Crafting a better work experience

How to run analytics without a consent banner? It is simple; don't use cookies nor collect personal information.

Frankly, the amount of information our devices give away is scary. Amongst other places, it ends up in the dashboard of a company's analytics app. For product people like us, many of these data points turn out to be irrelevant when making important product or marketing decisions anyway.

Even Google's Head of Insights & Analytics, Janneke van Geuns, said that "The biggest misconception is the perceived need to capture and measure everything and anything." "A common belief is that if you capture every type of metric, it will tell you magically what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, that is not how we get to insights, and would be comparable to having to find a needle in a haystack."

So, not only does harvesting data without intent can invade your users' privacy, but it can make your work more challenging. Keep it simple they say!

NOTEAnalytics/tracking were never included in our apps (mail.missiveapp.com, iOS, Mac, etc). This post is exclusively about our homepage and marketing site hosted at https://missiveapp.com.

The switch

We asked ourselves if it was time to switch to a less invasive analytics app than Google Analytics; one where lengthy privacy policies weren't needed to figure out their compliance with privacy laws of various countries (GDPR, CCPA, or PECR).

We realized that the answer was yes, a change was needed. Here are a few reasons why:

1. As an email collaboration tool, transparency and our users' privacy are paramount to us. Even if we were only including Google Analytics on our marketing site, we had to reference it in our privacy policy, which made it longer and scarier without a clear upside.
2. Many users are blocking invasive metrics scripts, skewing the quality of the data.
3. We hate those annoying cookie banners required to use Google Analytics legally in Europe. To scroll is not to give consent. So a veritable "consent-wall" is needed for it to be compliant.We are not fans of using free products; there is always a long-term hidden cost.

We looked at three potential replacements: Fathom Analytics, Plausible.io, and Simple Analytics.

After some due diligence, we decided to go with Simple Analytics, a product run by a small independent team from the Netherlands.

They were the only one not using fingerprinting to track users between page views. The upside is better privacy protection, the downside is the unique visitor metric can’t really be trusted.

But as seen here in this exchange between Rafael (our CTO) and the Fathom Analytics team, even with fingerprinting, the unique metric is not so reliable:

After a few days of using Simple Analytics, I'm happy to say it’s a far less overwhelming experience than the Google Analytics dashboard. You get a straightforward single-page dashboard with all the metrics they offer.

Privacy-first service

Let's explore what makes Simple Analytics a privacy-first analytics service:

• They don't save or collect IP addresses.
• They have an interesting way to detect unique visits, again, without cookies or IP addresses. They do it based on the hostname of the referrer of the page. They explain it like this: "When a user comes from one domain to another, their browser shares the previous domain with the next. If the current page's domain is the same as the one in the referrer, we know it's a non-unique visit." Not perfect, but good enough.
• They do collect and store timestamps, but those are entirely harmless and crucial for the graphs they generate.
• User Agents. They use them only for counting operating systems, device sizes, and browsers. They don't use User Agents for fingerprinting.
• Simple Analytics never tracks users, and by default, they ignore visits with Do Not Track (DNT) enabled.

The caveats

Simple Analytics currently offers these metrics: page view count, visitor count, referrals, top pages, screen widths, browsers, and countries. Seven metrics versus dozens in regular analytics apps. Is that a disadvantage? Not for us at the moment.

Since we don't plan to run ads anytime soon, we don't need to profile our audience, get their demographics, likes, interests, behavior patterns, etc.

Also, they don't crunch any data for you, so you will need to calculate ratios and percentages for traffic metrics manually. But again, not a problem for us.

They just rolled out cookie-less event tracking, which we will use to manually track some events like downloads.

On the other hand, they seem pretty engaged and are continually developing new features. You can see the whole roadmap.

And they were great at answering all our questions before the transition.

Conclusion

We traded a ‘free’, privacy-less, and complex analytic dashboard to a paid, privacy-first & simple one. We couldn’t be happier.

Also, thanks to this change our DuckDuckGo privacy rating was upgraded from C+ to B+

We have submited our Privacy Policy to the organization ToS;DR. DuckDuckGo works with them to provide these privacy grades. We will hopefully get the A grade soon.

Le changelog est l’une des pages les plus visitées de notre site. Il est attrayant, informatif et, depuis peu, un nouveau moyen de diffuser du contenu auprès de nos utilisateurs.

Nous l’utilisons comme un nouveau canal marketing, et vous pouvez faire de même.

« Votre changelog est l’un des meilleurs que je connaisse parce qu’il est transparent : on voit toujours ce qui se passe, et on constate que l’app continue de s’améliorer rapidement… »

Simon M.

Qu’est-ce qu’un changelog ?

Pour ceux qui ne connaissent pas le concept, un changelog (ou journal des modifications) est un outil qui annonce, dans l’ordre chronologique, les changements apportés à un projet. La plupart des sites qui en ont un se limitent aux mises à jour techniques destinées aux utilisateurs actuels, mais pas nous. Nous voulons que le nôtre retrace en détail le parcours de notre entreprise, pour les nouveaux utilisateurs comme pour les anciens.

