Proposal to integrate a product-analytics app like Pendo

Workstream Discussion Product (features & roadmap)
1

I’m working on a proposal to integrate Pendo, a tool for product usage analytics that also includes user journey guidance, user communication, feedback, a/b testing, resource center, surveys, etc. Basically, it’s an all-in-one tool that will allow us to better understand how users are using our product, be able to better guide our users through new features and help them with feature discovery. We would also get a ton of data and be able to track user funnels (and drop off points) to optimize their experience and more. So, we can also look at Pendo as an alternate to Amplitude.

Some competitors I looked at:

•Chameleon

•Walk Me

•App Cues

•Stonly

•User Pilot

Ultimately, I think Pendo is the right choice for ShapeShift — and it’s the only one of these tool that has both web and mobile app support. As I’m putting together this proposal, I would love to hear any feedback from the community about this idea, and whether anyone has experience with any of the above mentioned tools and the value that they bring.

2

I don’t know enough about these systems to weigh in properly, but I appreciate you pushing this initiative forward .

If you are confident it’s the best solution, then I would be too!

Can you give an overview of its costs etc?

3

thanks for starting this proposal discussion !

Pendo is an incredible tool for product teams and I agree it’s the right choice. I think it will an essential tool for the product workstream to both guide users in-app as well as track KPIs and report them back to the community. It’s great that it works in both web and mobile too.

Looking forward to seeing your proposal with more information on pricing and how the benefits will be worth the investment.

4

Hello Foxes! Here is a preview of the Pendo proposal. I plan to have a call with the community to do a deeper dive on Weds the 15th at 3 pm MST. I will make sure we post an announcement and get it added to the shared calendar.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts/comments/questions. Thanks!

PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION

Summary:

This is a proposal to implement Pendo on the ShapeShift web app and mobile app. Pendo is an all-in-one tool that combines analytics and user guidance into one platform.

Motivation:

In centralized ShapeShift, we used a combination of analytical tools to track user data, create user segments, monitor funnels and more. In the DAO, it would save us costs and effort to implement one all-powerful tool like Pendo. Furthermore, in centralized ShapeShift we had a lot of areas where we lacked tracking between web and mobile and we relied on other teams to help us access and extract data. With Pendo, this would be solved. We will be able to see what happens across mobile and web as the information is segmented, easy to access, and comprehend. This also makes it more useful for our DAO structure (any team will be able to grab/review data without dependencies on another team). Furthermore, Pendo will give us the ability to create user onboardings, guided feature walk-thrus, a comprehensive user resource section, A/B testing, heatmaps and more—all without any engineering lift.

Abstract:

This proposal has been weeks in the making as a comprehensive comparison between Pendo and it’s competitors was done. Pendo came out on top because of the analytics they provide (allowing us to save $ by not needing amplitude or other analytic tools) and because it works seamlessly across web and mobile (we were unable to find another tool as robust as Pendo, that worked on web and mobile — many products are currently just web focused).

Here’s a chart about how Pendo compares to other leaders in the space:

https://global.discourse-cdn.com/standard10/uploads/foxcookieco/optimized/1X/831d5b04d12a362fcdcfb085b896f882a94b1169_2_624x500.png

What we’ll get with Pendo:

Product Analytics: We will be able to track usage across our products on both web and mobile. We have already implemented this on the web platform, as part of our discovery process and the data is already flowing (but we’re limited on time with our current trial period).

Sentiment Analytics: We will be able to gather data on how users feel about our products and features in real-time by serving NPS and polls directly in our apps.

In-App Guides: We will be able to deliver data-driven, personalized in-app communication. This will allow us to encourage desired behavior — from new feature adoption to personalized onboardings — with step-by-step guides across screens and devices. We’ll also be able to implement tooltips and a resource hub to deliver relevant info to our users when they need it most. This feature of Pendo will be incredibly important in helping our user retention efforts.

Furthermore, we have a lot of guided journeys already designed out, but they were de-prioritized in centralized ShapeShift because they required engineering efforts.

Feedback: We’ll be able to collect, centralize and prioritize product feedback. This will help us determine where to optimize our product and user experience for each segment. This will also help our support team understand how to help users through specific moments and may even cut down on support tickets.

We will have a presentation to the community (with the team from Pendo!) to do a deep dive into their product and be able to answer questions.

Specification

Installation

To install Pendo, it’s a snippet of code added to the website and an SDK added to our mobile app. We’ve added this to the current ShapeShift platform, and are already able to see analytics. We’ve seen no performance related issues from the web install.

