 - Great site. Confusing onboarding

Hi, I'm Daniel from Duran, a product design studio for growth-stage tech teams. And together we'll explore what's working, what's not, and what you can learn from the newest launches on Product Hunt. Let's dive in. The first product is called Upstream. So yeah, the website is quite clean. You can see they are backed by Y Combinator and also the badge for the number 1 product of the day on Product Hunt. All of these give a bit more reassurance for users that, that get to this page. Also, it's a nice touch that you can have a view of what the actual product does or how the actual product looks on the side. It's easy to start. You can see they have the Gmail login. Again, some, some more trust builders here below, some of the companies that I assume are using their product, and then just highlighting what the product actually does. Okay. And there is quite some scrolling, so this might be a bit confusing. Because like you scroll, you scroll, you scroll, but nothing really happens up to this point. But the animations are nice and clean. But again, it's the same thing. So you scroll the background, but nothing really moves. And it might be a bit confusing for some users. It's not usually a good thing to hijack the scroll. And then they also have a separate mention for the agents and how it works with Granola and how you can connect everything together. Okay. And yet again, some highlights here. That's it. Oh, they also have a highlight on the fact that they have a mobile app as well. GDPR compliance, which at least for us in Europe, it's a big thing. And FAQs, testimonials, again, some, some more trust building here, especially since you have to give access to your, your own inbox. It's really important. Okay. And then we have login, sign up here, get started for free here. Here, the only thing is that in some cases, as you can see, the background of the navigation bar, because it's white on white, and though it has some kind of shadow, the text sometimes fades a bit too much into the background. There is a bit of a contrast issue, which is not a big, big problem, but it might be for, for some users. This has the glass effect similar to what iOS is doing. Okay, let's just see where this leads. So we have, we have this as login, I assume. I just clicked on starting with Google. And then we have another button here. We have some testimonials on the side. And what else? Let me just go back a bit. So here it says more about, at least my understanding was more about organizing the inbox. But when I get here, it's more about emails that sound like me. So the value props are slightly different. This might be a bit confusing for some people. Like you get here in a way with the expectations that this thing will just organize the inbox. Here it's more about how you write. But yep, let's try it out. Obviously I have to give access to my email. No, I don't have a lot of emails on this one. But hopefully it's good enough. Okay, some access rights, obviously. Now I have to connect again. So this is a bit confusing. I thought that I connected my inbox and now I have to connect it again. So maybe just setting the expectations a bit better, that could help. And now I give access to the inbox, obviously. And something is not working, at least not for me. Oh, this is something else. Okay. Now this is a bit confusing since they ask for different axis, like 3 times. And now I can see that this fish, it's moving here on the top. But it's not very clear what these dots or steps mean and how you can actually interact with it. There is also an extension. I will just skip this for the moment. And yeah, I create a workspace. Let's do that. You can change the theme. Okay. And then This is the inbox and things are still syncing here in the background. Okay. This is the agent. This is my inbox and I have something called channels. That means that you can organize your inbox with channels. Okay. So let's just go back here. You can see I even got the email from upstream and something is not scrolling at the moment. So if I click on this, it expands, but otherwise it It doesn't scroll. Okay. Loom. This is some older email that I have here. This is mostly used for testing products and such. Promotion, social, Loom. They created a separate view just for Loom. Okay. And noise, like a lot of stuff, as you can see here. Okay, going back. In itself, it looks interesting. It's nice that they have the split. It gives a bit of a superhuman kind of feeling for me. But yeah, let's try to write an email and see how it goes. So testing out Upstream. It's a bit confusing now that I'm writing here, also here. Not sure what's the difference between these 2. And now I'm typing here. So when you type a new message, it might be a good idea to type it in one place. And let's see, I will send it to myself. Okay, one moment. Okay, I can draft with the AI. I don't want to do that. So this here, it is the subject, subject line. So even how the layout looks for some people might be confusing, I would say. At least for me, it's a bit confusing