CommandBar's 2021 Wrapped
Our goal at CommandBar is to make all software easier and faster. Looking back at 2021, we made some solid progress!
📈 ~2M users served (from companies like
@clickup
,
@LaunchDarkly
,
@Netlify
,
@AngelList
& more)
❤️ Grew the team to 11
💪 1,611 PRs
🆕 Introducing Nudges & Questlists
A collection of widgets to guide users to feature announcements, product tours, and help content, or lead them through multi-step onboarding checklists.
🙏 Learn more and support us on
@ProductHunt
The origin story of CommandBar and the future of UIs 🕹
@dazzeloid
and
@PickensAllison
chat about how CommandBar can transform user interfaces for the next generation of SaaS 👇
AI will transform what users expect from software. Today's good UX will soon feel clunky.
Soon, users will expect personalized in-product assistance that makes fulfilling their intent effortless.
Meet Copilot.
Very excited to finally share what
@richardfreling
,
@vinayyala
, and I are working on
@CommandBar
adds a magical "command k" widget to any web app
- Let users search to discover any feature
- Blazingly fast CLI for your power users
- De-bloat your UI
We're tickled to be included on the Cloud 100 Rising Stars list this year! Thank you
@Forbes
@BessemerVP
@SalesforceVC
CommandBar was launched exactly one year ago today.
OneSignal now supports
#superhuman
-style keyboard navigation and search.
I firmly believe that a focus on UX and speed is table-stakes in modern b2b products and this is a big step in making
@onesignal
even better.
.
First, we conquered desktop. Now we conquer mobile.
We’re so excited to announce CommandBar for mobile, which lets you embed CommandBar's most popular in-product experiences into your mobile web, React Native, iOS, and Android apps.
🤖 Copilot: an AI-powered assistant for users
🗣️ Calling all
@bubble
builders
Say hi 👋 to the new Bubble + CommandBar plugin.
Add magic search, smart nudges, and timely help content to any no-code Bubble app.
👉
✨ 🚨 New podcast drop 🚨✨
Happy Paths, a show about the war stories behind famous products.
Starting with a banger: creating 📬 Gmail 📬 with the legendary
@paultoo
Hosted by
@dazzeloid
Excited for this launch 🥳
@personalai_
is supercharging memory and relationships with an AI messenger, and their universal search function is powered by CommandBar.
👀 Take a look at their bar in our inspiration library:
🆕 All the power of CommandBar, now in WordPress.
Spotlight-style search ➕ Pro shortcuts ➕ Contextual actions 🟰 The fastest way to control WordPress.
Try it out; it's free:
"You’re cooking up orders for customers, knowing that a random subset of customers will disappear before you can deliver the meal. A startup generalist must fully embrace this reality and not let it kill their mojo."
Excited to welcome
@FellerWestley
to the CommandTeam!
Wes helps product teams get CommandBar up and running fast 🏗️
Fun fact: Wes's first job required him to feed paper into a scanner all day. This sparked his passion for saving users time and automating away friction! ⚡️
Did you know you can search our blog posts directly from the Netlify UI?!
We recently released a Command Palette in Beta under Netlify Labs to give you quick navigation to lots of features! 🎉
Find out more here 👉
Going from single-player to multiplayer?
If you're adding real-time collab to your app, here are the essentials of a great UX.
...and some gotchas to look out for along the way.
Every product starts off with 0 users.
Then you get some users.
But the best milestone: your first POWER USER.
But what do you do when you’ve got one? It’s like having one Pokemon - do you train it or build out your dex?
Every app needs a power user strategy 🧵
“I’m a huge fan of products with great design and UX, so the vision was really in line … We already have a great [culture], and since we’re growing so fast there are so many opportunities to involve the entire team in building a generational company.”
Do you use HashiCorp
#Terraform
Cloud and need to administer large amounts of workspaces? Sign up here to test a new feature that enables searching and switching workspaces and organizations with lightning speed:
Power users — your best users, but do you treat them right?
👎 Bad: over-optimize for them & neglect everyone else
👎👎 Doubly bad: take them for granted & risk a revolt
So you need a power user strategy.
Here’s a template you can get started with 👉🏽
Changelogs are often a missed opportunity.
But when done well, they signal all the exciting things happening with your product and help you to engage your most powerful users.
Here are the essentials of a must-read changelog
Your users are already telling you what they really want... you just need to know where to look 🔎
In this post, we show you.
Using search intent data to understand what users want and how to use it to inform your
#productmanagement
strategy.
Did you miss
@dazzeloid
teaching us about
@CommandBar
live on LWJ?
No worries! Watch highlights from the episode here, then check out the full episode replay
Introducing our brand new Integrations Hub! It's now easier than ever for developers to discover, connect, and configure 100+ developer tools to all of their Netlify projects. 🙌
Product people across Twitter are wondering “What is this LangChain framework that all my evs are talking about?”
Breaking down
@LangChainAI
, specifically for product people — so you can hold your own at the watercooler or AI hackathon.
Founders, are you thinking about how you’re going to pull off a fundraise while staring down a recession?
With VC funding in the doldrums, here are some creative ideas for other sources of rocketship fuel (then, runway) 👉
LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE WRITING A LETTER
If this is triggering, you probably remember Clippy 😅
We think about Clippy a lot. Was it just a despised sidekick or a visionary ahead of its time?
Here are UX lessons you can draw from what Clippy got right & wrong
Why isn’t CMD + K a standard search feature for every SaaS (app) yet?
I just noticed how
@ConvertKit
does this while browsing on my iPad and didn't realize how I needed this 🤩
I know Notion does this too.
