Ballpark Progress Log: 004

Yo.

I shipped a big update today.

It's something that's pushed me very close to having Ballpark publicly available. It's something I should have built at the beginning but I got lazy. It's something that would have taken 2 hours instead of 2 days.

That something is the ability to reconnect flows after you split.

The problem this solves

I've been working with around 10 private beta users to get Ballpark dialed in. They'd all send me screenshots of their flows and I kept seeing the same thing: 4 different flows after they split on services.

Here's what was happening. Let's say you're a design studio offering branding, web design, and packaging. You'd create a question asking "What service do you need?" Then you'd split into 3 different paths. After asking service specific questions, you'd want to ask the same questions again. Timeline, budget, company size, whatever.

With the old setup, users were having to recreate the same questions 3 times. Every single time they split.

It was causing friction in the setup process. People were spending way more time than they should building their estimators.

What this unlocks

From the outside, this seems like such a small change. Trust me, it wasn't. But that doesn't matter. What matters is how this impacts our workflows.

There's the obvious benefit of having to create fewer questions. Meaning easier setup. But the new architecture has enabled something way more interesting: actions after someone submits your estimator.

Here's a few examples using my business Over-Stimulated as the case study:

• Send follow up emails if someone doesn't respond to the estimate

• Add people to my newsletter if they want to subscribe

• Use AI to include similar projects in the email based on the submitters inputs

• Add to my partner CRM if they're interested in being a partner

• Send notifications to Slack, Email, Discord etc.

The list could go on but I hope you get the point. It's enabling us to automate a lot of boring shit so we can get super creative in the ways we attract traffic to our sites.

For now, actions haven't been enabled. But you'll be able to reconnect flows from today.

Starting templates

The most requested feature amongst beta testers has been a point to start from. I imagine this is because of the blank screen problem.

When you go to design something, starting at the blank canvas is intimidating. You're never sure where to start. It's the same with creating a question flow. It's not an easy task to think through questions and the order you ask them in.

So the goal of starting templates is to create a starting point based on existing question flows that work. You can then adapt these to your business or use them as is.

The functionality for these is built. Here’s a preview. You can scroll through templates, preview, then select which one you’d want to start from:

My next task is to create the templates themselves. I'll launch this feature with only a few to start with. Over time, as we find out what works best we can add more.

That being said, if there's an industry template you'd love to see, reply to this email and let's jam on one.

I'm also going to be working through pricing over the next week. Expect to be involved in the process.

Thats all for this week. Talk soon.

Will