14 Oct 2014
Josh

Existing month to month, September 2014

This is the fourth in our series of monthly reports about our product, Exist. Catch up on August.

Development

Old dashboard vs new

September saw the launch of the redesigned dashboard that I'd been working on for a while. Partly we were due for a visual refresh and a more refined look, but this also allowed us to introduce the idea of comparing your day against your averages, something I'm pretty keen on. (Static goals are stupid.) Belle wrote about this in more detail on the Exist blog.

We simultaneously launched Calendar integration, supporting any iCal format calendar feeds. This marks the first vaguely productivity-related service we offer, with more to come.

Another large development was the arrival of free trials. This gives potential users a way to test how useful Exist can be for them, without committing to paying. Early results show this is indeed helping us convert new users.

We also added Exist activity as an attribute that shows up in correlations. For example, I'm slightly more likely to be using Exist when I'm listening to music — which is what happens when I'm at my desk, working on the site. For other users, they may find they use it less on weekends or check it more when they've been more active.

Finally, we added some smaller items like more detail in admin reports, and notifications for those with overdue payments.

Marketing

In September we started putting our mailing list to good use, by sending fortnightly blog updates. Back before public launch, we collected around 3,500 email addresses on our waiting list. Today, we still have 80% of these users on our mailing list. They've not yet converted, but they won't unsubscribe either! To make the most of this, we're keeping them updated on the blog. We also have a specific blog newsletter list for new signups (feel free).

Another major development was Belle's creation of "Exist Club", a weekly accountability session via email with a small group of users. Each week, everyone in the group commits to a goal (for example running 3 days a week), and emails Belle when they've accomplished this — with Belle likewise being accountable to everyone else. This was mostly an experiment in accountability and seems to be going well in its current, cosy incarnation.

We also subtly shifted our marketing angle from "Understand your life" to "Improve what matters to you". I suspect this may change again in the near future.

In addition, Belle published four links posts and four blog posts:

Fast Company and Inc both published content linking to Exist this month too.

Other business stuff

Our second product, The List, had its second issue published in September. The List is a premium newsletter for anyone learning the process of content marketing and creating authentic content. We had a good response to this issue and hopefully readership will continue to grow.

The numbers

Business stats
  • 390 users (322 paid)
  • 9% growth from last month with 31 signups
  • 10% churn with 35 cancelled accounts
  • $969.50 earned after Stripe fees
  • $184.92 earned from The List

Churn was looking pretty low for most of the month, but unfortunately overtook growth with a spate of closed accounts right at the end of the month. We're hoping that now free trials exist this number will decline a little.

Site stats
  • 6,259 uniques to the exist.io landing page (up 106% from August!)
  • 10,285 uniques to the blog (up 76% from August)
  • 2,234 uniques to our top blog post, How does your tracker know you're asleep? (same post down 25% from August)
  • Top traffic sources were organic search, The Next Web, and Twitter

It's nice to note that we beat our previous best month of July, where traffic was boosted by our inclusion in Buffer's "content suggestions" — but this month we accomplished it without the spike of traffic that buffered tweets brought.

September: how'd we do?

Putting aside the regular disappointment at churn numbers, this month we did pretty well in Getting Things Done. Last month I planned on launching the redesign, calendar integration, and free trials, which I actually achieved. In previous months I talked about providing more value to our current users, which I hope we're doing with the dashboard redesign. And free trials give us more leeway before we need to think about supporting an entire free plan, and should both encourage conversions and decrease churn.

Next month

We're still feeling mostly optimistic about our direction, which in the short-term is in the area of productivity, so RescueTime integration is up for this month. We've also noticed that users are really keen on mood tracking, so we're polishing that a bit too.

See you in November!

Author and Exist code typer @joshsharp was in a bad mood while he wrote this, but will promise to be nice if you'd like to follow him on Twitter.