now just trying it out for the first time because it's not that layout that I'm used to, you know, like If you're thinking about Gmail, and a lot of people are coming from Gmail, probably the layout is slightly different. And also this, that I have the title here but not the body, and I have the title here or the subject but not the body. And if I edit this, let's edit this part as well. Upstream. Okay, so I type this in, I type this in, and what I can do, I can send it later, I can send it now. This is nice. The animation here looks quite nice, and it gives you a bit more into like how the send later works. It's not just a hidden icon. And if I Command+J, I can talk. Okay, I won't do that for the moment. And let's say I sent this. So the message is undo send. There is an undo also here, similar. I assume it works somewhat similar to how Gmail is doing it. I can comment, I can chat. So this kind of probably creates a chat here. I can create a chat channel there and like have a discussion with some other people, I assume. So, so yeah, not sure how that part works. Okay. Now, since I got the email, I will just answer the email and see how it looks once I got a reply. And even here, if you see it, it comes with crafted by UX testing design in Upstream. So they give a bit of a branding for themselves here. Okay, let's send this back. And then if I back, this is just the sidebar. This is the inbox. Okay, let's refresh and see. Okay, so here it is. And yeah, you have some reactions and such. I assume they work similarly as, as Gmail is doing it. There is the signature, there is mine. So overall, it's an interesting product. The channels, honestly, I didn't really understand how they work. So it's probably worth investing a bit more on the onboarding side here just to understand how the channels work. I didn't also spend a lot of time in it. So you can see, let's see here if they have, nope, nothing here, nothing here. So I can add this into a channel. And then then it then it shows up here. Mostly the weird part was around signing up and then all those access rights, which took a while. It was like from what I remember like three separate screens, and it wasn't really clear because there was that small fish. It wasn't really clear what's happening, and even like I honestly I didn't notice the fact that. I'm moving through steps. So maybe highlighting those, making those a bit more obvious would be helpful. And then once, once somebody joins the product, maybe a bit more guidance about how to use it. Like you get here, you see the inbox obviously, but maybe a bit more guidance of like what are the channels and how you can use them. Maybe an example of like maybe even their email added into a channel and shared with somebody or commented and such, just to have an idea about how this thing works. That might, that might be helpful. But yeah, other than that, quite an interesting product. Okay, next up is Jesse. Stop building Apollo playlists and search the internet. Let's see. The website itself, it's clean. Some highlights. It's just like highlights of what Jesse can do. I thought that it's like a comparison, but here it is. We have the comparison here. There you have a video. Demo. I'm not sure how much— Hi everyone. Usually from my experience, at least, users don't really— they tend to not watch these videos that much, but it might be helpful to just scroll through it, especially that it's like almost 3 minutes. It's a bit long. Okay. Lead gen and some highlights again. Testimonials as well, I assume. Yep. Some testimonials and questions and that's it. Let's see. On the signup login page, we have some highlights on the right side and also the options to sign in or continue with Google, Microsoft, or with password. We will go with Google for now. Also, this Product Hunt badge might be helpful to have it on the homepage instead of like in a way hidden after somebody clicks on sign in. Okay, and now we are going through the onboarding. What's your main goal? Exploring founder, co-founder. Let's put Product Hunt here. Continue. And now I'm straight into the product and I have to select payment plan, but I didn't really try anything yet. Also, there is already a chat. So yeah, I would just honestly, I would skip this because I haven't had the chance to try out the product yet and I'm already asked about pricing and such. So what I can do, I can just move to a different page, select the plan. Okay. So I have to select the plan, but then if I have to select the plan, maybe it would be more helpful to just gate everything and, you know, just show me the plans or put me on a free plan and then let me play around a bit or something. Because here my hunch is that most of the people will just go with the free one. Start a free subscription. Payment successful, though I didn't pay anything. So it might be a bit confusing, like why they say payment successful since I didn't pay for anything. Then I have to set up stuff, right? Product design for growth stage SaaS companies, pre-seed to Series A. Okay, and here is turan.co. And let's go with