UserEcho improve projects together

UserEcho - Service organizing feedback to your customers


What is under the cut?

• Why we decided to create UserEcho?
• How to run?
• Highlights for the past 9 months
• Distinctive features
• Plans

Why we decided to create UserEcho

Our team is engaged in various developments already decent time. Previously, we had experience in creating projects that brought a certain profit, but we constantly wanted to create a project in which a large bias would be directed to the usefulness of the project for users. In the process of finding solutions to improve the service of current projects, we realized that we lack a system for conveniently collecting ideas from our current users. Understanding that such a system is useful to almost every site on the Internet, we decided to dwell on this idea. At that time there were already similar services, but you can always do more interesting things, find how to differ qualitatively from others. We decided to pay close attention to the following parts:

1. Rapid implementation and reengineering of current functionality

   After the emergence of ideas began to explore the Internet for the presence of competitors. We found some good options, but their problem was a slow response to requests from users to finalize the functionality. Users left a lot of interesting ideas that safely hung without implementation and discussion. It seemed that project owners do not seek to develop their product, or they do it slowly. We have the goal of continuous development in the same stream with the ideas and wishes of those who use our product.
   ')
   

2. Strive to make servic more simple

   While this is tight, new chips and various requests are constantly appearing, but we are trying.
   
   

3. Make the service more accessible

   The service has implemented a free tariff plan, which includes functionality sufficient for most projects. For non-commercial projects that seek to help other people or provide free open source software, we decided to provide a special tariff plan for free.
   
   

How to start - from the moment of the idea to the launch of the project took 60 days

1. Planned

   Identified approximate functionality and painted all the obvious subtasks for UE 1.0 turned out 210 points. Later we reduced them to 165 in order to meet the deadline and moved the less important tasks to start in UE 1.1.
   
   

2. Determined with the timing and platform

   At the time when it was decided to start developing the project, 60 days remained until the new 2010. Therefore, we decided that we should start the project by the new year. Despite the short time we decided to take a chance and use the new for us platform Django, as a result we learned a lot of new things and combined the pleasure of studying it with the creation of the project.
   
   

3. Went according to plan

   Well, then sleepless nights until the new year :) They did the project mostly in the evenings and nights. Everything was done on its own and at its own expense, without attracting investment from outside. Basic costs: server fees, domains, SSL certificate. Later, they added Amazon cloud service. At that time, costs were easily covered by profit from other projects. As we planned, the project was ready a couple of days before the new year and launched on New Year's Eve.

Highlights for the past 9 months

• Now our service is used by 1007 projects, 3'207 users have left 6'859 ideas and have voted 129'834 times
• Since launch for UserEcho, users have left 324 ideas and comments, of which 216 have been implemented or corrected.
• For conducting tasks on the UE, we used Redmine now use UserEcho
• At the end of March, a project came with a large audience of 500,000 active users.
• April there was a project with> 1'000'000 visits per day
• 6 months after the launch, we went to self-sufficiency (in our understanding, this is payment of all current expenses on the project, although we do not pay our salary)
• August DDOS attack on the UE, attacked 27'546 bots within two days, it took 9 hours to develop an antidote, we managed
• In September, Rambler came to us
• Added a bunch of features

here is our blog here everything is detailed from the very beginning of blog.userecho.com

Distinctive features

1. We take care that there are no duplicates - When a user types a review text, the system automatically analyzes previous reviews for similarities and shows similar ones in a relevant order. This minimizes the repetition of requests, and allows some users to quickly receive an answer to their question if it has already been set and answered.
   
   
2. Quick registration in the project using OpenId - Users can quickly register using their accounts from Twitter, Facebook, Google and other popular services.
   
   
3. Private forums and private discussions - You can create a forum for internal use, or discuss any feedback between project owners, regardless of users.
   
   
4. Extensive structuring capabilities of the feedback database - Reviews are divided by type (IDEA, QUESTION, ERROR, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS). You can have an arbitrary number of categories. Supports the creation and assignment of tags. There is a convenient and fast mechanism for searching and filtering reviews.
   
   
5. Multilingual reviews - We have implemented multilingualism not only of the site interface, but of the feedback files themselves. This is true for sites that work with a multilingual audience. Now there is no need to create a forum for each language group in their language. It is enough to specify the transfer options for feedback. This eliminates the duplication of ideas between language versions, saves time and gives a more complete picture of user needs. Currently we support Russian, English, German and Danish languages.
   
   
6. Support for sites that use HTTPS - The widget code can be used on sites using SSL encryption.
   
   
7. Quick review editing - We try to minimize the number of user transitions to perform various operations, we actively use AJAX.
   
   

There are a lot of chips and everything can be seen here userecho.com/features (although not everything is there, we don’t have time to enter it :))

What awaits UserEcho in the near future

• further active development of the project taking into account the wishes of users
• Single Signon for transparent authorization (already tested with one of our clients)
• add API for tighter integration with sites
• integration with major GTD systems and CMS platforms

Service site userecho.com
An example support forum where you can submit your ideas and suggestions to feedback.userecho.com
Register userecho.com/project/new