New Total Shares Counter feature. And no more badge!
First things first. As we don’t post this type of product-related content very often, we’d just like to take a minute to thank you for all for the valuable feedback and warm love that we have been getting in the last couple of months. We’ve been growing quickly and quadrupled the number of websites using GetSocial during February and already doubled that in the first days of March. Plus, it’s really important to us to hear from you. We believe that the only way for us to grow as a product and as a company is by listening to the feedback coming from the ones who rely on us to achieve their goals.
Like I said, we’ve received a lot of feedback in the last few weeks. Dozens contact us every day with problems, concerns, needs and ideas. We take this very seriously and get together to discuss the most common issues. These can vary in relevance, frequency or even priority, but there was something which was bothering you (and therefore us) more than anything else: our branding in the social sharing bars. Remember this?
We used to include our badge in everything we provided for free, as a marketing tradeoff. We were expecting it to bring a lot of qualified traffic back to our website who would then become new users and customers. Although it did have a relevant outcome for our business, it was doing more harm than good. So, in our latest product update we decided to remove it completely. Not make it optional, not make it sexier, just completely removed it.
Our thought was: if our users want to become our customers, it shouldn’t be to remove ‘in-your-face’ advertising. It should be for the value we deliver to them. And value is the key word here. GetSocial should focus more on developing valuable experiences and features for our users and features that contribute directly to their goals and their needs.
Getting back to the feedback that we had received, we noticed another pattern rising. People wanted an aggregated share counter. Of course, it was important to show how many shares each network had, but they wanted more, they wanted a big counter. So we did it.
I’d like to introduce you to our Big Total Shares Counter feature. I know I’m biased, but I have to be honest. I think it looks great. You can see it here on our blog on the top and bottom of each post and in the floating share bar. It is a Pro feature but it’s one that people are happy to pay for as we have seen so many upgrades from folks on our free plan since we launched it earlier this week.
There are times that we want this business to be … well … a business. But businesses are made from and with the people who use it and pay for it. It’s for and with you that we work. It’s with you that we learn. And it’s with you that we grow.
We sincerely thank you for all the feedback you’ve been providing us and hope that you continue to be awesomely proactive. This keeps us moving forward every day.
Cheers from the GS team.