Nous ne réinventons pas la roue : nous testons simplement ce format pour tenir nos clients informés, avec notre petite touche, et nous partageons notre expérience avec vous.

Voici quelques enseignements, et un petit cadeau pour vous !

Soyez concis

Faites court, idéalement une seule ligne de texte. Les tags (par exemple IMPROVEDBETANEW) indiquent tout de suite à l’utilisateur la nature du changement, ce qui vous permet d’aller droit au but.

Il faut parfois des notes pour compléter le texte. Nous avons choisi de les afficher dans une police plus petite et d’une autre couleur.

Si une ligne et une note ne suffisent pas, ajoutez un lien « En savoir plus » qui mène vers un article détaillé.

Ajoutez des images, des GIF ou des vidéos.

Sans visuels, ce n’est qu’une longue liste de texte ennuyeux. Ajoutez des images ou de courtes vidéos pour enrichir le contenu.

Mais n’inondez pas votre changelog d’images : il deviendrait difficile à lire et perdrait tout son attrait.

Nous ajoutons généralement des images pour rendre le contenu plus clair. Par exemple, si vous voyez ceci :

Vous n’avez aucune idée de quoi il s’agit, faute de contexte. Mais avec une capture d’écran zoomée, vous comprenez tout immédiatement.

Allez au-delà du produit.

Les changelogs traditionnels recensent généralement les modifications apportées au logiciel : nouvelles fonctionnalités, corrections de bugs, améliorations. Mais c’est justement là que vous pouvez faire preuve de créativité.

Nos articles de blog n’étaient pas très lus, et nous savions que les gens aimaient la page du changelog. Nous avons donc ajouté un tag BLOG au changelog, et nos articles ont commencé à être bien plus lus !

D’autres tags ont fait leur apparition récemment. Nous avons embauché un nouvel employé, alors nous avons ajouté un tag HIRED, et l’un de nos utilisateurs a même pris le temps d’écrire un e-mail pour souhaiter la bienvenue à notre nouvelle recrue !

Envoyez-le aussi par e-mail !

C’est une excellente alternative à la newsletter classique, devenue bien trop banale. Fin 2019, nous avons envoyé une newsletter présentée comme le changelog. Ce fut un succès : le taux d’ouverture était bon, la lecture de nos articles de blog a augmenté, et nous avons même reçu des messages encourageants nous invitant à continuer !

Convaincu ?

Oui ! Mais comment le mettre en place ? Eh bien, de nombreux SaaS de changelog proposent exactement ce service. Voici trois excellentes options :

• Canny : un service unique qui vous permet de mettre en place un changelog, une feuille de route et un système de demandes de fonctionnalités.
• Beamer
• Changefeed

Ou construisez le vôtre, comme nous ! C’est un simple fichier YAML dans notre application Rails. Nous pourrions peut-être y consacrer un autre article. Écrivez-nous si cela vous intéresse.

Nous espérons que vos utilisateurs apprécieront autant que les nôtres !

This end-of-year retreat was different from past ones. We did the usual full week of intense work, but the weekend gave way to a relaxing, cheerful time with everyone's family under one roof.

It all started in mid-October, when Philippe, our CEO, decided it was time for a retreat. He booked a fantastic cabin, barely big enough for the five of us 😗, overlooking the Saint Lawrence River. It was suggested to us by one of our customers: MonsieurChalets.

After doing a quick Doodle to agree on a date, we decided to go during the last week of November. We also decided to hold the company's Christmas party on-site during the weekend. Great idea!

Before we knew it, we were packing suitcases, computer screens, and laptops in two small cars. Did I mention that we bought one week worth of food for five guys? That sort of looks like this:

‍

By 6 pm we were on full retreat mode, our defacto workstation was a big dining table situated on the eastern side of the cabin facing the grandness of the river.

Days passed by very quickly. A typical one went out like this:

6.30-8.30 am - At different times and in no particular order, people would start showing up at the work (dining) table. Some in a grumpy not-a-morning-person kind of way, others with a 5k already under their belt.

8.30-9 am - Self-serve breakfast, which included an array of fruits, eggs, bread, and all-you-can-drink coffee too.

9.30 am - 1 pm - First uninterrupted sprint of work.

1 pm - 1.30 pm - Lunchtime. Delicious and copious lunch prepared by our in-house master chef Philippe.

1:30 pm - 6 pm - Second sprint of work. With a few breaks here and there to refill your coffee mug, take a quick dip in the jacuzzi, go for a jog, or simply to admire the breathtaking view.

6 pm - 7 pm - Dinner time. Another large shared meal and time to open a couple of Coronas.

7 pm - As late as you wish - Third work sprint. For some, the most productive time of day, for others time to slow down and work by the fireplace. For all, a moment to have a ping pong match, a stroll near the cabin or another dip in the jacuzzi.

