Welcome back to another edition KyLeads product updates.

These are my favorite posts to write because they give you a glimpse into the work we’re doing behind the scenes.

They’re also a way for us to keep an open record of our progress over time.

It seems like just last week when we were talking about our new UI. Now, we’re focused on implementing exit popups and a few other cool features I won’t reveal quite yet.

I digress.

Let’s dive into the updates we’ve delivered this time around.

Integrations

We’re always adding new integration and this period is no different.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a popular email marketing tool used by tens of thousands of businesses around the world. I’ve used it on some of my other projects in the past as well.

It was an obvious choice when we were deciding which services to integrate next.

The GetResponse integration allows you to choose whether or not you’d like to send a confirmation email to your new contacts before they’re added to your mailing list.

This is an important consideration because of the new laws around data privacy. Now, you can be compliant at the click of a button.

Don’t forget, KyLeads comes with a way to show your privacy policy as well as collect consent before people submit their contact information.

Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular email marketing software that we’ve decided to integrate with after a few requests.

Of course, you can send newsletters and set up a few advanced automations. If you’re in the market for an email marketing service then it’s a solid choice to check out.

Anyways, we now have a direct integration with Campaign Monitor which you can use to send your contacts and initiate nurturing and marketing campaigns while increasing revenue.

Shopify

Shopify has been a bit of an elephant in the room for us. We’ve wanted to do the integration for a while but haven’t gotten around to it because other things have taken precedence.

The good news is that we’ve finally been able to take care of it. You can now integrate with Shopify by pasting the embed code for your quizzes or popups on specific pages. You can now use your quizzes and popups to increase your Ecommerce revenue.

Templates

Templates make the world go round when it comes to creating high converting popups and quizzes. We’re constantly creating more so you have a large selection of templates to choose from. In this update, we’ve added templates for both quizzes and popups.

Quizzes

We decided to go wide with these templates because there are so many different industries we serve. There are just under a dozen templates ready to go when you want to create a quiz and we’ll be adding more over the course of the next few months.

If you have any that you’d like for us to create then let us know. We’re open to any and all suggestions.

Popups

We also created a series of popup templates to complement the templates we had before. This is a smaller update but takes advantage of the popup types in our inventory.

Now, each popup type has multiple templates you can take advantage of. All of them are created with an eye to conversion best practices.

Again, if you would like to see a certain type of template or design then let us know and we’ll do our best to create it.

Thank you page customizations

Before the thank you page was basic at best and it would’ve been in your best interest to just redirect users to another page.

We didn’t like that so we’ve decided to go back and look at what someone would want to accomplish with a thank you page.

We’ve expanded the way you can edit your thank you page and given you more control of the experience your visitors have.

We’re, of course, not done. We plan on turning the thank you page into another opportunity to get a conversion out of new contacts by adding a one-click opt-in option.

That’s not quite under development but be on the lookout for it. It’ll be done sooner rather than later.

Squashing bugs

The more complex software gets, the more bugs need to be found and squashed. We spent a lot of time addressing bugs that were affecting some of our features and the user experience. I’ll just mention a quick list without going into too much detail.

Split testing

While it worked, it left a bit to be desired. We’ve streamlined the split testing interface and reporting dashboard so you get the most important info at a glance.

Quiz answers options

These were a series of cosmetic changes that make the quiz look better for the end users. You won’t have to do anything differently because these are built into the core of KyLeads now.

Before, when you uploaded an image for the quiz image answers, there was no real way to understand whether the upload was successful. This was a UI mistake from our end but it’s been taken care of. Now, when you upload an image it shows the name of the uploaded file to indicate the upload was successful.

Real-time edits

This was a major sticking point with both forms and quizzes. Changes made didn’t reflect in real time. You had to save your changes and reload the page before they’d reflect. That was far from ideal and cause a lot of confusion. Now, as you’re making changes you can see how your form will look.

