Ideas for interactive tools on the website

[joethreepwood]

@charlescook-ph and I were speaking recently about some potential tools or interactive elements we could add to PostHog.com as an SEO tactic. We were thinking of things similar to a percentage calculator, image cropper, etc.

I spent my lunch break thinking about this idea some more and put down 10 ideas, organized as the most straightforward to the most ambitious. Sharing it in case others feel these are worth pursuing, and so we can discuss how if so...

• Hackathon idea generator: You input things like the name of your product. We shuffle them together with some variable modifiers (e.g. X, but bigger). Useful for hackathons and product iteration.

• SaaS calculator: You input how much you do (or would) pay for feature flag software, a replay software, an analytics software, per month. We compare that to PostHog and give you whichever is cheaper.

• Experiment scaler: You put in how many users you have per day. We tell you what a minimum detectable result would be, and how many days to reach it.

• Regex checker: You paste in a Regex string and we check that it is formatted correctly and accurate.

• Event validator: You paste in a list of all your events, or export it from PostHog. We help you find duplicates by looking for similarities, so you can avoid useless events.

• Accessible UI helper: A colour wheel tool which helps you choose colours with sufficient contrast to work for accessible UIs. Each time you choose a colour on the wheel, we eliminate all colours within an inaccessible range.

• Build-a-Hog: Build your own hedgehog by layering on hats, accessories, poses, etc. Then export as a png. Would also be useful internally.

• Wordcloud Generator: You paste in your user interviews. We surface the most common positive and negative words into word clouds to help you visualize things.

• A simple game: You play an interactive fiction game about getting a product to PMF fit, playable in browser. Completing the game rewards you with a copy of the physical PMF guide to order for free. (I could build this).

• A complex game: You play a full-on flash or Pico-8 game starring Max. From Top-down perspective we see Max as he searches for five reference customers while surviving waves of bugs. Rescuing all five gets you a physical copy of the PMF guide to order for free. (I could probably not build this).

[joethreepwood]

Or, as a wild but probably the best and most achievable, 11th idea:

• Are you a product engineer? You complete a personality quiz that checks for behaviours, concerns, and tools of different types of engineer. At the end, we tell you what type of engineer you are: Full-Stack, Front-End, Back-End, Product, Growth, etc. At the end we suggest other content and tools to help you.

This is the one.

[ivanagas]

This has been on my long-list for a long time: https://github.com/PostHog/posthog.com/issues/5751

[joethreepwood]

I know Build-A-Hog has been a @lottiecoxon wishlist item for a while too...

[charlescook-ph]

@joethreepwood your list is also in descending order of usefulness, so I'd be inclined to go with anything 1-3 in your list, or Ian's A/B test calculator.

I like the fun of 'are you a product engineer', but I feel like that would land badly with our target audience, as it feels very much like a thing an engineer would find annoying.

However, riffing off that, what about something that is obviously totally silly - a Buzzfeed-style 'you tell us about your eng habits, tools, etc. and we tell you [where you should next go on holiday/which Pokemon you are/what to watch next on Netflix/which car you are]'

[joethreepwood]

OK, now who's suggesting useless ideas 😛

[charlescook-ph]

Look it has to be useful or EXTREMELY VIRAL, there is no in-between 🤠 🚀