Unfortunately, we had a big problem. The Staction website is designed to be used with a keyboard. The whole application is built around using the mouse as little as possible. But on the iPhone the keyboard is, well, small. Using a tiny keyboard to bang out tags, and a clunky half-visible auto-completer just wasn’t the experience we wanted to give our users. It wasn’t the experience we wanted for ourselves… It just wasn’t great, – believe us, we tried it.

After lots of experimenting, eventually we realized we had to rely on touching and scrolling for tag input. Like with lots of ideas, -it seems quite obvious looking back.

As of Today

As of today, all of our paid accounts have access to the Staction web app. Simply visit your normal account URL, and you’ll be directed to the optimized site. (You can still access the regular site if you like.)

Once logged in, you’ll have access to all the most commonly used features of Staction. Creating todos, logging time, and keeping up with your teammates.

Make sure to tap “+” and add Staction to your home screen, – it works really well that way.

If you want to see the web app, but don’t have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad you can visit your normal account URL and add a /m at the end like this:

http://accountname.staction.com/m

We think you’re really going to like the web app experience. In some ways it’s the best Staction experience yet.

Why Not the Free Account?

We’re going to be honest in a way that I don’t think most companies would. We really hope that the web app drives upgrades for us. By far the biggest portion of Staction users are on the free account. It seems that when we created our plans for Staction, we gave away too much on the low end.

It’s no problem, -we’re happy to have our users, on any account that fits their needs. But we do have to make money to keep our jobs!

Talking over the problem, we came up with a plan that we hope will make sense to you. As we add new features to our apps, you’ll probably see most of them added only to the paid accounts at first. As we recoup the cost of our development time through the upgrades that the features drive, we hope to trickle the features down to the free accounts as well.

We’re hoping this is a sustainable system that can keep everyone happy. Paid accounts just get the features a bit sooner than everyone else. We hope you’ll think it makes as much sense as we do.

But every now and then, you get lucky and things go your way.

In line at Starbucks yesterday, it actually happened to me. (Not the nasty thing, the lucky thing.)

Someone ahead of me paid for my drink. I’ve heard of this happening to other people, but I never thought it would actually happen to me, you know?

Of course, I paid toward the order being taken behind me, to keep the kindness going.

Then, this morning, we received an e-mail telling us how great Jumpchart is, and that they recommend it to everyone they can. Their excited tone came through loud and clear, even in an e-mail.

I’m once again compelled to keep the kindness going. I’m reminding everyone to take some time today to tell someone whose product you use why you find it useful. Feedback of any kind does wonders to improve a project, and letting the creators know you care enough to send an e-mail says “Thank You” even louder.

It’s contagious, and it’s part of what sets our industry apart from others. We help each other through beta tests, we give each other feedback on projects, we learn from each other daily. We’re proud of creating a tight community of designers, developers, and ideas.

So pay it forward, keep our community strong, and don’t piss on the seat.

We continue to make updates as the internet, and our users evolve, but we’re stubborn in a big way: we’re sticking with simplicity. We feel this mentality is what makes our apps useful to the majority of our users in the first place.

Our core values revolve around eliminating the things that might distract you from what you’re really trying to do. With Jumpchart, you get to focus on architecture and content. With Staction, you get to focus on communicating quickly and succinctly while staying organized. With Paprika… well, stay tuned (Or be one of our beta users!).

We love hearing from our users. We learn a lot from the feature requests we get, and take each and every one of them into consideration for future updates. But at our core, we’re willing to hold off adding extra features to save compromising the simplicity we’ve built our apps around.

This is so true. I think it’s especially true for someone who really loves your app, and doesn’t know how they ever did without it. For example, lovers of Jumpchart have to appreciate simplicity, and organization. Lovers of Staction have to understand the importance of communication with a minimal amount of clicks, and want the ability to do things quickly. We create apps as extensions of ourselves, knowing (hoping?) that others like us will get a kick out of them, and find them really useful.

A lot of conversation about modal editing recently brought our studio to a very simple conclusion- one that seemed undeniable the second we arrived at it.

