Tally skipped signup entirely and it might be genius

All right, guys, welcome to the teardown.

This time I'm going to be taking a look at Tally.

So if you're finding users are dropping off or they're struggling to understand your product or how it works, maybe it's just not very intuitive, then I think this one's definitely going to be for you.

So the plan is to go through Tally as a new user and then I'm just going to share my kind of raw, honest thoughts with you on the user experience and then you can take these learnings and then you can just apply them to your own product.

So I'm pretty sure you'll find this one useful.

now, if you don't know, Tally is a form builder they claim to be the simplest way to create forms.

and they talk about how intuitive their form builder is as well.

So I'm keen to get into this one, put that to the test.

I'm going to click create free form.

Okay.

So you don't see this very often.

I was expecting to be taken through sign up onboarding but no tally have gone with a completely different approach here and bypassed that completely and this just reduces the time to value to next to nothing.

I really like this approach.

Now I appreciate not all products could do this given the nature of different types of software of course.

But this is a really bold approach that I think is going to work wonders for them.

So instead of taking users through a sign up and onboarding they've just bypassed that completely and now it feels like I'm in the product already.

Which is great because I get to test it out without going through that process.

Definitely not what I expected.

but pleasantly surprised for sure.

So whilst we're here we might as well build a form.

So let's take a look at what we've got then.

very minimal in its design which I'm sure is a deliberate choice.

we do have some guidance down here as well.

So we can either start from scratch which is always a little bit intimidating and I guess puts the onus on the user to figure out what it is they want to do or we can use a template here and then we got some instructions here.

so it says tally is a form builder that works like a doc.

So we just use the backslash to insert a form block and we can also use for mentioned as well.

So that just gives users two different ways to get started.

So I think that's really helpful at this point.

If you're just getting started and you're not familiar with how it works.

Instead of just relying on users to figure it out, they've added some simple instructions here and Highlighted them in pink as well, so you, you just kind of can't miss them.

And then the other options down here then.

So we've got some getting started.

So we can create our first form.

Start with templates, embed the form, we've got a help center if we need to.

And then we can learn more about Tally Pro.

And then over here on the right, it looks like we have additional options that might appeal to more power users.

So we've got how to guides on things like conditional logic, calculator, hidden fields, etc, etc.

So I like the fact that we can come in here, we can start building our form, understanding how the product works, And then they're also giving hints to other more advanced features.

So I really like the simplicity of this page.

As you can see here, we can come in and we can type.

So it is just like a Google form, basically.

All right, so I'm going to start with a template then.

Let's see what they've got in here.

Okay, so, so there's lots to choose from.

And then they also have some links here on using the templates, creating our own or submitting So I'm guessing some of these are from the community, some of these are from the folks at Tally who have built them out.

And then we've got some categories underneath as well, which is really helpful if there's something specific we're looking for.

I'd also suggest maybe putting a search in here.

I think that would be quite useful.

I like the fact that we can see a thumbnail of these as well.

Like, I know a form is a form, but, it's nice to be able to see them visually here.

There's lots of variety, so clearly we can design or we can customize the form to meet our brand.

So I think the thumbnails, are really helpful.

And then although it's very subtle, I think there's some social proof over here on the right.

So I assume that these numbers over here on the right, are the amount of times that the form has been used or maybe downloaded.

All right, so I'm going to go for something really simple like this customer feedback form over here on the right.

Now what I like here is it hasn't just inserted, the template straight into the form, But rather giving us a preview of what we can expect when we added in there.

Okay, so that looks good to me.

let's use this template then.

Okay, so we've inserted the template into the form.

Now.

looks pretty good, although it does seem to be a little bit bigger than first anticipated.

There are questions on here that weren't shown in the preview, so I think that's a little bit inconsistent.

We've got four pages, including the thank you page as well.

I don't think it's a huge issue, but I would have liked to see the full form before adding it.

but the form itself, looks really good.

And presumably we can come in here and we can make any edits, so we can add covers, we can add logos, we can customize the form as well.

So presumably this is just like editing a document where we can come in and if we need to, we can just highlight and then just delete with a keyboard.

and then as we're hovering over each element in the form we've got these actions that appear over here on the left.

So we've got the option to delete the block and we can add a new block below or we can drag and move the block somewhere else.

So that works pretty well.

yeah, I think that's really intuitive to be fair.

So let's see if we can add a block below the text.

And so we'll come in here, we'll click on the plus and Okay so we've got search at the top here so we can find questions, input fields, various different layouts and then on the left we've got a long list of, of other things that we can add to our form.

I just want to find something really simple, maybe So I do think they've made really good use of this empty state over here on the right.

So I haven't yet selected anything but it does point me towards the search.

And then we can use the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard.

or we can also hit enter and then we can insert that block into the form.

So they're clearly pushing the keyboard shortcuts here.

Which again is something I think the power users will appreciate.

So let's test the search out.

I'm going to search for something really simple.

okay, so we've got various options that pop up as we are searching.

so it feels really quick and responsive and I think we found what we're looking for here.

So we've got a short answer.

So we could insert, we can use this to insert a question combined with a short text answer.

Then we can either add a label or placeholder if we need to.

And then beneath that we're given an example which is what we want.

what is your first name?

So that's what I'm looking for.

let's hit enter, insert that so it doesn't add the label from the example.

but presumably we can come in here and just type.

Alright, so I think we're all set in terms of form.

It looks good.

I'm just going to take a really quick look at some of these options up here as well.

so obviously we haven't signed up for the product at all.

We've come straight from the homepage here but it looks like there's some options we can access as well.

So we've got integrations up here which again I think is really good, to expose users to other integrations that they can use if they sign up for the product.

I can imagine users coming in here and just checking if some of the other software that they're using is available via the integration.

Beyond that, if we go back to the editor, we've got their version history which I think just helps put users at ease because they're able to go back in time and view a previous version of the form they're working on.

so they know they haven't lost their work.

Next up we've got Customize, which presumably is the design.

So lots of different options over here on the right.

I'm not going to go through those in detail right now.

We obviously got the option to sign up as well and then preview, which obviously just previews our form.

And then publish as well, which I assume is going to take us to the sign up.

Yeah.

Okay.

So you can't publish until you create an account, which obviously makes sense.

So I think this is a really nice example of reducing time to value to absolutely nothing.

It's not an approach I see very often.

but I think it's going to do wonders for Tally.

I think the design of the product itself is really good as well.

It feels very intuitive, it is very quick and responsive and I think they've clearly thought long and hard about a lot of the design details here.

Alright guys, I'm gonna leave it there.

Let me know what you think of Tali.