I signed up for a free trial but Kit asked me to pay before I saw anything

All right guys, welcome to another teardown.

So this time we're going to have a look at Kit, formerly Convertkit.

it's obviously a hugely popular, email marketing software.

So I'm going to go through sign up for the product as usual, go through the embody, get into the product, and see what we can do, see if we can reach any kind of meaningful value in there.

As I go I'll review the experience, and just share my kind of like honest, raw thought.

and I'm sure you'll be able to take some of these learnings and apply them to your own product as well.

All right, okay, cool.

So let's dive in then.

Let's click start free trial up here.

Okay, so this is very on brand aligns really well with the website.

I'm not a huge fan of the lifestyle photography here.

Kind of dominates the page quite a bit.

and I'm assuming this is Tori who's a podcaster, who's a user of Kit, but I'd love to know what value she got from using it.

Have we got a testimonial, any results or anything?

I think that would be much better use of this space on the right here because right now that feels a little underwhelming.

Anyway, we've got a switcher at the top here so we can obviously log in, we can create an account.

so it looks like we're asked for our name, email and a password, all of which are required and that's pretty obvious from the asterisks here.

I think one thing that would be handy, obviously no social login here, which is a bit of a shame.

I'm sure there's good reason for it, but I do think it helps fast track the signup process and means I don't need to remember, another password for another account.

one thing I would say is I'm quite big fan of like auto focusing that first field.

So when I come here to the page I could just start typing my name.

I can start building momentum as part of this signup process.

So that's missing right now.

so let's go through, I'll put my name in here and I'll just add my email address as well and then we can create a password.

no idea at this point whether there's any password rules or not.

So, I'm going to use the suggested from 1Password here.

In fact, no, let me just type in really quick password and let's see if that one's accepted.

Right, let's click get started.

And we'll add that as a new item.

Okay.

I.

No idea what's happened.

Aha.

Uh-huh.

Okay, so email's already been taken.

So clearly I've already used this email address for a kit account.

I hadn't realized that.

And actually this message wasn't clear at all.

As you can see, it really blends into the background of this page.

So I'm just sat here clicking get started and nothing's happening.

Right, let's see if we can find a different email address then.

Okay, we're through.

just had a different email address in there.

Looks like we're taking straight into the onboarding full screen experience which is much more engaging.

six steps, to go through here.

So quite a bit of work up front before we get into the product, which, not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm just hoping as we go through this it starts to shape the experience I'll have when I get into the product.

and we're not just kind of asked a bunch of questions that are just self serving.

I do think again, like we had that imagery on the previous page.

just for the purpose of continuity, why not kind of just bring that through?

anyway, let's go through this.

So welcome.

tell us about yourself.

And yes, we can customize, kit to match your specific needs.

Are you already using an email marketing tool?

Okay, so for the purpose of this, I'm just going to click no, got to use my mouse here.

It would be nice if it has some keyboard shortcuts.

I'm going to click no for this one.

How big is your audience?

Okay, so I like the fact they've clarified this question.

It alludes to the fact that you've got that we're talking about subscribers across different platforms.

So let's go 0 to 99.

So even though there is six steps here, it looks like we're rattling through them quite quickly.

So we've got like four steps to go.

what is your business newsletter or brand name called?

again, I like the fact there's some justification Here.

so this is going to appear on pages, that my subscribers visit.

So let's just put my name in here.

And again we'll click.

I'll click Continue.

Okay, so there is a back button, which is this one here.

so if we did want to go back, we can, kind of just missed that.

What kind of creator are you?

which of these best describes user creator?

We can pick up to three.

So I'm guessing these are the most popular options and then they've given others by clicking on more, which is nice because otherwise you'd kind of just overwhelm users with a bunch of irrelevant, options here.

And I'm guessing the six you see up here, six or seven you see up here are the most popular anyway, so I'm going to click Designer.

that'll do for now.

And we'll click Continue.

So again, fairly common step asking me for my website.

And that looks like they're going to tailor the experience based on that.

If I don't have one, I can click Continue and I can set one up with Kit.

So I like the fact that we're not taking down a dead end here.

If we don't have one for whatever reason, then they're going to help us set one up.

so put the website in there and, we'll click Continue.

So what do you hope, to achieve with Kit then?

And then again, they're just, really good here at, kind of setting expectations and helping me understand that this will, help set up my account for success.

So they're going to tailor the experience here.

So let's click.

Let's click.

I just want to take a look around.

Nothing too specific.

Okay, so it looks like we're nearly there.

Nearly.

The dashboard after going through that, onboarding experience now.

Welcome to Kit.

so we're kind of being hit with a model here.

Lots, of social proof, talks about how, you know, Eddie, is getting value from the product.

Like, I think some of this should have been used further, or earlier on in the signup and onboarding flow.

Like, as I've gone through that, I've answered all those questions.

Like, now I'm committed to getting into the product, and finding some value from it.

However, adding a paywall at this point just kind of feels, Feels a bit premature if I'm honest.

I mean, I think we started this process from the website, and, and the CTA on the site talked about, starting a free trial, which is obviously what I'm doing, but they're pushing me towards a, create a plan on a monthly or an annual basis before I've even experienced the product.

