NotePlan 3 finished being
#2
for Sunday with 399 upvotes (right now). This got me into the ProductHunt newsletter and a good jump in traffic from Sunday till today.
It took me at least 3 versions to get the app there - or I was just lucky this time. 🤷♂️
Test Driven Development in real life:
1. Writes a function as part of a bigger feature
2. Writes tests for that function
3. Notices this function is not needed for that bigger feature
🫠
Done, that was fast and easy, you can't have enough feedback!
It opens a form with just two questions, so it's easy to submit and if you left an email with NotePlan it includes that automatically.
Week is planned ✅
Web Version ready for public beta. Finishing Stripe integration. Solving the big problems in the native version by enhancing filters. Some import improvements.
Love the A/B test feature of AppStoreConnect. Trying right now a few variations of my new screenshots for NotePlan. Just started a test to check if the color gray or orange converts better.
I like gray more, but I'll trust the numbers.
Wow, it amazes me how well
@mijustin
's email template works he shared here:
We switched that on just two days ago and getting a steady stream of interesting conversations.
This feature was fun to build! And highly requested, or rather expected to exist.
Now NotePlan can create events on your calendar from the timeblocks you have defined for the day.
Progress update in updating the screenshots for
@NotePlanApp
:
1. We updated just the first 3-4 screens across all devices so we can upload them fast (like an MVP).
2. We are running A/B tests with variations to see what's converting better.
3. New drafts for the other screens
Deleted Instagram and Youtube from my phone yesterday. Already feeling more motivated to work on NotePlan.
Everything is more fun if you take your time. The doom scrolling of Instagram makes you quite impatient.
Some new experiments!
Improving the filters I thought why not show empty days and add the ability to drag tasks between days?
This way it's even easier to re-schedule tasks:
💪 Featured in a couple of countries in "Events You Might Like" and "New Apps, Features and Content".
And the effect on the impressions and product page views on the right.
@thekitze
Here's the structure:
- Weekly goals at the top
- Today's plan written out as part of journaling
- Batched tasks with titles
- Split between "work" and "personal" stuff (top and bottom)
- Stuff that's important is flagged (in red)
Week 47 is planned!
I haven't finished all goals from last week, and I think I planned my goals too concrete. Made it more abstract for this week, so there's wiggle room.
Last week I realized how important churn / retention is and implemented some Analytics.
🔑 Found out that CloudKit encrypts assets. So if we want to have notes encrypted in
@NotePlanApp
, we just need to save them as assets.
In the next beta: Enable "Save note content as encrypted asset" to get encryption.
Proof:
Easiest way to do a monthly review in NotePlan:
1. Setup a filter to show only the completed tasks of last month
2. In Split View, open last months note.
Now scroll slowly through the days and take note of your achievements, what could have been better, some stats, etc.
Added the first step for an invite system for the web version of NotePlan to enable collaboration.
Here you see how I add a user ID to a teamspace. This automatically gives that user access to the teamspace.
Next steps:
- Allow inviting by email
- Add 'copy link' invite step
SwiftUI with GitHub Copilot, what a ride, but got it done.
You have to open Xcode and VSCode side by side and I'm constantly switching, but Copilot is so useful to help you auto-complete whole blocks of code in seconds.
Saves time!
This was a productive Saturday!
⏱️ The timeline on iOS is almost ready for beta testing.
At first you will only be able to see your events and timeblocks like on Mac, but gradually adding drag & drop.
Very cool,
@NotePlanApp
being featured on the U.S. AppStore (iOS) in the list "Apps You Need This Week".
But you surely need it for more than just this week ;)
Goals for week 44: Set!
This week I'm adding a "Remember" bullet list to my weekly note. This list has no tasks, just things to remember following during the week.
Inspired by Paul Grahams essay, I want to keep remembering to follow my curiosity when building NotePlan!
“NotePlan has become […] the single place that I can capture notes, tasks, and reference materials. During my working day I used to use OneNote for notes, Todoist for tasks, and DevonThink […].
NotePlan replaces them all.”
This review made my day! ☀️😊
NotePlan is one of this weeks favorite in the German App Store thanks to widgets which we introduced in the latest release.
With one of the note alternative icons which you see being A/B tested here.
My favorite part about NotePlan's Discord community is the feature brainstorming. By far my most exciting part of the day!
I'm taking so many notes my brain is on 🔥
The ideas are sometimes so awesome, I think "How did I miss that?".
In-App events are approved and ready, set to publish tomorrow.
And I filled Apples "Tell us about your app or game" form, which I don't do often. This time I added a presentation and a loom video to explain the new features and why they are relevant.
🤞
Got my 16" MacBook M1 Pro yesterday.
Coded 5h non-stop today in the office, all on battery and when I came home it was still 62%. 🤯
Not to speak of the sheer speed of compiling and "quickly testing something".
It's 2 days after releasing a new version of my app on the AppStore and shipping a popular new feature.
Here's the marketing I did:
- Tweet & Discord message
- Newsletter (~10k subscribers)
- Copy email to my sub Reddit
- Show "what's new" screen in-app
- AppStore changelog
Filter view integration is coming to iOS (beta soon available)!
