Create a gated content website with user sign in with Glide

What is it:

A Nocode initiative to empower people with our Nocode Course on Glide and let them build apps for themselves, without having to write a single line of code.

Maker Insight:

Nocode development with a good UX can change the game.

What did I learn:

What better way to teach about how to make a no-code app than use a no-code app to teach it.

Some interesting things I learned about this app that you might be interested in.

1. New glide functionality of a desktop view for glide apps. This is a newer feature, and for a product like this it makes perfect sense to use a larger screen size. Creating an educational course is best for a desktop view. If you are interested to see how Glide operates with a desktop view this is a good product to model after.

2. "We had progress bars throughout the course for users to track their progress just like a learning management system"
You can see a tutorial of how that is used here: https://community.glideapps.com/t/new-progress-bars/13839

Progress bars can be used in many different ways. From a product perspective this is great to help encourage a user to complete a task. When you are talking about user retention and sharing the your product through word of mouth. Your users must feel the value and reach success with your product. How does your product produce a better version of your user?

Using a progress bar can help them reach that better version of them selves.

My favorite illustration of this concept for this on this page here. Its illustration with of little Mario, a plant, Super Mario throwing fireballs. It makes a lot more sense to see it, but the essence is this. Your business isn't the features of your product. Your business is the awesome benefits and things that your user can now do because of your product.
https://www.useronboard.com/features-vs-benefits/

When making your product don't just think about the features and expecting your users to automatically do what you need them to do. It should be supported by progress bars, encouragement and copy that all works together to get them to the finish line and be successful with your product.

3. "Noscript did not have a landing page. Instead it had it's landing page inside of the app controlled with visibility features such that it's a landing page for normal users and a course for members"

What this means, is Glide has the ability to manage user permission for signed in users. Once they pay for your service, they then get access to pages behind that service. This is natively done inside Glide and is a great feature of using Glide. Other apps that you build with like Bubble, Webflow require using a third party plug in service like Memberstack. Bildr is creating this natively inside their platform but requires a little bit more tech saviness to set up and manage.

4. There is a community forum within the application. I did not realize how well Glide has built this feature. I'd recommend that you check out its functionality. The way this feature works is there is a way to make posts, leave comments and interact. I think that this feature is something that is a really big deal. If you're looking for something that offers many features for your community. This may not have the feature set to support what you're looking for. But I'd argue just having a way to create a forum with questions and answers within the community could get you most of the way there in providing a really great resource for your users.

A forum like what is used here for this product is good way to start some type of community where answers that get asked can persist and help newer members get information that may have already been asked before.

Forum's are just one type of community.

As a Maker, I often see many folks, including myself pre-maturely building major features of their products. One of those ways is building community too early. Timing for this is hard. For examples I see a lot of slack groups and communities in general get started too prematurely. Community takes a lot of effort and initial inertia. Generally you need hundreds of extremely active members if not thousands.

I see a lot of Makers struggle with their communities early on because its a hard thing to start. Its not valuable for the first few people that show up. It's the chicken or the egg type problem.

Why do people strive to start communities? Because it is a fantastic defensible moat for your product.

So then how do you get around this problem?

I would recommend if you are thinking about starting a community, and the core product is not a community, it's better off to wait. Better to focus on something you can go deep in providing a ton of immediate value instead of a community which takes time to give real value to your first users.

One example, with Side Project Stack I've built a newsletter subscriber base of 2000+. I've built this over time sending emails of helpful information. Product Hunt started this way too. Once Ryan H. of Product Hunt built up a sufficient email list, when he launched his product which relies on a massive community it got a really good push to start and created a massive initial wave of momentum.

If I were to decide to go the community route with Side Project Stack, I'd have an attentive group of Makers who would be more likely to jump in all at once.

Then once you have built up enough inertia like through a newsletter sign up, you can create a community, it will instantly provide value because you have hundreds of people showing up at the same time. Think of it like a dance floor. No-one wants to be at the dance party being the only ones. A full dance floor is the best experience.