Faster Hosting for Premium Users Coming Soon + Payment Processor Challenges
Scrolller Weekly Update September 2nd, 2021
Intro
Hello and Welcome to our weekly update. This week's main highlight is the completion of development for the Shareable Favorite collection for users, Faster Hosting for Premium Users Coming Soon, Payment Processor Challenges, and Social media win. If you are new to the newsletter, subscribe to keep up with our journey of building a 100 million MAU web application.
User Highlights
User Highlight this week spotlights Dicks McChicken for suggesting a function that enables users to add tags to relevant content for easier referencing or indexing. It definitely is a great feature that will it makes it simple for Scrolller users to manage and categorize their own content. @Dicks McChicken Thank you for making the contribution
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User Accounts
246885 → 252471
Account Creation Returning to Normal
In last week's newsletter, the team decided to take a more direct approach and decided to account lock the categories page again for a few days. As soon as the categories page was account locked again, we saw a clear spike in user account creation but we are still halfway to our previous user account creation level and we are still striving to regain the pace that we had before the massive drop.
Unlocking Categories plan:
The challenge for Scrolller is now to unlock the categories page for users but also make sure that it doesn't negatively impact the new user account creation on the platform.
The team brainstormed and came up with different ideas on how we can unlock the categories page in a way that would prove to be a win-win for Scrolller and end-users.
Ideas:
First "X" visits of the user, categories are unlocked.
Lock other visits and show a CTA popup to educate users that they need an account to unlock this feature.
Show limited number categories and blur the rest for non-logged on users.
Potentially show the high-level category and blur the sub-categories.
Categories page engagement-based locking.
After expanding 4 categories, show login popup.
Lock the multiple collection combiner so non-logged on individuals can only combine X number of collections
In the next newsletter, we will show you some mockups of these potential ideas. Please let us know in the comments what do you think about these ideas to keep the categories page unlocked.
Impact of Pro-Metric Ads
In the last newsletter, we discussed that in order to really pinpoint the impact of pro-metric ads, we want to evaluate it in terms of the dollar amount generated from conversion via these ads. This week our developers have added the necessary labels in the google analytics and we are waiting for the week to see the results. The addition of these new labels will help us to measure the true impact of pro-metric ads in terms of the dollar amount.
Below are the graphs that show the number of users that clicked on pro-metric Ads and landed on the subscription page. By next week we will have data about how many of those users actually subscribed.
Progress on Content Recommendation
Over the last week, we transferred the recommendation system into a containerized Docker environment. This will make it easy to move it to one of our servers in the future. Our developers are looking at it so that it can be made much more efficient and can be scaled to Scrolller growth.
The current target is to utilize the system to generate engaging content recommendation emails according to users' interests. Our UI/UX designer is creating some mockups on how that email should look like. The success criteria of that system will be based on the email open rate and the amount of traffic generated via those emails
With the launch of the email-based recommendation system coming closer, the next steps will be focused on user experience and performance. For this our DevOps and design experts put in their knowledge to make sure that the most pleasant experience can be provided to the biggest amount of users.
Current Step
Generate 10 great recommendations for our users based on their likes for content recommendation emails.
Create metrics for evaluation of success for those emails.
Next Steps:
Integrate the content recommendation system in scrolller as a "More Like This" feature.
Only Fans and what it means for Scrolller
The hot topic all over social media these days is OnlyFans removing all adult content and then walking back that decision after intense user backlash. In the last newsletter, we discussed what measures scrolller is going to take to support original content creators all across the world. We started to plan out features that are a must-have for any digital content creation platform. Including but not limited to monetization.
For any digital content platform, the first step is to allow the users to be able to upload their own content. Scrolller has started to create mockups for this necessary feature. This will help the digital content creators to port over to Scrolller quickly. On top of the uploading content feature, we have explored using scrapers to make transferring to Scrolller take as little as 5 mins. We are sharing a mockup of how this feature would look like when it is developed.
Next steps include
Incentivising content creators for their digital content
Allowing users to interact with their fans
Introduce digital currency in Scrolller that can be cashed out.
In the next newsletter, we will share more details of such features. Please let us know in the comments if this is something that Scrolller should invest in?
Roadmap for Growth for User Accounts
Unlocking Categories plan (Design Phase)
Content Recommendation (In Progress)
Scrolller APP (Back Log)
SFW Categories (Blocked)
Scrolller Extension and Enhancements (Blocked)
Pro-Metric Advertising (Completed)
Revenue
Premium CTA popups and subscriptions
The premium CTA popups continue to be a major success as our daily number of premium signups has trifold and continue to be stable at 30+ new subscriptions per day. with an all-time high of 63 new subscriptions in a single day. We have seen amazing growth in the 30-day rolling period compared to the previous term. In the coming weeks, we will keep experimenting with the copies to see which one outperforms the other.
A/B Testing Copies for Premium CTA Popups
This week our developers have added the necessary labels in the google analytics and we are waiting for the week to see the results. The addition of these new labels will help us to measure the true impact of Premium CTA popups in terms of the dollar amount.
Payment Processor Problem
This week we came to know about a potential hazard that might become a very big blocker for Scrolller to flourish. The Scrolller team set out to build a new way to view Reddit's content that maximizes the user experience for visual content. We have grown in users and revenue because we have done a good job at that goal. Just so happens a lot of our users come to Scrolller for NSFW content. We run the risk of getting blocked by payment processors that view NSFW content negatively. Now that Premium is our main source of income. Getting our premium revenue cut off would deal a massive blow to our goals. The team started brainstorming on how can we reduce the risk of getting blocked by our payment processor. So we are taking a couple of actions.
