WEARESTABL.COM — a new direction
To recap, Stabl has changed somewhat.
The reason for this is wholly valid and in this blog post I’ll be explaining why.
Our initial iOS app took a hell of a lot of time to make due to several reasons, but the main one being that I, personally, didn’t have the expertise and skill set to push it forward. I largely relied on another member of the team — who has since left the project — to fill in the blanks for me, and she had a full-time and extremely stressful day job. Downtime mattered to her and working on the Stabl app wasn’t something she wanted to do after a hard day’s grind.
However, the main reason for our pivot lay directly as a result of talking to our newsletter readers, our true users. We asked them to fill in a questionnaire which would go back to the basics: how important are podcast recommendations to you in everyday life?; Who do you want recommendations from?; Is the time factor a major influence in what podcasts you listen to?; Is it important to see what other people are listening to at any given point in time?
The results were clear.
Despite its downfall, our iOS app was a significant achievement however the answers we found in our survey clearly told us something. A vast proportion didn’t understand the appeal of our core service, which was, to deliver podcast recommendations based on the amount of time available to the user.
Here’s a breakdown of what we found:
- 82% of people we asked rated podcast recommendations as important.
- However, only a stark 7.4% rated searching podcasts by ‘time available’ is as their highest priority.
- A whopping 80.5% wanted recommendations from a variety of different sources, not particularly from one “expert” or even a group of friends.
- 70.2% liked the idea of a stream of daily recommendations, available to view at one’s convenience.
- And, 67% would possibly be interested in hearing exclusive previews of shows of interest.
So, that’s what we decided to build.
To do this, I taught myself some basic code (for those interested, I went with these guys — highly recommended!) and set to work.
Our new website basically streams daily the best podcast recommendations from a variety of different sources. We’re starting small with several popular podcast newsletters, Facebook groups, newspapers which feature podcast reviews regularly and, of course, existing Stabl readers. In time, we hope to build the site out, and make it even more user-friendly with several more features. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy our new direction and find your new favourite show.
And if you have any recommendations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
