Time Flies
Ok, it’s been a long time since I last posted. Half a year has gone by and more.
Over the past months one thing I’ve tried to do with Escape is to make it a little more welcoming to newcomers. Adding more content to the home page to call out to them directly and, more recently, adding an onboarding or setup process. This setup takes the new user through two actions, firstly specifying their reading preferences. Asking the user for the genres of books that they like to read is something I did when Escape was in its infancy but this is something we no longer do. Until now. This information, along with finding out their favourite authors, allows me to inform users of books that have been added to the site which are relevant to them. It also gives me an idea of what niche my users belong to, allowing me to potentially source books that they might like.
The second part of the setup walkthrough for the new user is taking them through the process of listing a book on the site. For the early days of Escape it’s important to have people make books available.
Once the user has specified their reading preferences and listed a book, and so completed the setup process, 4 bonus points are then added to their account.
I began by saying that months have gone by since my last post here. Looking at my last few blog posts I realise that quite a lot has changed since my previous post. Support pages should things go wrong. Improved book descriptions. Book ratings. User feedback. More coverage for featured books. And a lot more books listed. There are also features, such as a refer a friend scheme, which have come and gone.
Child’s Play
During the past months I’ve also begun to create more material on social media in order to promote the website. I’ve not wanted to have my own face plastered over social media but I did want to start having a conversation with the audience. The idea of creating some cartoon characters seemed appealing. I tried to draw some cartoon characters myself and looked online for inspiration. In the end I settled for something simplistic, childlike even. Characters that look like a cross between stick figures and a children’s drawing perhaps. I found that I could draw them quite quickly and then create a little sequence of pages where these characters could have conversations with one another. Using these characters I created posts on Instagram where they introduced the concept of book swapping and also showed how someone could sign-up to the website.
I had some good feedback for these posts and the use of the characters. A future blog post will look at how I am now planning to take these characters further.
Getting New Users
While I’ve been making changes to the website I’ve not spent any time creating posts on social media. To be honest I was beginning to ask myself why I was creating posts that seemingly drew little or no interest. No real interest in the posts let alone interest in the website. I am perhaps discovering how difficult it is to get people in through the virtual door. Not just to visit the website, but to sign-up and to then contribute by listing books.
As an example, I posted on Reddit in order to gain some interest in what I’m trying to achieve. I had a LOT of interest. People asking for a link to the website and saying that it was a great idea. Good news I thought. However I only had something like less than a quarter of those who expressed an interest actually sign-up. Then of those who did sign-up only a tiny fraction of them have continued to be an active part of the community. By active I mean visiting the website and offering and claiming books.
Community
One nugget of hope has been a very small group of individuals who I’ve engaged with on a Discord server. This small group have been overwhelmingly supportive. Being active and using the Escape site for one. Secondly this is a group that I can approach for feedback about ideas I have for the site. They also provide me with suggestions for improvements and for new features.
If you’re interested in joining us, find us over on Discord.