Like, I'm not sure at this point whether this is right for me.

I want to test it out.

And, so I'm going to click, I'll do this later.

just so we can get in the product and we can test it out.

Okay, so we hit dashboard here.

let's take a look around.

Obviously got our nav, top left.

we've got notifications, and we understand how many days left of the trial.

So all the usual stuff is up here.

got a personalized welcome message as well.

And then we got this getting started.

So Explore Kit.

So they're encouraging us to create a landing page or a form.

Now I'm guessing, depending on how I went through the onboarding, that this page might be customized.

And because one of the options I selected was, just the fact I want to explore the product a little bit more, I'm assuming that's why they've chosen, to prompt me to create a landing page or a form.

there's a little bit more at the bottom here.

So it talks about reports which will show up.

Obviously we don't have any right now, but they're going to appear on the dashboard after we have subscribers who are, coming through from the landing page.

I guess, like from a creator's perspective, there's quite a bit to set up to understand whether Kit is the right tool for me.

I'm guessing at some point we might have had the option to import our email list, maybe pull through our email designs and campaigns from other similar software because I, because I don't have any of that.

I, I think it would be quite helpful here if we had an option, to simulate some of that data.

So maybe there's a toggle somewhere and I could have turned it on and I could understand what these reports and things would look like without needing me, without needing me to go through that full process.

Okay, but what I will do, I'm going to create a landing page.

I'm just curious to see what this next step is.

Okay, so there's a number of different things here in this getting started, that it's suggesting, customizing email templates, writing my first email, and then learning more in the creator University.

Let's start with this first step.

I also think like presenting those options all at once might have been a better use of this space right now.

Appreciate you don't want to, overwhelm new users at this point, but if we don't have to do these things in a specific order, then it would be nice to understand a little bit more about what the product is capable of.

So let's create a landing page here.

Okay.

So kind, of feels like we've been taken to a blog post of some sort here.

Huge wall of text, which feels like hard work.

I don't want to have to read all this right now.

Useful, resources at the bottom.

I can see how that would be helpful.

No idea what leave this blueprint means.

I'm going to create a form just because I think it'll be a bit quicker.

so let's dive into that process then.

So right off the bat, it looks like we've got a different, A few different options here for creating forms.

Weirdly, we still have the navigation at the top.

Presumably this is to get out of the floor we're in.

but I do think it's a bit distracting and kind of irrelevant at this point.

And again, we got a lot of dead space down here.

Right.

anyway, let's create a modal click on that one.

So we'll be giving some templates.

these look cool.

These are, quite well designed.

although there's not too many of them.

if I'm looking for a template from a specific category or industry, I think that might have been helpful.

maybe a search in here.

I'm going to go for something really simple.

Let's go for Charlotte.

No way to preview them either.

Right.

So I'm going to click on them.

They're quite small.

I like to click on them and kind of view a larger design and then maybe just interact with the form a little bit.

Maybe that's the next step.

Let's find out.

so I'm going to click this one.

Okay, cool.

So it looks like we're now taken to an editor.

So, it's got in line editing here.

So we can click in here and we can add some text.

Like.

So, presumably we can change the image.

yep.

So we've got background image.

We can change, Change that, replace it, change the background forms.

We've just got the email address in here.

branding sits at the bottom, obviously.

I mean, presumably if I am a page paid subscriber, I wouldn't see that.

there might need to be a checkbox in here for GDPR reasons as well.

So we got inline editor on the left and then this contextual panel on the right.

So as and when I'm clicking on different elements I can make some changes.

So fairly straightforward, fairly obvious kind of works, as you'd expect.

So I'm not going to make any changes to the design right now.

Let's see what we've got up here.

We got embed, so it looks like we can embed across different platforms.

So plenty of those supported, which is good with a quick link, here to copy the necessary information.

And then we got save and publish.

So let's do that confirmation on down here that it's been published, although it will take a few minutes to see the changes that are live.

So I might expect that to take us back to the dashboard to where we were.

It hasn't.

so let's go back ourselves.

Click on the logo up here.

And now we can see the dashboard feels more engaging.

So we've got a number of different options that have appeared on here based on the fact we've created our first form.

So I like this.

again we've got the report up here, we still got the stepper that takes us through and you can see we've checked off creating a landing form, creating a landing, landing page in a form.

And the next thing it's prompting us to do is to customize email templates.

We've also got recommendations down here, a Kit app store and then we're learning about what's new with kit down here as well, which I haven't seen very often, but I think that's quite a good use of space, especially if you're pushing updates on a regular basis.

I think finding a way to surface those maybe on the dashboard, is a, is a good idea.

I think there's, there's a lot of SaaS companies who build really.

powerful features that never get used and one of the reasons is because they don't surface them.

So I think that's a good use of space down there.

so recommendations looks useful as well if we were to go and set that up.

and then we can also power up our account with other applications that connect directly to Kit.

So presumably that's like integrations and things.

All right guys, I'm going to leave it there.

I think kit is great, a little bit hit and miss in places.

There's always room for improvement.

Anyway, let me know what you think.

All right, cheers.

Bye bye.