Tens of commits, five beautiful sunsets and many accidentally broken eggs later, here are a few of the most notable things that we accomplished during this retreat:

• Modern authentification for Office 365 accounts.
• Image resize in the composer.
• Multiple bug fixes.
• Feature fine-tuning.
• New FAQ content and landing pages.
• Missive Live Chat. Wait. What!? Yes, we will be releasing it soon, here's a quick preview:

By Friday evening, our families started to arrive, and our focus shifted to them. It was time to convert the work table back to a dining table.

Unlike the rest of the week, Saturday started as a sunny bright day; the cabin felt warmer and full of life with children playing and parents preparing breakfast. The day had a holiday feel to it, with people playing card games and kids sledding out in the snow.

By 6 pm, Christmas music started playing from the surround system in the living area, and everyone started chopping food in preparation for the Christmas dinner. We had raclette, some good wine, and a great conversation.

It's safe to say we all enjoyed the time working and the time off with our families. It's the first time we've done it this way and could very well be the last time.

We're at a point where we are small enough to do this, but this will undoubtedly change in a year from now — a good problem some might say. So yes, this was a special retreat.

From all the Missive team, we wish you a happy holiday season!

🎄

We went on a week-long work retreat in Italy.

Last month we decided to give ourselves a break from our co-working space and went on a week-long team retreat in the beautiful countryside of Charlevoix, Québec.

We set out to the Petite-Rivière-Saint-François village on a grey Sunday afternoon and arrived in a beautiful log cabin perched above the Saint Lawrence River. The view was stunning.

A change of pace

We knew from past retreat experiences that breaking the routine can be beneficial for productivity and new ideas. From way back into our client-work era, to building Conference Badge and Medali.st, we always got something big out of team retreats.

No specific goals were set for this one. We simply wanted to work more, with fewer distractions and more time to discuss. We firmly believe in work-life balance, but sometimes it’s just good to go all out for a few days. The key benefit was constant focus… with a view.

Working with a view 🌄 #missiveRetreat pic.twitter.com/iPUCwfnUpc

— Missive (@missiveapp) November 11, 2015

In between all the hard work we took the time for good food and relaxing spa sessions. Add a few refreshing runs rewarded with drinks and pool games and you get the dream retreat (let’s not forget Etienne’s classic late-night LoTR viewing).

Sharing the fun

Since the Airbnb “cottage” had enough space to house 12 people, we thought it’d be good to invite friends to come work with us for the week. It was a win-win situation: they got to spend a week in a nice spot and we got to have feedback on various aspects of Missive. Getting raw feedback from people you trust outside the bubble of your team is very important and surprisingly hard to get.

Late night dev is best dev 🤓#missiveRetreat pic.twitter.com/HRU1NsxxdV

— Missive (@missiveapp) November 11, 2015

All in all, going on a team retreat is like changing the tires on a racing car. You come back thirsty for new challenges with a refreshed view on your next steps and memories of good times spent together.

Depuis que Dropbox a annoncé l’arrêt de Mailbox, beaucoup s’agacent de l’instabilité qui secoue le monde de l’e-mail.

Le commentaire le plus plébiscité du fil HN résume bien cette frustration :

Pfff. Encore une start-up d’e-mail prometteuse rachetée puis enterrée par une entreprise tech mieux établie (voir aussi : Sparrow). Nous sommes en 2015 et je change encore de client de messagerie tous les deux mois, parce que toutes les grandes options ont de sérieux défauts.schneidmaster

L’e-mail est solide comme un roc. Il a peu changé au cours de la dernière décennie et reste omniprésent. Les applications que nous utilisons pour le consulter, en revanche, évoluent à un rythme effréné.

Est-ce une tendance récente ? Les entreprises de l’e-mail étaient-elles déjà rachetées et revendues par le passé ?

Nous avons pensé qu’il serait intéressant de visualiser l’histoire de tous ces clients de messagerie sur une frise chronologique : leur lancement, leur rachat et leur abandon.

‍

Chaque fois qu’une nouvelle plateforme apparaît (web, iOS, Android), une vague de nouvelles applications de messagerie semble se lancer à la conquête de ce marché. Puis les grands acteurs rachètent les gagnants pour prendre aussitôt la tête de ces nouveaux marchés.

En 1998, Microsoft a racheté Hotmail et Yahoo a racheté RocketMail. Plus récemment, Google a acquis Sparrow, Microsoft a racheté Accompli et Dropbox a mis la main sur Mailbox.

La valorisation cumulée de ces trois derniers rachats, $320 millions, explique sans doute aussi pourquoi tant d’applications voient le jour depuis 2013.

Et vous, qu’en retenez-vous ?

Notes

1. Cette frise est sans aucun doute incomplète : nous avons probablement oublié de nombreuses applications, surtout les plus anciennes. Si c’est le cas, n’hésitez pas à suggérer celles qui manquent dans les commentaires ci-dessous, ou à ouvrir une issue sur le dépôt GitHub.
2. Nous nous sommes inspirés de l’équipe de sameroom.io et de sa Brief History of Chat Services.