Tag Archives: amberleaf

Business Startup Week 9: From Moo Cards to TestUnit

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The Plymouth Software business cards turned up this week from moo.com. I couldn’t be happier with how they’ve turned out – the logo and colours matched perfectly, and Moo’s 100% recycled green cards have a fine finish.

Plymouth Software Business Cards

Amberleaf Gets a New Look

Amberleaf finally saw itself updated with the new look screens I have been working on for the past few weeks. With the update comes a complete refresh, less clutter on screen and an improved user experience.

Sign up today for a 30 day free trial to try out the new look, and see how Amberleaf helps your hosting business.

Amberleaf Screenshot

Coming Soon: Outlime 1.1

A lot of code went into Outlime this week, completely rebuilding some parts of the app to be more stable and add some new functionality. Amongst the changes are a separate layer for background images (letting you erase over your sketch without erasing the background), and some additional pen colours.

Open Source Contributions

In between coding Outlime and Amberleaf, I found some time to start working on my github account again. Working on open source is a great way to try out new code techniques, and improve your developer karma. In pushing a few updates to my fork of the cPanel Gem, I had to to learn TestUnit which I’m now tempted to use in any projects.

Although I’ve been a fan of RSpec for a long time, TestUnit is a much lighter approach. Whilst both frameworks approach testing in different ways (TestUnit for test driven development, and RSpec for behavioural driven development), I’ve often found myself battling with

Get Started Quicker with a new Rails 3 app

Despite that, I also updated my template Rails 3 project to use the release version of Rails 3.0. The template is a kickstart project, setup to use jQuery, PostgreSQL, FactoryGirl, Shoulda, Mocha and RSpec 2.

What’s Next

The coming week will see a major update to Outlime, adding new and improved functionality for sketching over photos. I’ve also been asked by Mark Stocks to redevelop his photography website for selling the 2011 Vistas de Murcia calendars.

Business Startup Week 8: Amberleaf’s New Look

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Just a short update this week, as most of my time was spent working to improve the Amberleaf interface screens. The revamp is also complete (here’s a few sneak previews on Twitpic) and I’m looking forward to pushing the new release shortly.

Amberleaf Dashboard Sneak Preview

Sneak preview of Amberleaf’s new dashboard

As well as its first email newsletter (thanks to MailChimp), this week finally saw Plymouth Software get a logo. This is another step in the right direction for branding and marketing. There were also a few tweaks to the website, including a move to the sinatra platform.

Sinatra is a fantastic tool for building lightweight web sites and apps, and I’ll be using it a lot more in the future for smaller projects where dynamic content is needed, but Rails would be too heavy. I’ve looked at moving this blog to Sinatra, but haven’t yet found a blog engine that quite matches up to jekyll.

The first sales of Outlime are now trickling in. Last week, I released a free version of Outlime, Outlime Lite, to the Market. Outlime Lite has now been downloaded over 250 times, letting people try Outlime’s sketching features.

What’s Next

This week, I’m refining Outlime’s code so that it can provide better functionality in the next few releases. A couple of minor upgrades this week saw orientation support, so rotating the screen now adjusts the menus. There’s also an option to discard sketches without them automatically saving.

Business Startup Week 7: Use your own software

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It’s hard to believe that nearly two months have passed since I formed Plymouth Software. A lot has happened in what has seemed a very short period of time! Here’s a rundown of what went on in week seven.

Amberleaf

Amberleaf has seen several minor updates released this week, including development on the public landing pages, and an important update to the sign up process.

Amberleaf Front Page

Amberleaf’s updated front page.

Legacy Decisions

The problem arose because I’d used a paid Spreedly plan for the free trial, delaying the first payment by 30-days. Users could cancel the account at any time before this, but they were asked to enter their payment card details before they’d even signed into the app. Understandably, this was a little off-putting.

I created a new Spreedly “Free-Plan” for trial sign ups. People logging into Amberleaf for the first time are now automatically subscribed to the free plan. When the trial expires, they are prompted to subscribe to the paid plan.

As well as removing the need for new subscribers to enter their payment card details upfront, the new approach also paves the way for the limited free account plan.

Invite Friends to Amberleaf

A new addition to the Amberleaf dashboard is an Invitation panel. This lets existing customers invite friends and coworkers to try out Amberleaf. In order to reduce interruption, the invitation requires only an email address; the app will create and send an invitation email. If you have an account, log in now to start inviting your friends, coworkers or customers to try out Amberleaf!

MailChimp Integration

As part of the new sign up process, and in an effort to improve communication with Amberleaf customers, I switched to MailChimp to manage my mailing lists. Integrating MailChimp with Amberleaf’s registration form was a painless process thanks to the Hominid gem.

Use your own software

On Friday evening, I got a few reports that the amberleafapp.com SSL certificate had expired. This came as a shock, not only because I couldn’t believe a year had already passed, but also that I hadn’t added the SSL certificate into my own Amberleaf account!

Within a couple of hours, a new SSL certificate had been issued and installed on Amberleaf’s server; the panic was over. Thanks to the VPS.net support staff for their extremely quick replies and getting the SSL certificate generated.

Needless to say, I’ve since updated Amberleaf to remind me when the certificates are due again!

Outlime Lite

A couple of weeks ago I released Outlime for Android. Whilst the app is paid, I wanted to offer a demo version for people to try it out.

Android’s market offers a 24 hour cooling-off period before charging for app downloads (just uninstall it within 24 hours of first installing), but this doesn’t seem a well advertised or known feature. So with a little Twitter fanfare, on Thursday I launched Outlime Lite. Outlime Lite lets you sketch draft ideas and designs just as Outlime does, but stops short of saving and sharing.

Outlime Lite lets you see if the paid app would be useful to your own design process. You can check it out for free right now on Android Market!