It saves you time and cuts down on confusion.

Clearer UI for popups

There was a slight issue when you chose a popup template with images. It wasn’t immediately clear that you needed to click the image in order to change it. We’ve added microcopy that addressed the issue. Now, you can get in and get out with much less confusion.

Other news

I wish everything we did at KyLeads revolved around shipping the latest and greatest features. It doesn’t. There are other things we had to do that pertains to the business of business which I’d like to share.

Hiring developers

Fortunately, I didn’t try to hire developers myself like last time. Instead, I handed over the part where we vetted skills to someone else and only jumped in when it was a matter of culture fit and work ethic. It seems to be working well.

We brought on a few more developers over the last few weeks and are trying to get them acclimatized to the way we work.

We’ll be able to get features through the door much faster than we’ve been able to in the past. These updates posts will be much bulkier once they’re all the way ramped up.

Even though we’ve had a bit more success hiring developers this time around, it has still been a challenge striking the balance between people that can grow with our organization and those who are already skilled and can take over leadership positions.

Survey UI

We’re a bit behind with shipping the UI (and by extension the development) of the surveys aspect of KyLeads.

We don’t have a UI developer in house and had issues with the person who initially designed our app UI (unreliable is an understatement).

This time around, we went with another freelancer and he’s proven to be unreliable as well. It seems we have bad luck when it comes to finding a good UI designer.

Anyways, here are a few screenshots of what the Survey UI will look like.

It’s coming along nicely but as a founder, it’s never fast enough. I predict we’ll be done with the UI by the end of the month and we’ll start development on the Survey’s beta soon after that.

Conclusion

We hit a lot of our targets this period but were unable to take care of everything because of a lot of unforeseen bugs. We’re steadily working towards it and in the next update we’ll have more integrations as well as exit popups taken care of.

Thanks for supporting us and taking the time to read about our progress.

It’s been a few months since we shared a product update. Part of that is because we’ve been busy working on KyLeads and wanted to save some of that goodness until now.

The other part is because we were head down improving KyLeads.

I’ve been busy squashing bugs with an oversized mallet and I’m proud to say we’ve got most (if not all of them). Unfortunately, bugs have a way of sneaking up on you when you’ve got a product you’re actively making better.

I digress.

Apart from making KyLeads faster, more intuitive, and bug-free, we shipped a lot of features people were requesting.

This made us happy.

I’ll keep it short in this post, but if you’ve not done so already, go ahead and start your free trial so you can experience it firsthand.

Integrations

There was an integration we kept getting requests for so we had no choice but to ship it. We also added a new one for good measure. In the next development cycle, we’re focusing heavily on shipping integrations for multiple email marketing services et al.

Aweber

Aweber is an email marketing service that allows you to manage contacts, send newsletters, and set up automations to engage your audience. It’s used by thousands of businesses around the world.

Now, you can connect to Aweber with your KyLeads account and send contacts to lists you’ve set up in Aweber as soon as they sign up. It’s as simple as clicking a button or two and logging in.

That’s right, you don’t need to actually copy and paste any code. I know, perfect.

Gist

Gist is a combination of email marketing, customer support, and sales messaging. If you’re familiar with Intercom then you understand what Gist brings to the table.

We’ve integrated with Gist using their tags feature so whenever a new contact is captured using KyLeads, you can append a unique tag and send them over to gist. Once inside your Gist account, you can set that tag to trigger emails and all the other interesting stuff Gist does.

To connect the two accounts, all you need to do is copy your account key from Gist and paste it into KyLeads. Unfortunately, this one requires a bit of copy and paste.

Templates

Yes, we’ve added more templates to KyLeads for your popups (we’re not done though). Now, you can choose from over a dozen templates and customize them to create a popup that’s truly unique.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to add templates for both the popups and quizzes so you’ll be able to get in and out faster and focus on turning leads into customers.

In addition to the templates, we adjusted the way the forms appeared on mobile and desktop.

