Introduction to remoteStorage & Signup process confusing and convoluted.

[silverbucket]

I've had several friends try out dogfeed and inevitably the first feedback I get is that they don't understand what they're supposed to do to get remotestorage working.

The widget directs them to remotestorage.io which doesn't easily clarify what they are supposed to be doing / looking for. People assume remotestorage.io is the provider, and then are confused. Out of the 3 people I asked for feedback from, all 3 ran into this issue, and only 1 person figured it out without my needing to clarify.

Secondly, people are confused about what they need to enter into the user address field. I think user@host isn't very clear. Host? I think it should probably be username@provider... It's not perfect, but from the feedback I gathered this was thought to maybe be a little more clear, since they are familiar with the term 'provider' as the entity which provides the storage service.

Another issue is that when you try to connect and enter a wrong user@host, the widget seems to hang at 'connecting' forever. We should have some sort of timeout. I've made a separate issue for that #475

[michielbdejong]

good points! this has always been a big adoption blocker and will hopefully be a lot clearer once we add GoogleDrive and Dropbox.

the suggestion used to be 'username@provider' iirc, let me dig into the git logs to see why we changed it to '@host'

[michielbdejong]

also it would help if we would link directly to http://remotestorage.io/get/ and make that page clearer (a "choose your storage provider!" call to action with a big 5apps logo that links directly to https://5apps.com/storage/beta and we should remove heahdk from that page. i'll open an issue on the .io repo)

[silverbucket]

I agree with landing people on remotestorage.io/get and also with making that page much clearer as to what people are there for. Hmm, maybe even making a special landing page just for the widget to direct to?

I don't see what adding Google Drive and Dropbox will do to make the situation more clear though, can you explain why you think that?

[michielbdejong]

yeah, i was assuming that most of your three friends you tested this on would have either a Google account or a Dropbox account or both, so then it's easier for them to start using your app. and even though Google and Dropbox are for-profit storage providers, your friends would still enjoy freedom from storage provider lock-in and have the option later to switch to a non-profit provider, an EU-based one, one that runs on a freedombox, etcetera.

[silverbucket]

Hmmm. I see what you mean, though I don't think that having those options fixes the real issue here, which is that we're doing a very poor job of presenting a first impression to the user. Adding Dropbox and Google Drive makes that first impression even more confusing unless we first address the crux of the issue by improving the widget, and the subsequent landing page.

[raucao]

While we're at it, no matter where we link to, let's add a tracking parameter to the widget link, so that we can see what users do exactly after being sent to the website.

[silverbucket]

Good idea, this is another reason why I think it makes sense to make a special landing page for users coming from the widget.

[raucao]

Well, remotestorage.io should be that landing page ideally. It's just still in its initial state, and nobody ever did big improvements or changes since then.

[silverbucket]

I'm not sure, with the users that are coming from the widget - we have a very good idea of exactly the kind of information we need to explain to them up-front. This isn't the kind of treatment they're going to get being thrown onto the landing page of remotestorage.io - which covers a much more general range of topics.

[raucao]

You mean like everything you need to know about remoteStorage? Because that's not what you want to know when you're interested in what the heck that app sent you to? ;)

It's not so much about the content imho, but more about how you're guided. There's no guiding or call to action at all on the current frontpage, which I find to be the main problem with it not working well as a landing page.

[michielbdejong]

Let's do more starbucks testing and come up with ways to improve the widget and the landing page it links to. Would also be great to have some input from newcomers and drive-by contributors here.

[raucao]

We also introduced a detailed explanation of how to use the widget and what your user address is (with video/gif) on 5apps storage in the meantime.

[michielbdejong]

where? i couldn't find it, except for http://help.5apps.com/kb/storage

[raucao]

You'll see it first thing after signing up and it'll go away after connecting the first app, meaning you've learned how to do it.

[michielbdejong]

ah, found it. Opened #728 about the widget landing page (including Starbucks testing of how it fits in the whole signup flow), and #729 about the widget placeholder.