Maintenance

The user guides, resource center and tooltip walk-thrus will be created and maintained by the Product Workstream. This will be a semi-large lift early on as we need to design and build out the onboardings, resource center and feature walk-thrus. However once they are set up, they will just need to be maintained as we make changes or updates to the products. Also, new walk-thrus, resources and tooltips will be added as new features roll out.

Reviewing Data

Analytics will be easy to access by all workstreams in the DAO, and as a Product Workstream, we’ll have regular meetings where we’ll share progress and go over analytics with the community.

Budget

Pendo is an all-in-one tool that will save us money as we won’t have to implement multiple tools to give us the same benefits. The annual cost is $58,000.

If we were to implement Amplitude, we’d be paying upwards of 40K annually just for the product analytics component. We also will save considerable development/engineering time, as we won’t be dependent on them to build out any of these pieces going forward, or require them to make changes. The Product Workstream will be able to handle everything.

Benefits

By using Pendo, we’ll have an all-in-one platform for tracking, analytics and creating guided user journeys (instead of paying for multiple platforms). We expect the initial setup to take several weeks to get all the guides and the resource center up and running. As mentioned above, all of that will be handled as part of the Product Workstream responsibilities. It will not require engineering efforts.

Retention is an important metric, and one that can be improved by using Pendo. By using Pendo, we’ll be able to take our user experience to the next level, guiding and engaging our users at the right moments, leading to better feature engagement and higher user retention.

New feature adoption rates will also be evaluated as a metric to measure success.

This is also the tool the product team we’ll use to track, analyze and report metrics back to the community.

Drawbacks

Pendo is not the cheapest solution out there. But, it’s an all-inclusive solution where the benefits outweigh the cost (especially if compared to pricing out several different tools that collectively would provide the same benefits). We’d also be committing to an annual plan, to get the best pricing.

Vote

If you vote “for” this proposal you are voting to implement Pendo at a cost of $58,000 in FOX for the entire year.

If you vote “against” you are saying you do not believe this is important for the DAO or that you think there might be better one-off solutions, instead of an all-in-one solution.

5

This generally sounds great and I know the product and DAO would benefit from this tool.

Only question: does it have to be paid annually up front? Any way to break payments into months or quarters?

6

Good question! I will find out

7

Thank you for this in-depth analysis of the products and features.

How do the other products prices compare? While Pendo is the obvious choice from the most robust features and analytics standpoint, if one of the others with close to the amount of features (walkme or gainsight) have a significant price drop off, it could be worth considering.

Do the other products have any short term plans to implement and become a full service analystics package like Pendo? Or will Pendo likely remain the only all in one analytics package?

8

Great questions!

We did look at WalkMe - unfortunately we weren’t really impressed with their offering and the demo they gave us. Their analytics capabilities were limited to funnels, session replay, and csv reports that didn’t let us see user behavior. They also seemed like they could not easily create segments or target messaging based on in-app behavior. Their editor for walkthroughs was lacking. We would need to do a lot of CSS work to get the guides to look and feel like ShapeShift. Also, WalkMe’s editor and insights portal were separate products, which felt complicated.

We also looked at Chameleon, Stonly, App Cues and User Pilot (among others). The most impressive solutions after Pendo were Chameleon and App Cues but those did not have mobile app options. For 50K MAU’s (web only) those solutions were between 17K - 20K. Chameleon does provide event tracking and heat maps. However, without a mobile app solution, if we set them up on web, we’ll still have to find a solution for the mobile app. Furthermore, their analytics are not nearly as robust as Pendo’s—so we’d still need an analytics solution as well.

Something that was also important for us to consider, is that the mobile app is where the majority or our users are, and that’s where the majority of the crypto newbies are. These are the users who would most benefit from the in-app guidance and feature walk-thrus, tooltips etc. App Cues is working on a mobile app solution, something we plan to revisit next year once they’re further along.

9

Got it, I had asked these before the call yesterday. After hearing about the potential for them to accept $FOX token for the payment, and the fact its an all in one analytics tool, and already a discounted price, I think I support the premium on the application in favor of establishing a strong working relationship with them moving forward.

Thank you for taking the additional time to answer the questions I had!

This will have my support moving forward!

10

To throw another option into the works, I’ve just started playing around with a product analytics tool called Posthog for some of our platforms at work.

I’s pretty good so far and has a lot of features (including auto-capture), and most importantly for us (since one of our values is “Do More With Less” :upside_down_face:) it’s open-source.

I’ve currently got it set up on Digital Ocean with 2 entry-level production nodes - costing around $80US/month.

Haven’t completed my exploration yet, but honestly super impressed so far for the cost.

Not going to have all the features of some of the other (e.g. Pendo) - but thought I’d throw it out there anyway 1f642