the generate. Let's see. what they can generate. So I would try to move that first hurdle of selecting the plan away and either just onboard people on the free plan and give them a bit of a demo of what the product can do. If that's not possible, because there might be some technical limitations in the background, then probably I would just not let people wander around here and make them select the plan. And I definitely wouldn't just like pop the first thing in the chat as like, any questions regarding the pricing because I just joined. So most probably first I want to try out the product and see how it goes. Okay, so the CTO part, it's actually valid. We targeted CPOs, European. Okay, let's go with that one and generate leads. And then they are searching for matches. Okay, so the ICP that they came up with was, I would say it was somewhat on point. And given that I just wrote like a couple of words, It's not bad at all. We have some companies and their website. So far from what I can see, we have 10. It's nice that they show the first 10 and you don't have to wait for all of the 50 to load because that, like, even these 10 took a while. So it's nice that you have a preview and then you can maybe just spend some time checking these before you have all of them. Basically, they kind of keep you busy in a way. You can see the ICP description and the context here, which is nice. You can look also for people. Oh, okay. So you have separate tabs for what happened now. So I have this as a recent search. Okay. This isn't a recent search. I have lookalikes. Oh, and I have to go separate for companies and for people. Okay. If I come here and I do the same thing, let's go with Tran.co. Can I just copy the whole thing over from here to here? Okay, and generate. And they have alerts, saved lists, and enrichments. Okay, so this, this isn't ready yet. I'm not sure what I've done yet. So this is, I assume, still in progress, right? Yes. But I started one here as well, which doesn't show up. Should I just wait a bit more? Probably. Oh, The distinction between the companies and people, for me at least, I'm obviously not a salesperson. It is a bit confusing sometimes. Okay, let's go with this one. Let's just stick with the 25 people. Oh, I didn't saw this one. So basically they can send you a test email, probably like a notification. Okay, and now this is working. Like we have this still ongoing. Find people. I assume it's still ongoing here. Okay. And I'm not sure what's this. Okay. So you can get 25 leads every day and you can save some lists. Okay. And we don't need this yet because it's not working. So if I'm here, what can I do with this list? I can check their website. There is like a relevance score and some description and the company name. And this is still ongoing, so I assume it will take a while. And on the people side, let's see. It's still in progress. In the meantime, we can look around. I'm not sure what's with Jesse and Alicia, but probably some kind of agents, I assume. And this is my profile. Okay, it's not very clear what's what. Like, not sure what's with Jesse and Alicia. And even if I click on Alicia, it doesn't do anything yet, right? And then when I get into find companies and find people, like it's nice that you have this here, but maybe it's worth thinking a bit on the sidebar how we actually show up the results instead of like the search, because I'm not sure how many times you want to search. Probably would like to have like save these lists somehow. Okay, and if I get here, as you can see, I start to have A list of people. Again, it's 10 from 25 found. They have the relevance score as well. And there's a bit of a description or rationale of why they selected these specific people. Let's see what kind of columns. So we have web source, but I assume if I would have, if I would like to have like maybe access to their email or LinkedIn or something, I should just enrich, right? I assume. Let's just stop this one. Okay, still stopping. Find companies. It's still loading. Let's stop this as well. It is still stopping. Whatever it happens in the background, not sure, but I cannot click on anything here. It's like I can click on the company and that kind of, that's it. Other than that, if the product actually works, it's helpful and it's easy to follow. There are a couple of things though, but that, as I mentioned, would work checking like how the search looks, how the results look, what you can do with the results. Is this the thing that I want to see every time that I get into find companies and find people? Or maybe once I search for something, there is something already saved like this one that's more visible, but this is really dependent on how people are actually using the product as well. And I'm not sure yet how I can save the lists. So maybe once The whole search is stopped, then I have there an option to save the list. Or should I create here? No, I cannot. Also, what might be slightly confusing, though might not be that important, is that from this website, which is agentjessie.ai, I landed in a product