🗞 What's New: Design principles for a standout product

Basic design principles can help take your product to the next level:

• Whether you're a designer or not, these deign guidelines can level up your user's experience, increasing conversions and reducing churn. Hint: Don't underestimate in-product education, but be helpful, not annoying.
• When you're first starting out, it's tempting to spend money on all the fancy tools and courses. But let's get back to basics! Here's an overview on how you can start a business with no money.
• Founder Claudia Zhao launched MyVisa, an AI travel tool that helps people secure tourist visas, earlier this month, and has hit over 30 users. Below, she shares the acquisition channel she's narrowed in on, how she handles AI's occasional lies, and what's next for her project.

Want to share something with over 75,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

⭐️ Design Guidelines to Make Your Product Stand Out

by Sarah Hum

Back in the day, design wasn’t too big of a deal. As long as the product worked, it didn’t much matter what it looked like.

It’s very different today. There’s much more competition on all fronts, and users have much less patience for poorly designed products. Any friction in your product may cost you a customer.

I'm a product designer and cofounder at Canny, and in this article, I’ll explain how non-designers can apply basic design principles to software products.

Let’s dive in!

What is a well designed product?

The overall design consists of two equally important parts: UI (user interface) and UX (user experience).

UI’s goal is to clearly communicate to the user what's important. Any user interactions should be very straightforward. UI is also about the look and feel of the product. Put simply, the user interface is what you see in a product, such as navigation, inputs, and icons.

UX combines all aspects of a user's experience: Usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. You consider the entire experience of interacting with a product, including your feelings.

Contrary to popular belief, design isn’t just about making things pretty. Good design is about solving real problems, first and foremost. This is especially important in B2B products, where your customers are paying for your product to do a job.

First things first

Sometimes, you just want to jump in and start designing. Try to fight that urge, and start here instead:

1. Define your target audience:

You need to know your target audience extremely well in order to optimize experiences for them.

If you’re not sure how to define your ideal customer profile (ICP), try this: Think about who’s most likely to benefit from your product. Take the time to really dig into their demographics, psychographics, and personality. The clearer you can get, the better.

2. Consider alternative approaches:

Any given problem can have many potential solutions. Perform due diligence early on to think through and refine your approach. Ask yourself:

• Is the problem a byproduct of another issue?
• Is there a workaround solution?

3. Learn to say no:

The reality is that you need to be selective. You can’t build everything. That’s the art of prioritization; selecting the most impactful ideas.

Occasionally, we have to push back on ‌requests that we get from customers or other team members. Sometimes, a feature just isn’t a priority, based on how much effort it would take or the impact it could have. Other times, features don’t add to the long-term vision, or might negatively impact the overall user experience.

Design guidelines

Now that we’ve done some due diligence, let’s get into some guidelines:

1. Understand use cases to define the scope:

Effort is required to fully understand the underlying problem you’re solving, but don't make the scope too large right away. Try the following:

• Collect user feedback.
• Ask your users questions through surveys, interviews, etc.
• Gather data and look for patterns.

Aim to build an MVP for design, and consider the Pareto Principle: How can you solve 80% of the problems with 20% of the work? Before designing, do your research.

2. Don't reinvent the wheel:

Design exists to help solve a problem. As a designer, the more you can move the design out of the way of the task, the better.

Don’t overcomplicate your design. The more unfamiliar the interface is to the user, the more potential for confusion. Unfamiliar design patterns also hurt conversion rates.

Avoid making your users question anything.

3. Get rid of any friction:

This point goes back to simplicity, and is especially important in user onboarding. If something within your onboarding causes any confusion, your users will feel frustrated.

If customers cannot complete their tasks in your product, they're not reaching the value they want. This will lead to churn.

How can you prevent that? Remove distractions, and focus on helping them complete their task. Decrease the chance that they could make any mistakes.

If you’re finding that some of your users aren’t acting the way you want them to, this is a clear signal that you need to optimize that design.

Usability tests can help answer several of the above questions. As you’re running them, ask your users to think out loud. Take note of any confusion. Bring the most common actions to the forefront.

Applying this information

1. Make a list of tasks that your users need to complete.

2. Rank the tasks by how often they need to be performed.

3. Think of navigation as a separate feature. Which navigation should always be accessible? Which navigation only needs to appear on certain pages?

4. Group similar functionality together. When a user is working on a task, what other options should be available to them? Divide pages into larger sections made up of those groups.

5. Break down your customer journey into phases.

6. Align features across each phase. Ask yourself: When do ‌customers need to know about a feature? Right away? After a certain action? Only if…?

Also, don't underestimate in-product education! For instance:

• Surface tips that make sense on the page the user is on.
• Don't leave null states completely blank. Use them as an opportunity to educate, or point people in the right direction.

Another thing we find very useful is dismissible new user experiences (NUXs). Those don't go away until the user has acknowledged them. It’s a good way to educate, without being annoying.

When designing, you should always look for opportunities to collaborate. Be open to feedback, and keep a pulse on how people are actually using your tool.

What are the most helpful design tips you've learned? Share below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

🚀 TikTok has launched a new site for agencies and SMBs.

🏛 Europe has taken another big step towards agreeing to an AI rulebook.

😍 Here's how to improve your product's first impression.