RedesigningNSFW Toggle
Scrolller is working on changing and redesigning the NSFW content toggle and make sure that we are not labeled as an Adult website. Scrolller wants to stay away from that area as once a website is labeled as Adult Website, there is no turning back from there. We are considering various designs that will only serve NSFW content to users that are specifically looking for it. We are going to need your help to get this right.
Multiple Payment Gateways
Scrolller is working on getting in contact with multiple payment processors. We want to create a load distribution in the backend where we can decide how much traffic will go to a specific payment processor. This will eliminate the risk of halting Scrolller if one of the payment processors decides to ban us and will also allow us to instantly change our payment processor while we sort out the ban.
On reviewing and researching various payment providers Scrolller has decided to get in touch with 3 new payment processors.
Segpay
InstaBill
CCBill
Let us know in the comments what you think about our plans for dealing with the Payment Processor Problem and feel free to share other payment processors you feel will work well for our situation.
Progress on Faster Hosting for Premium Users
Faster hosting for our premium users is the biggest challenge we are working on right now. As a short-term fix team has maxed out the resource usage on our server that will hopefully increase the performance and page load times for our all users.
As a long-term fix and to provide our premium users with a faster experience our developers are setting up a new server that will only serve the premium users. Separating the servers for premium and non-premium users will allow us to provide a faster experience to our premium users. The improved infrastructure will be ready for dev testing end of this week and we want to stress test it to make sure it is ready and actually deliver what we promise to our premium users. We will share details about the testing in our next newsletter.
Roadmap for Growth in Revenue
Faster Hosting for Premium Users (In Progress)
Exclusive Features for Premium User (Design Stage)
Multiple Payment Processors (Design Stage)
Social Traffic
User Generated Collections Progress
Regarding the shareable favorites, we made great progress in terms of development. Shareable favorites along with sharable follows is now in the testing phase and we are refining these two features so when we launch it is absolutely bug-free and is ready to be used by end-users.
Testing progress:
A few issues were detected in the testing phase and the issue tickets have been made and assigned to developers. Most of them are now resolved and we are trying to get this feature out to our end users by the start of next week.
Progress:
Shareable Favorites collection (Testing Phase)
Shareable Following collection (In Progress)
Leaderboard (In Progress)
Incentives for top 100 users in the leaderboard. (Backlog)
Social Media Update
We've started to see increased progress and engagement on our social channels unlike in the previous week. For instance, profile reach on Facebook shot to 42.6k from 6.05k while Twitter's reach was 6.3k from 5.2k. Sadly, we had to deactivate our old Instagram account because of issues with Reels settings. But then we also managed to get started on a new Instagram account which is picking up really fast (1.7k profile reach) due to the hard work of our social media managers.
The increase we have seen this week has to do with targeted engagement with other pages, group linking, and shares. Here are our social links for your review and engagement.
🔘 Instagram 🔘 Facebook 🔘 Twitter
If you can share and help us with any social media growth strategies that have worked for you, you are welcome and we'd love to hear from you. Looking forward to it in the comments section.
Roadmap for Growth in Social Traffic
User Generated Collections: Create and share your favorites and follows (In Progress)
Facebook Automation (Back Log)
Twitter Automation (Back Log)
Team Highlights
Team Updates
Behind the scenes with the Scrolller team this week!
Nick — I was able to take a deep dive and familiarize myself with back-end /scrapper as well as review queue process management for improved diagnostics and performance for our users.
Mannan — Still pushing exclusive features for premium users. Have also been busy ensuring all users have an overall great user experience by resolving any current user issues including payment challenges.
Karol — Been working on refining display collections, fixing UI for shared collections & subscriptions maintenance.
Lavanya — Worked on showoff filtering, sorting & finished organizing all Pro-Metric Ads files.
Matt — I'm on tracking and monitoring user account changes. Started Netlify research for A/B/n testing
Tim — Executed code using Docker, got Spark running locally and wrote some utility functions
Marité — Still on enhancing our user design experiences.
Nitesh — Was into updating postgres config for logging slow queries, updating their threshold & setup new server for database backups. Started training on Kotlin to help with backend queries.
Chris — Still on interviews, team management & meetings with investors to discuss investment and growth strategies. I also started a deep dive into Scroller market research and payment improvements.
The Scrolller Team likes hearing and always looks forward to any feedback you have for us. Don't hesitate to share it with us in the comments sections.
Road Map
You can share feedback with us about any of the new features below. Using this Airtable Form. Looking forward to your comments
This week
Improve quality and user experience of pro-metric advertisements (Completed)
User Generated Collections: Create and share (In Progress)
Content Recommendation (In Progress)
Turning off old scrolller (In Progress)
Exclusive Features for premium users (In Progress)
New native advertisements (Back Log)
Monetization Update and Optimization (Back Log)
Categories page for SFW collections + Unlock (Blocked)
Enhancements to Auto Scroll Feature (Blocked)
P.S. As a reminder, subscribe to our newsletter if you are yet to, walk with us on this Building Scroller exciting yet challenging journey.
Also:
Sign Up To Help → https://airtable.com/shrrRkFqMSZBqF24Q us translate Scroller to Russian.
To help us with Scroller features testing, Go Here
Until next time, happy scrollling!