that's called Flowworks. And yeah, it might be just nitpicking some stuff, but having this more visible, like what Jesse really is, it's just one of the agents of Flowworks. Or it works somewhat different. I'm not sure. Okay, so both of these are still in progress. I clicked stop some time ago, but it looks like it takes a while to actually stop this. So these are still in progress. I think we can just leave it as is. So overall, the product is interesting, especially if they deliver the value that they say they do and they find the right leads. That's super helpful. Probably a bit of a work on the onboarding would be helpful guiding people of like how to search, what to search for. But what they generated on the ICP part, it was, I would say it was on point, at least for us using just a couple of words, like a very short description and the website, but might worth looking a bit into these pages of finding the people, finding the companies. What happens once I clicked on search and what happens when I join? Do I have to necessarily select one of those plans or maybe they can just show me the free plan and once I hit one of the limitations of the product, then nudge me to upgrade. That might be a better option than just, you know, showing the payment plans straight from the beginning. But yeah, other than that, interesting product. Let's go with Xernio, social media and messaging API for developers and AI agents. The website itself has like a bit of a retro feeling, but the fonts look nice. You can start for free, you can continue with Google, and there is like the API preview, I assume. Let's go with this one, continue with Google. Okay, and we are in the product. I'm just curious to see what happens if I go with start for free. Okay, I have this sign up option and if I click on the dashboard, I cannot do anything obviously because I'm not logged in. But if I'm here and I click, I assume this is the dashboard, then I get into the dashboard. You have the API key, you can connect the platforms and you can start your integration, which is actually quite a nice onboarding. It's a step-by-step process. Let's go to the dashboard. Now there is not a lot of stuff obviously that we will see here since nothing is connected. But they have a bunch of quite nice small details, like even these small icons move, at least some of them, on hover. You have analytics that you can check, ads numbers, API keys, and a bunch of other ones. The product itself looks super nice, it's clean. You can connect, oh, whatever you want, and then No accounts connected. Can we like see a preview? So the product looks interesting for sure. I just don't have anything connected yet. Maker's Claw, hire AI employees that that live in your Slack, Teams, or Telegram. Oh, straight in it. For me, this looks a bit crowded. It might be just me, I'm not sure. There is a sign-in here at the bottom, but other than that, it's like a lot of things happening on the same screen. Let's try sign in. Continue with Google here and here. I already signed in. I have to agree and continue. Okay, and here is where I can start Agents, start a new agent. We have some templates and what is an employee? So what happens if I click on this? Start a new agent. Not sure. Let's go with strategist. Okay, you can hire this employee and then there are, there is the configuration that's happening here on the side. Community is not working. Sorry, a link for community, it's grayed out, but when you click on it, it's not working. We also have support. It works on email and help center. Here it's all the stuff that you can set up, I assume, right? You can select the model. You can set up the soul. Okay, so this will be auto-written as we talk here. You can connect the apps and you can set up— oh, you can install skills because they are already here and there is a bunch of them. So Yeah, there is definitely a lot of stuff. For me, it's a bit, I feel that it's a bit overwhelming because like it's a lot of information on one screen. You get here and you see like 3 different columns. I'm not sure what's this or why it is here or why I have this here. I have wallet, but not sure for what. So yeah, it's a bit confusing, I would say. Probably a bit of an onboarding and guidance for people to set it up. But if you target just like very technical people, it might work for them. And if they like to figure it out. Otherwise, I feel that it's a bit too much happening on the same screen. And also there's like a lot of colors. You have yellow, you have green, you have red, you have FAQs, you have a new agent, whatever it's happening here. You have my employees here. My feeling is that it is just too much in one place. Workclaw. Okay, let's see what Workclaw does. The AI team for your team. I assume it's somewhat similar to the other AI product. that we tried out, but at least the website is clear so far. Okay, nothing. That's a video. Okay, there is a video presentation, some highlights. I'm not sure how useful are these. One-click setup works where you do. So some highlights of what they can do, I