💻 The Reddit blackouts have made Google worse.

🤖 These new AI-powered ad solutions can help drive demand.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

💸 Starting a Business With No Money

by Alexander Graves

When you're first starting out, it may be tempting to buy all of the premium tools. But the truth is, you don't need any of those fancy things. Here's how to start a business for free!

The platforms

When you are starting out, all you really need are platforms for distribution. The platforms that you likely need are free:

• Social media: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
• Email: Beehiiv, for example.
• Video hosting: YouTube, etc.
• Business OS: Notion, for example.
• Twitter scheduling: Hypefury, and the like.
• Payment: Gumroad, etc.

Stop right there. That’s all you need. Not convinced? Let's keep going:

• Video editing: DaVinci Resolve.
• Graphic design: Canva.
• Webhosting: Google Drive.
• SEO: Ahref's has free insight.
• Data and spreadsheets: Google Sheets.

I can keep going, but you get the picture.

The bigger picture

At the beginning, you don’t need those special features. The reason you think you need all these paid plans is because you don’t trust your own content, skill, and wisdom.

You think you need to skip steps and build fancy things, while you likely haven’t even evaluated if people like your content.

You think you need to be super fancy because you see other people’s YouTube videos or tweets, and they have all that cool stuff. But remember, they all started small. Once they found what worked, they doubled down on that.

Setting it all up

• Get a Twitter account: Feel free to check out my Twitter and mimic the profile structure. You need a good picture, clean banner, and a bio that shows how the follower gets value. Add a pinned tweet that shows what you are about.
• Tweet 3-5 times a day about your main topic.
• Reply to big accounts 30 times a day.
• Create one thread a week where you dive a little deeper.
• Use Hypefury to schedule and automate that.
• Get a Beehiiv account and set up a simple signup for a newsletter. It automatically creates SEO-optimized posts on a dedicated website, so you don't even need a website. Emails are automatically turned into posts.
• Check back with Twitter analytics (or BlackMagic) to see which tweets did well, and double down on those. Write an email on your topic, and go deeper.
• Post the link to your signup page under each well-performing tweet, and in your Twitter bio.
• Make a Notion workspace, and get my EZ Life Planner.
• Track your income and expenses on dedicated Notion pages.

Going deeper

Did some topics struck a chord with people? Are your emails working well?

Build a course on Notion. Record and upload to YouTube, and paste the links in Notion. In the top right corner, you can click “Share,” and share a page publicly.

Put that link on Gumroad, and sell the product in your newsletter.

Boom! Making money with $0 spent. Now, of course, this is just the overview. This is the basic understanding of how it is possible these days. It's never been simpler.

Will you try this $0 approach to revenue? Let's chat below!

Discuss this story.

🌐 Best Around the Web: Posts Submitted to Indie Hackers This Week

📝 50+ places to launch your product. Posted by Satya.

🛠 Do you use any AI tools for coding? Posted by Darko.

👩‍💻 Setting up your split tests. Posted by FunnelCandy.

🤔 Are your projects 110s, 80/20s, or 50/50s? Posted by Channing Allen.

📆 One day subscriptions for SaaS products. Posted by Interlap.

😖 Giving up on writing blogs. Posted by Claire Heginbotham.

Want a shout-out in next week's Best of Indie Hackers? Submit an article or link post on Indie Hackers whenever you come across something you think other indie hackers will enjoy.

🌎 Claudia Zhao's AI Tourist Visa Tool

by Claudia Zhao

Hi, indie hackers! I'm Claudia Zhao, and I had to apply for lots of visas in the last few years to go to Europe, the UK, etc. Each time, I have to write a cover letter, book flights and hotels, have my employers sign a letter, and find lots of documents.

I started MyVisa, an AI travel tool, to help people with visa applications. Here are some of the current features:

• Generate a cover letter with AI, and a human in the loop.
• Based on your dates and destinations, find flight and hotel reservations.
• Help with other supporting documents, such as finding travel insurance, generating an employment letter, etc.

My ultimate goal is to create sort of a TurboTax for visa applications, as the current process is extremely tedious.

AMA!

When did you start working on this project?

I started working on it the beginning of the month, and have since helped 30 people with their visa cover letters.

I have done this manually myself (approved for 10+ travel visas), and have helped friends and family, as well. I've definitely learned more about specific cases in the past few weeks, due to my new signups!

Has AI lied on any applications?

Right now, I'm only using AI for generating a daily itinerary. I've seen a few cases of the itineraries not making sense.

The way I tackle that challenge is just by having a person review everything, and put in the finishing touches! At the moment, the AI might have hallucinations, and may not be able to produce a completely usable application letter.

How are you promoting the tool?

I have been going to a few subreddits where people have visa related questions, and answering them. I've been linking my tool there. So far, so good!

I am always trying to think about what problems people have regarding visas, and where to find people that can benefit from this tool.

What's next?

It would be awesome to help with immigration in the future. That's an area that's definitely super hard and time-consuming.

However, I don't foresee replacing immigration lawyers any time soon, since immigration is super high stakes!

If you're applying for, or recently applied for a visa, I would love to hear about any pain points!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

🏁 Enjoy This Newsletter?

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Sarah Hum, Darko, Alexander Graves, and Claudia Zhao for contributing posts. —Channing