You can switch between timeline and filters - just like on Mac - which allows you to manage tasks across days and notes without having to open them. Control everything from today's note for example.
- Have an idea
Here's how I capture feedback these days.
Was sick of switching between apps, so made a chrome extension to pump the exact feedback I need into Trello.
"[...] you've gathered such a nice bunch of people here. to me that says it all".
It's sometimes hard to keep up 🫠, but I'm loving this respectful and constructive community that tries to figure out with me how to build
@NotePlanApp
.
Discord link:
✅ Weekly goals
- Making good progress on integrating Supabase as a third-party database for sharing and non-Apple users
- Community convinced me to look into widgets for iOS. The biggest challenge is to figure out how to get the data into the widget.
I'm slowly figuring out how the App Store works:
1. You need downloads, but that's not enough
2. You **need** reviews, so use that review prompt
3. More downloads -> More reviews = better rankings
4. Creatives and SearchAds can help with downloads
Week 49 is planned!
This week we want to release an update to the web version, which has finally now a command bar and dragging notes into other folders.
Last week we have also implemented a new native version which we need to clean up and release this week.
📰 Just finished writing: "How I manage parallel projects and stay sane".
Learn how I apply James Clear's “Four Laws of Behavior Change” to get things done I don't want to do, but have to, and how I beat the Zeigarnik Effect.
... with NotePlan 😀
▶️
I had some time to record a video this weekend showing you in detail how I use Zettelkasten with NotePlan to develop the app.
Besides the Zettelkasten, you also see how I baked in agile/scrum project-management into my notes.
Enjoy!
New weekly goals. Last week we couldn't get it quite finished, but made good progress!
Widgets for the native version are added as the new features for this release and the web version supports basic regular notes and calendar events now.
You are angry why your feature requests is still not implemented years after you suggested it?
If it's B2C, there are probably 1000+ other non-trivial requests that might take hours if not days to implement.
It's overwhelming.
"The reason people get good ideas in the shower is because it's the only time during the day when most people are away from screens long enough to think clearly.
The lesson is not to take more showers, but rather to make more time to think."
-
@JamesClear
Plan for week 48 is done!
We made good progress on the web version, but it's not quite ready for an update, some more work this week.
- The MVP of "teamspaces" is almost ready, re-focusing on core features after that.
- Finished an update for the native version, releasing soon.
Looks like NotePlan 3 on the AppStore got into the "Be the First to Try These Apps" list in the U.S. 🥳.
Finally! A small step, but bumps up the impressions.
Week 46 is planned! And yours?
Last week I've learned that I got to focus more on the churn rate. The average for this year has been 6.9%, which is still too high.
The ideal rate for B2C is 5% and that's what I'm aiming for.
Another feedback highlight:
Why did you cancel?
“It has more features than I need, I’ll use Apple Notes and Reminders”
What can we improve?
“Add the following new feature…”
🤦♂️
📧 How to send canceled and expired users on the AppStore emails?
This is what I have set up so far:
1. A webhook between
@RevenueCat
(RC) and
@onesignal
(OS) to get the latest status updates of a subscription
2. In OneSignal I setup segments with automated messages.
Today was quite a marketing day!
- Recorded a video of a new feature (explaining how to use it, giving examples and use cases)
- Sent newsletter for an update (with that video)
- Wrote a help article on how to use the new feature
- Replied to questions
- Tweets
Building new features and talking about them gets good open rates!
Trying to release a new version every ~6 weeks and always send a newsletter talking about features, how to use them + gifs and videos.
The response is great and always earns new reviews.
Yesterday I turned 34, here’s what I wish I would have done earlier:
1. Read more books
2. Take a note about every idea
3. Take advice with a grain of salt
4. Setting high expectations
Let me explain…
Finally found some way to get GPT-4 into NotePlan. It's on purpose still a bit hidden, but was extremely easy to add.
Let's see what people do wit that.
This one took a bit longer, since we also started working on a web version and took some time to take care of the sync code, which is always very tricky (loooots of anxiety driven testing).
🗞️ v3.9.2 now available on the AppStore!
Highlights (Mac & iOS):
🔔 Get notified when a timeblock starts
— Stay on track with notifications
📧 Send meeting notes with a tap/click
— Email meeting notes right from NotePlan
Some people seem to be really angry if they can’t use your app for free. So angry that they go to the reviews section and take the time to leave you a one-star rating.
In hindsight my product roadmap and pivots w/ NotePlan looked like this:
0. Free beta / MVP to "validate" my idea.
1. Launch NotePlan 1 as $15 one-time payment.
2. Upgrade to NotePlan 2 as another $30 payment.
3. Launch of NotePlan 3 with subscription pricing.
-> 4 🚀 Launches
SwiftUI Update
- Managed to move what I have written for iOS directly to Mac.
- Had to make a few adaptations, but it worked surprisingly well!
- Wiring up the UI with Swift logic was also easy enough.
How to manage feature requests where you end up adding preferences?
Like customizing the behavior of an existing feature.
Adding every preference request would make the app more and more complicated over time.
Any ideas?
On a daily basis, the most difficult part of building an app is to stay focused and not get distracted by all the good ideas users are throwing into your way.
💎 Shiny object syndrom in action