What’s Next

In the coming week, I should receive Plymouth Software business cards from Moo complete with the final branding. I’ll continue tuning Amberleaf’s marketing to attract web designers and businesses looking to simplify their domain and hosting management.

I hope to spend some more time working with Rails 3 and the process of migrating Amberleaf. With Rails 3 released, tutorials are appearing across the web. Some of the best I’ve found so far are Ryan Bates’ railscasts and Simone Carletti’s blog.

Changes to the site

I’ve been looking at Sinatra for building fast, light apps such as this blog and plymouthsoftware.com. Jekyll (the static site generator that builds these sites) has served me well, but the sites are missing some benefits given by server-side apps.

I’m thinking of trying Marley, a Sinatra-based blog engine that offers the best of Jekyll and server-side software.

Is your sign up process pushing customers away?

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The sign up process is one of the most important functions of your app. It’s what converts potential customers into active and, hopefully, paying subscribers. Getting it right is essential, and you need to make sure it’s not pushing customers away.

Amberleaf Sign Up Form Screenshot

Amberleaf’s new price plan and sign up page

Spotting a problem

While analysing trends for Amberleaf, I noticed that a number of people had signed up and verified their account, but never completed their first login. I’d already minimised capture fields to lower barriers, but something else was stopping people trying out their new account.

Despite running through the sign up process countless times during testing, I’d missed one very big problem, and it was scaring people away.

Would you sign up to your site?

When I realised my mistake, I knew I wouldn’t have signed up to my own app! Customers were being pushed away from even trying Amberleaf because of a poor decision I’d made early in development. So what was the problem?

Just after signing in to start their 30 day trial, new users were asked to input their payment card details.

This was a huge barrier that had stopped a lot of people from even trying Amberleaf. The sign up process was working as it should technically (payments were never taken until the 30 days free trial had passed), but that wasn’t the impression given to new customers.

At exactly the moment a new customer should be experiencing what Amberleaf offers, I was instead insisting they hand over payment details.

Improving the sign up process

When I realised what was going on, I immediately revised the sign up code. I implemented a separate 30 day free trial plan on Spreedly, and tied Amberleaf into it. This had the added benefit of removing a step from the process. Not capturing payment details right away meant new users could be subscribed to the free 30 day plan automatically when they first logged in. This resulted in a smoother sign up process, and helps to build users’ trust in the software.

The new sign up process went live a few days ago. I took the opportunity to tidy up the sign up screens, bringing the registration and payment plan page together. I’ll see how these changes affect conversion rates over the next few weeks. Either way, I’ve certainly learned a valuable lesson in designing the sign up process.

Business Startup Week 6: Outlime and a Crash Course in Marketing

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Last week saw the launch of my first Android app, Outlime to Android Market. Outlime is built for designers to quickly sketch ideas and designs on their Android phones. It’s intentionally minimalist, staying out of your way so you can just keep sketching ideas.

Outlime Screenshot

Quick Interface Design Sketch in Outlime.

Outlime can load your camera snaps so you can sketch right on them! This is great if, for example, you want to sketch some ideas on a website design – just snap it on your phone, sketch the changes, and share to your co-workers.

Thanks to Android’s built-in technologies, your sketches can be shared instantly with friends and co-workers through any appropriate app installed on your phone (GMail, MMS, Bluetooth, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Outlime in Android Market

Outlime published in Android Market

Outlime was inspired by 37Signal’s Draft for iPad. Before launching, I contacted 37Signals (in the spirit of good coding karma!) to let them know about Outlime. I got a great, positive response, and was very pleased to release Outlime to the market last Tuesday. Depending on demand, I may release an ad-supported, limited free version. I was disappointed to discover that Google’s AdSense for Apps isn’t yet available to UK developers.

Outlime costs just £1.29, and is available now from Android Market. If you have Barcode Scanner installed, just scan the QR code below to go straight to Outlime

Outlime QR Code

Scan the QR code with your Android device to install Outlime via Android Market

Marketing 101

One thing that’s become apparent with the release of both Amberleaf and Outlime is the need for better marketing. A great book that was suggested to me is Rob Walling’s Start Small, Stay Small, which I bought after being recommended to Rob’s site through Twitter.

Start Small, Stay Small is full of useful and (most importantly) practical tips for building good marketing behind web apps. It’s aimed specifically at small, startup software developers, and after the first few pages I was hooked, finishing the book in a couple of hours.

At the back of my mind, I’ve been aware of falling into the trap – building an app; launching it; and completely missing the marketing. Before reading Rob’s book, I’d found little practical guidance on marketing software apps. The advice from Start Small, Stay Small, and other resources I’m discovering, has been a great eye-opener.

Inspired by Rob’s advice, I’ve made a few changes this week. I signed up to MailChimp for managing my mailing list, and began making some changes to the Amberleaf site. Switching to a dedicated mailing list provider was a relief, as I’d previously relied on a woefully inefficient combination of Google Mail and a spreadsheet! You can sign up right now here:

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I’m looking forward to trying out some new marketing approaches for Plymouth Software, and getting Amberleaf better known to the web developers for whom it was originally designed. I’ll also be submitting Amberleaf’s upcoming new page designs to Rob’s Startup Lens site for feedback.

What’s Next

With Outlime out in the wild, this week’s plan is to focus on Amberleaf’s updates and continue developing its marketing. I was also pleased to read that Rails 3.0 has been released. I’ve been working on a smaller project to learn Rails 3 in preparation for upgrading Amberleaf to the new framework.

About Amberleaf

Amberleaf is a tool for web designers and developers to manage their domains and hosting accounts. Signing up takes a few seconds, and includes a 30 day free trial. After that, it’s just £4.95 a month with no minimum term contract. Check it out today at amberleafapp.com/.