It’s like having Spotlight/Alfred specifically for every app.
We just released a new feature that professional creators have been clamoring for:
Quick Find
It's a way to search navigate
@ConvertKit
in seconds, all from the keyboard.
Press CMD+K to open the menu.
You craft awesome help docs, but:
- users don’t read them
- they have to leave the app to find them
Use our new HelpHub for 10x more helpful help docs, in-app, with AI.
On PH today 👇
✨
This feature empowers any user to make an app feel like home, allowing customization according to their preferences and the features they use the most.
Whenever a new product launches, there's always that one person asking: "where's dark mode?"
Have we just gotten used to seeing it, or do we actually need it?
Here's how to do dark mode well, and what to consider before going over to the dark side... 🖤
We just launched CommandBar for WordPress - A
#wordpressplugin
that makes WordPress Admin blazingly fast to use.
It’s perfect for WordPress pros, agencies, and content teams. Here’s why 🧵
SaaS blogging is about to change forever.
We’re building something that breaks away from the standard format, something that feels different, enticing, and, well, out there.
An unhinged publication for product and UX enthusiasts to unashamedly treat software as art. To bathe in
Your weekend project: go check out from
@HubSpot
and
@dharmesh
🤖 AI powering multiple cool use cases
💫 Integrates straight into your HubSpot account
😎 Slick command palette of course
for the past four months I've been living a double life, interning in software/product
@CommandBar
and exploring venture
@envisionaccel
and
@CowboyVC
here's why I did it, how I managed it, and what I learned:
“I love that we’re all included in everything we’re doing … everyone comes together — whether you’re in sales, marketing, or engineering — to execute and contribute to the company mission.”
Don't call it a comeback!
Command palettes may have origins in the 60s, but they are more popular today than ever.
What's driving their surging popularity?
Let's take a look at the past, present, and future of the command palette
Have you ever turned yourself into a 🐶 or a 🦁 on
@Snapchat
?
Lenses was the OG AR feature that took the world by storm back in 2015.
@Soengle
, Product Design Lead at
@Snap
shares the inside scoop on our latest Happy Paths episode!
🎧
"Sick turtleneck you got there, did you buy that with the $20k bonus we gave you for tripling our conversion rate?"
-Your boss 2 weeks after you start using CommandBar
64.1 percent of CommandBar end users have used at least one keyboard shortcut.
Does your app need keyboard shortcuts though? What makes a good set of shortcuts?
Read on for data-derived advice…
Trying a new calendar app just because it comes with a well designed command palette.
It's such a game change for productivity. cmd+k all the things! 💪
Many companies ignore UX writing.
But UX copy can make the difference between sky-high churn or a 10/10 experience users share with their colleagues.
Here's how to do it well (with examples):
Dark mode — meme feature or will adding it to your product drive real benefits?
If you’re mulling taking the plunge into the dark abyss, here are some things to keep in mind 🧵
For our latest onboarding deep dive, we 🎁 unbox
@Algolia
🎁
Join us and step through the first few minutes in the product, what it looks like, and how it makes you feel.
Some great takeaways in dealing with onboarding complexity ↓
What’s the point of a GUI if a command can get the job done faster?
The prospect of using natural language to control software is on the horizon.
But will the GUI survive the LLM meteor strike?
We consider what happens when the GUI meets AI
👉
This week on Happy Paths, the design genius behind 📢 Twitter spaces 📢:
@mayagpatterson
.
— How Spaces pre-dates the pandemic
— Learning from Clubhouse
— Designing against abuse and space takeovers
— Future of social audio
— Shipping fast without doing harm
Listen here 👇
If you’ve ever used Slack from the toilet (guilty), you know that mobile UX is becoming more important, even in B2B. Less patient users on smaller screens means it’s extra hard, too.
UX has come a long way, but why has time stood still on mobile UX?
👇
“Laika users love using CommandBar to seamlessly navigate the platform ... And a big plus: it’s actually fun to use.” — Taj Sangha, Senior Product Manager at
@LaikaHQ
FAQ autopilot options in ✨ HelpHub ✨
(Inspired by
@Tesla
)
🤖 Autopilot: Write FAQs → get semantic search for free
🤖 ➕ Enhanced autopilot: FAQs that write themselves
🤖 ➕ ➕ Full-self driving (still in beta): FAQs generated on the fly from user questions
The OG cmd+k: Superhuman
@gauravvohra1
on the origins of the legendary Superhuman Command interface
— The first command palette in Superhuman
— Why cmd+k as the shortcut?
— Meme features
— Should every app have cmd+k?
Listen here:
Budget cuts layoffs... Companies can't afford petty product-eng conflicts anymore.
When you understand engineers, you'll have less conflict and stress while building better products.
And what better way to learn how engineers think than to listen to a world-class technical
It is a truth universally acknowledged... that every social network, for the rest of time, will include
#hashtags
.
On the latest episode of Happy Paths, hear from
@chrismessina
(the most interesting man on the internet) about how he birthed the hashtag into existence with a
“[After meeting] our awesome founding team and testing out our product for myself, joining seemed like a no-brainer … During my first week here, I had the chance to interview another candidate for our sales team! Talk about diving in quickly!”
proud b2b founder moment 💫
broke out the ruler to confirm that commandbar is now the highest-rated vendor in digital adoption
(this is the only moment where I will ever self-identify as being in the "digital adoption" business)
🚴🏻♂️
This week I’ve been wrapping up the second phase of work for
@CommandBar
– this time, I helped redesign their documentation and some other fun pages!
Before + After ⚡️