Previously, the mobile forms took up too much of the screen and were borderline noncompliant with Google interstitial guidelines.

Now, we’ve made sure they’re compliant with Google interstitial guidelines so you don’t have to worry about a penalty.

Finally, the popups just look better. They’re bordering on what I’d call sexy but I’m not sure that’s the right word to describe them so I’ll just call them good looking.

Split testing

The ability to test your forms and quizzes is important because you never know what’ll work best until you try. Right from the beginning, we’d built a split testing engine that let you test every element of your forms and quizzes to drive up your conversions.

There was only one challenge, the reports were limited. You could only see split test reports like this.

While there was nothing wrong with that and it gave you information at a glance, it didn’t allow you to clearly compare results.

We decided to go back and add a table inside reports so you know exactly how much your conversions have improved with your tests (or reduced).

The same process applies to both quizzes and popups.

Customization

You’ve always been able to customize your quizzes and popups.

Now, you’re able to customize them even further.

With quizzes, you’re able to go deep into the lead capture page customization options. It’s possible to add a separate subheading, change the background colors, and add GDPR consent checkbox.

For the popups, you can choose how the image appears on the popup and choose separate fonts so it more closely matches your brand.

Other development news

A lot of our time this development cycle was spent upgrading our application as a whole. We’ve succeeded in making it incredibly stable so it can withstand anything you throw at it (in a relative sense of course).

Apart from that, we ended up spending a lot of our time squashing bugs. As a wise man once said, it doesn’t matter how strong the house if it’s built on a weak foundation.

While we would’ve loved to do nothing but ship features, they would’ve broken under pressure if we didn’t make sure our foundation was strong.

Now that we’ve gotten that taken care off, we’re charging full steam ahead.

What’s next

Over the next few months, we’ll be working on integrating with a lot more third-party tools as well as bringing you more insightful reports.

That’s not what we’re most excited about.

We’ve officially started development of our survey platform which will bring our total products up to three (quizzes, popups, and surveys).

We’re going to continue working on expanding the targeting and display options for popups.

Here’s a partial list of what you can expect in the next update we write:

• Exit intent popups
• Popup surveys
• Popup quizzes
• More templates for quizzes and popups
• At least half a dozen integrations
• Deeper quiz reports
• So much more

If you’d like to see something implemented then leave a comment or shoot us a message.

It’s been a few months since we launched our beta and less than a month since we launched a KyLeads V1.

We’ve been quiet about exactly what improvements and changes we’ve made.

It’s not that we’ve been hanging out on a beach in Bali, it’s because the updates were complex and involved a lot of moving pieces.

We wanted to minimize the bugs and stabilize the software before making an announcement.

Today, we’re removing the veil and showing you exactly what we’ve been working on over the last few months.

Let’s dive in.

A complete overhaul of our dashboard

When we launched our MVP, we wanted to get it out the door and collect feedback on whether or not it was what people wanted.

We validated it and got a lot of feedback from our users. One of the biggest points we made sure to address was the way KyLeads looked and felt.

To put it simply, it was ugly and a bit confusing. It hurt the experience and people who would’ve otherwise used it decided to pass.

That was a big wakeup call for us.

We spent a lot of time making sure that never happened again. Now, the dashboard looks like this.

When you log in, you can see exactly how many contacts you’ve gathered from your quizzes and forms. In addition to that, it breaks down how many are coming from quizzes or opt-in forms.

The donut in the top right shows the percentage breakdown between quizzes and forms.

As you scroll further down the page, it shows you the top performing forms and quizzes based on contacts.

When you log into your KyLeads dashboard, you’ll have a bird’s eye view of your most important metrics.

New Opt-in Form Building Experience

We also overhauled the popup builder experience. Before, it was a bunch of clicking around trying to figure out how everything fit together.

While you were creating your opt-in form, you couldn’t see what it looked like.