assume, and how it works and the benefits and Another video presentation, which is actually quite, I would say, nice or cute as a Q&A, and then you can start building. Let's get started then. It has to be connected to Slack, and you have to add a work email or a phone number. Let's go with work email. Continue with work email. Let's see if it's working even if it's not a work email. Yep, it's working even if it's not a work email. Let's add the verification number. The Small graphics are actually quite nice, and then we are in the onboarding process. Daniel A, your role. I'm a designer by trade, so I will go with that. Not sure how these help at this stage. Another one, company team name. Okay, let's add ours, and company website is not mandatory, and then you can claim. $100 in free credits if you do these. Can I do anything else or I have to do everything from here or just one? I'm not sure. If I go back at the payment method or connect. Okay, so let's add a card. Okay, so I added a card. I now have $100 in credits. Let's click continue and let's see what we can do. You can connect Slack, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, but the only option for the moment is Slack. I will skip this for now just to see how the rest of the things work. You can invite your teammates. Obviously, you can do that later. Skip for now. And we are inside of the product. There are skills, bunch of them, apps. I assume that you can integrate into this. Yes, you can set up the team. You have your credits and there is the profile. And this is our first assistant. And yeah, you can customize it, which is quite nice actually. What else? Continue. Other people. Talk to them. You can connect again. So you have to go through this whole thing. Oh, and now I added a new one. I didn't want to add one. Can I delete? Can I delete this? How can I delete one? Edit profile. Delete clone. Okay, so we have work Claw and you can add a new Claw if you want what you need and train me and how you want done. Got something specific in mind. It's actually quite nice. They have a computer here. You can add apps. They have Slack and the browser installed and Claw Chat installed and a bunch of other options. And you can even, you can even switch between devices and what else you can do. But yeah, it looks quite nice actually. You can create skills, you can import skills, you can use the skills that are here. Obviously you have to set up things properly. Nice product so far. The only, in a way, weird thing is that I honestly don't find any options to edit my card or subscription or upgrade or downgrade or delete my, my profile. That's a bit weird. Okay, the next product is Novu, the open source notification infrastructure for developers. The website looks a bit oldish, I would say, with some of the font choices, but not necessarily very, very off. Let's see. Start for free. Have a simple, clean sign-in option. And what Novu does, let's sign in or let's create an account for now. Accept. Usually, usually at least from my experience, you have to click on agree terms conditions when you sign in or sign up. Or in a way, they kind of bundle it into it. Okay, let's create an organization. The previews are nice though. This change between steps, like, I'm not sure. There was another step when I started to set up the organization and then that was a modal. Now they switched to a full page and I'm going through the full page and they have a loading to set up things, right? I'm in, in the product or still setting up stuff so we can send the test notification up and it shows up there. Next step, and they can select here the integration type. Let's skip for this. And we are inside of the product. We have an onboarding. You can see the steps, which is nice. It's clear. You have 4 steps. You can go through them and such. So that's super helpful. There are also agents, workflows that can be set up with some templates to start with. It's always a good thing instead of like having just like a blank canvas and you have to figure out stuff. Layouts, and you can also create new layouts here. Translations, subscribers. It looks like a very robust product. And even, even if it's mostly for developers, and usually those are not that well designed, this one actually looks pretty nice. Kudos for the team. It looks super nice. The cards are crisp. And well-spaced and even the color choices are nice. It's gray and just a hint of like accent colors, either green, either this red. It's well thought out obviously. And even these like small animations, quite nice. So yeah, cool stuff. That's all for today. Thanks for sticking here till the end. To sum it up shortly, it's very important to nail the first steps inside of the product, the onboarding especially. how people come, how you set the expectations, how you nudge them or guide them towards figuring out the real value the product can deliver. And from that point on, it's much easier to make sure that they come back, they use the product, they understand it, they find the value inside of the product, and then they upgrade. Thank you.