Peter, Nick, and Joseph here with https://guestboard.co, and we're back with some significant improvements, a snazzy iOS app, as well as our own pivot/response to the growing need for virtual event solutions.
The problem that Guestboard continues to solve is that there are MANY event types that are too complex for a simple digital invite like Paperless Post, and too small for pricey event software.
Facebook Events used to claim this title, but the average Joe/Jane needs a flexible and intuitive tool that can scale with their needs, and can manage groups of 10 - 1000 people, whether it's personal or professional events.
But with COVID, we were presented with a new hurdle. In-person events being out the window for a while, we didn't want to lose sight of our original mission. But we also needed to meet the changing landscape.
Among other updates, we just released our Video Chat widget– one of 10 optional (and free) event tools you can activate in your event board.
The Video Chat widget is nothing groundbreaking, to be honest. Just stable, encrypted videocalls powered by Jitsi Meet's open source platform. But with this, we were able to build one important distinguishing feature..
With Video Chat, you can schedule multiple AND concurrent video calls, with slick invitations that are sent directly to your existing guest list within Guestboard.
When paired with other widgets like Schedule, Checklist, Message Board and Shared Resources, you're able to build an event board that is perfectly tailored to the needs of your group, foster a little community around your event, and streamline your communication all in one place.
As always, we're here for some real feedback and critique, so if you're the type of person who typically wrangles large groups of people, how can we solve your pain points even further?
Simple, cool, and your site immediately gets the point across of what it does. Nice work! How are you monetizing? Charging rim co's to be a part of the available library? Affiliate cut?
For public events, discovery is supreme - totally agree. We started as a planning tool for groups to cut down on massive email chains and group texts (hence the festival/Sasquatch use case :) We've got more cooking, especially with this change of events (ha).
We've been cranking away at a better group event/planning platform on https://guestboard.co for a while now (basically Slack meets Evite), but with this news, we're switching up our product roadmap to include recurring events much sooner. Would love the input from any/all. Possibly considering an interim solution of simply cloning an existing event and carrying over the guest list from previous?
We'll also be prioritizing a "discovery" search tool to be able to find public events without needing to encounter an invite link from an organizer.
And before you jump down my throat(!) a common feedback point has been improving the RSVP function to allow attendees to join without a full registration, and this new invite/onboarding flow will be releasing in a week or so :)
Absolutely not. We'll be monetizing by charging a small amount for more powerful upcoming widgets, as well as our deals partners– which we've chosen to be as un-obtrusive as possible by keeping them only within the Deals view.
Completely agree on the polls - and it's on the short-term roadmap :)
Similar user experience comment from me: for whatever settings i have on Chrome, all i get when entering is a black screen and a popup that says "This site will not work without microphone/camera access". Not a deal-breaker, but definitely could be a friendlier/welcoming experience
Gotcha, ya the single post was making it confusing, much more clear now. I'd definitely consider including a snappy couple lines of text that explain how it works.
I'm more of a web designer, so I'm not your target audience necessarily, but I love how simple this can continue to be. Straight to the point, gets the results fast, and displays the info clearly. Nice work.
Just a design note on your product landing page: the big gradient "responsivedevices.css" in your hero looks like a big CTA button, although not clickable. Might want to change that, or make it direct to something.
This would be super cool. Could even do community-based upvoting on what a leading website should look like.
Curious as to how the legal end would work re: IP. If you have 1,000 people redesigning Reddit and publishing it for all to see, there's bound to be some serious design overlap (whether intentional or not) when said company eventually goes through a redesign.
I LOVE the concept, as I'm constantly searching for free stock photos. I think there's a disconnect in informing users what they are supposed to do once they search a term..
I wasn't sure if the results on the right were a result of my search (no feedback loop or indication that they were), and then I didn't quite know what to do.
Then, clicking into each result let me realize that this was simply a tool to "queue up" the search functions on each of those sites. Which is awesome, but there was a bit of mystery around it before I clicked around.
Keep tweaking, but this is a great little tool I'll be using