Now, there’s a preview pane while making your form as well as clear menu items that let you edit specific portions of your form.

You can go deep into customizing every aspect of your opt-in form. Add background images, change colors, set the display options, and so much more.

We’re nowhere near done. 2019 will see more improvements but I won’t speak on them now – stay tuned.

New Quiz building experience

We also looked at the way you build quizzes.

In the old UI, some of the elements were hidden and you couldn’t find them unless you looked at our help docs.

That situation was far from ideal.

We’ve rebuilt the quiz creation process from the ground up.

After you’ve set up a custom start page (optional) you can click around to whatever section of your quiz you’d like to customize first.

We recommend creating the quiz by following the steps we laid out.

For example, you need to create outcomes before you create questions because the questions are mapped to the outcomes you create.

After that, you can proceed to customize the other aspects of your quiz. In essence, we’ve brought the hidden elements to light and made it easy to create quizzes.

No help documents required.

Quiz image answers

Image answers for the quizzes was a highly requested feature.

You asked and we answered.

You can now set up image answers for your quizzes in addition to text answers.

When choosing the answer type, just select image instead of text.

After that, click on “choose file” and select the image from your computer’s hard drive. When you add the image, map it to an outcome and save your question.

It’s the same general process for the text questions.

This is especially useful for directing people to Ecommerce products which are driven by high quality visuals. Try out making a quiz that has both text answers and image answers to engage your audience.

 

Deeper customization of the lead capture page for quizzes

This is where the money is made so you need to be able to control every aspect of the experience.

We dove deep into the lead capture page customization. You can, of course, turn it off. In addition to that, you can now choose the fonts, colors, headings and other elements.

You can also choose to make your privacy policy visible and add an explicit statement and checkbox so you’re in compliance with the GDPR regulations which were recently introduced.

Let us know how you think of the lead capture page and whether or not you want even more customization options.

Clearer reports

Reports make the conversion world go round.

Without them, there’s no way to tell what’s working and what isn’t.

We reimagined what our reports looked like so you can understand them at each step.

For forms, you can see total views, contacts, and conversion rate.

You can also see how many contacts you gained over a certain period.

For quizzes, you can drill down even deeper.

You can see the total views, the number of starts, the completions, contacts, and conversion rate.

You can also see the percentage of people who answered each question.

Going forward, we’re going to drill even deeper into the information you can uncover about how people took your quiz.

You’ll be able to see the percentage of people that answered specific questions and what they answered. That way, you can understand where people are dropping off and what that’s doing to your conversion rate.

Contacts view

Before, you could only see your contacts as relates to individual forms or quizzes.

Now, we implemented a contacts view that lets you see all your leads from both quizzes and forms.

You can also sort the views between quizzes and forms.

You have the ability to delete duplicate contacts and even edit the contact record if there’s an obvious mistake like a missing letter or symbol.

Easier access to help center and live chat

We’ve added a help center menu option to every page of the application.

It’s easy to see and access so if you get stuck, you can refer to the articles there.

If that doesn’t help, you can also access the chat widget in the bottom right corner.

If you get slowed down at any point, we’re never more than a few clicks away.

Let us know if you want any more ways to reach us.

Reimagined the account setting page

Finally, we’ve made it easier to manage your account in KyLeads.

It should be easy to upgrade, downgrade, or add extra details to your account. Now, it’s possible to do that.

From the setting page, you can add your websites, integrations, billing details, upgrade/downgrade, and see your billing history.

You also have control of your password settings here.

With just a few clicks, you can access and change the important details of your account.

Add your address, we like to send surprises in the mail.

What’s next?

We’re charging ahead with development. Next on our list for the short term is to create templates for both the forms and quizzes. They’re already in progress and will be here soon.

In addition to that, we’re expanding the integrations ecosystem so you can send your lead data wherever you want it to go.

Let us know if you have any suggestions or thoughts and we’ll do our best to add it to our ecosystem.