I play with some of the jinja in rust variants (askama/minijinja/tera - minijinja being by the creator of jinja) and could see this something like this working well there as well.
Sounds like a great app, was hoping for something like this & immediately signed up
Initial onboarding flow comments
- nice product/market fit - I almost missed the promo code but wouldn't have been a barrier to paying
- imagine that at 25/mo (+ another 25 for books) it's also kind of expensive for families who are impoverished and might need it more (believe lockdowns were way way worse for their kids).
- felt like there weren't enough "none of your business" options. Like I have 2 kids of different age but similar reading levels. Even though they go to actual schools, I just selected that they were homeschooled to preserve some privacy
- wasn't clear how to handle siblings. I went with setting the options based on the one who needs it more and hopefully it doesn't get confused by both a girl's voice and a boy's voice (edit: after signing up I see the add-a-child option in the online profile)
- this should have been more clear: "Can Ello use audio recordings to provide additional features and to improve the service?". I selected no, even though I would have wanted my kid's voices saved to make the experience better for them. I just felt a single checkbox was insufficient here because there should be multiple levels of privacy+information implied (and where kids are involved that's way more sensitive an issue)
- annoying that after signing up there was no preview book available in the app, just a sad & lonely "hurry up and wait" page. would be great if there were immediately some books that they could read in case they already had them home or in the library (go with something popular here). otherwise it feels like a growth hack is being used on my kids
But looking forward. My kids really enjoy math+chess apps (esp the dragonbox family) and we usually work IRL to reinforce what the apps teach (also Epic and some others). Happy to share more thoughts, esp once they get to playing with it.
Thanks for signing up but even more, thanks for the wonderful feedback.
- We actually find the opposite. Without the promo code people are reluctant to try it. I think because it's new and - to you next point - not cheap.
- This is a real concern for us and one of our primary product develop tracks it to change this. Our mission contains the phrase 'regardless of resources' and as a $25 DTC product we are not doing that yet. Hopefully much more to come on this soon.
- Interesting. We kinda have to know the grade level to send the right books. About 10% of parents know their child's reading level but 90% the only info we get is grade level and ahead/ behind etc... I haven't heard that as a privacy concern. We could do more to explain why we want this.
- We can explain how to add siblings better up front. It is there, but it's small and easy to miss.
- Agree. Right now as we are getting started we have made it binary - our main goal was that Ello would work for those who really wanted no data sharing, and to give parents that option very easily and clearly. As we start to build out more product features that rely on processing audio we should make privacy modular rather than binary.
- Again agree. We're working on that. We definitely need to get parents/kids to the 'aha' moment sooner and not have a 5 day shipping delay. What do you mean by it feeling like a growth hack? It feels like the opposite to me - a growth killer!
Would love any more thoughts as you get the box and they start using it. Thanks you!
> Without the promo code people are reluctant to try it.
Yeah, I mean I used the promo code, was just complementing that you hit on something I was jumping into regardless. Feels like most subscription kids apps are $9 a month max (I lost track of all we pay for), but I didn't blink at you being way above.
> We kinda have to know the grade level to send the right books... I haven't heard that as a privacy concern.
I might have slightly misphrased this. Basically some parents would be super involved with an app like this (we tend to be) and want to self-serve a little bit more. As a more extreme example - and not your beachhead customer for sure - there are plenty of adults who read at a low level and would feel more comfortable with there being an "other" option in there.
But I get the opposite side too. It is a lot simpler to have it tied to their school grade. I'm just sort of thinking out loud about removing barriers because I think something like this might be super useful for kids
> What do you mean by it feeling like a growth hack?
Might be a silly point of mine. But I mean by adding anticipation/delays into the mix, even though they are enforced by real-world shipping factors. There are plenty of public domain books - many of which families already own (or can print pdfs of) - that can be there to seed the collection. So the blank library on day 1 is silly.
Also, maybe I am projecting my own anticipation of the box arriving.
Another note, it seems that the requested features (privacy levels and interests) are not available for edit after registering.