For example, when I’m in “Preview”, and I want to make a simple edit to an image, I click “Annotate”, but I don’t immediately see the result. That’s because it happened away from where I clicked, which is not what I expected. I have to search for it, which is frustrating.

Instead of popping up somewhere near the annotate button, a tool bar drops down from the bottom of the preview screen, which depending on how big your Preview window is, isn’t always readily visible.

This threw me off just enough to make me realize that other people probably have the same frustration/hesitation. It’s something many people take for granted and expect out of the apps they use- usability based on expectations.

It seems too simple to have to put into words, but I’m going to do it anyway. For every action, there should be a nearby reaction.

I quit lots of stuff. There. I said it here in public, and not because I need pity. I’m proud of quitting- and I think more people need to give themselves the permission to guiltlessly quit things.

It used to be that every time I quit something, I felt like I failed a little. Like I left some incomplete portion of my brain behind. I became reluctant to start new things because I worried I wouldn’t finish them.

The important caveat to this is that you have to try long enough and hard enough so you can be honest with yourself about your reasons for quitting. You can’t quit because it’s hard. You can’t quit because it gets boring. But if, with effort and time, you can honestly say there’s no joy in it… Quit.

The thing about the “fear of quitting” is that it also leads to “fear of starting”- and starting is the most important thing. In order to see if something is worthwhile or rewarding you have to give it a shot. Not just a tentative fleeting try, but an earnest, honest try.

As a proud quitter I’ve recently and guiltlessly:

• Quit three books midway through, and then skimmed the last pages and index.
• Abandoned plans for two new web apps.
• Stopped two video games after nearly five hours into each.

I’ve also kept doing (and finished) more things than are worth listing here. But I abandoned these former commitments because I wasn’t getting enough out of them. I have opened up time, and mental capacity for new things to start. I might quit those things, too… But broadening my experience and maximizing my time towards the things which are most rewarding surely can’t be a bad thing.

Charge once.
Great for building momentum. Great for quick revenue. Maybe not so great for long term earnings.

Advertise within your app.
We’ll see more and more advertising fueled apps. It can work if done well.

More customers = higher pricing.
The more customers you get, the more you charge. Have to start really low… Pinboard does it.

More customers =  lower pricing.
On the flip side, the more users you have, the more money you’re making, and more money helps to take care of other costs (like hosting).

Charge based on a granular sliding scale.
A sliding scale is a cost based on your customers’ ability to pay. Usually apps have predefined tiers- but do they have to?

Pay What You Think it’s Worth.
Lots of restaurants swear by it. Desktop software has embraced it for ages. Why not web apps?

Give power through participation.
There’s a site called stackoverflow.com, and it nicely demonstrates just how cool this can be.

Whatever works
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel with your pricing, – but it’s important to think about which option fits best. Before you commit to “big,” “bigger,” “biggest” pricing plans, – at least take a few minutes to think if it’s really the best way to price your app.

• What would happen if we solved the opposite problem we’re trying to solve?

• What would Apple do?

• What would it look like if it was made in the 80’s? 90’s? 00’s? Ten years from now?

• If this app could only have one button, what would it be?

Recently I hit on another thought provoking question to ask myself:

• What would terrify me if I saw it online the day before we launched this app?

Let’s tell ourselves the story to get full impact. You’ve been working on your app for months. The app is complete (enough to launch), the sales site is ready. The emails and the PR is queue’d up and ready. Tomorrow you will launch!

You head home for some much needed relaxation as you gear up for the slew of support requests and other launch-associated tasks headed at you. Time to unwind and spend some time catching up on the feeds you’ve been neglecting.

Then it happens. You click the first link and read about some new site that just launched. We’ll call it http://theotherapp.com. It does exactly what your app does, but it’s slicker, better, and is already getting great buzz.

You ought to be feeling the sweat right now. That feeling. That panic. Now quick, ask yourself these questions:

• What does the site look like?

• What feature does this site have that you didn’t have time for?

• What are you jealous of?

• What are the bloggers saying about it?

You might not have answers right away, but the change of context is fun, and mind altering. The acknowledgment that something could be better than what you’re working on gives you the freedom to imagine. The acceptance that the competitor could exist- but doesn’t yet- reminds you to keep focusing on the reaction of your customers.