Regarding Dashboards, Payments And Back End Systems
Working behind the scenes is just as important ...
Posted by Steffi Lewis on 11/07/2023 @ 8:00AM
It may seem to those that know me that I've been a bit quiet this week. Since adding birthdays to YourPCM I've been working behind the scenes, integrating Stripe, working on my dashboard and tidying up some back-end systems ...
Building SaaS products like YourPCM is an awesome pastime. I really do love coding!
The first thing I did last week was get Stripe integrated as my new payment processor. All my existing subscribers (unless they request to move) will remain with Square and all future subscribers will use Stripe. Why? After re-evaluating Stripe recently, I feel it is now better suited as a SaaS payment platform, and Square is better for retail point-of-sale systems, although it does have other merits too.
"I looked at Stripe originally, but went with Square as, at the time, it was easier!"
I discovered how inflexible Square was without a lot of deep coding. The reason for this is that I wanted my subscribers to be able to switch subscriptions quickly and efficiently as their needs change. They can do this via the Stripe customer portal.
Stripe also allows me to add additional users to the same subscription and move the quantity up and down. With Square, I needed a separate subscription and had to control it myself which wasn't easy for the subscriber.
Next up this week was my dashboard. This shows me how many subscribers of each package I have, how many free trials are running and what my conversion and churn rates are. These are all pretty accurate, and the charts that go with them are nice.
I think I mentioned I was working on my dashboard last week, and that's finished now, giving me the ability to quickly switch packages for a subscriber, now the Stripe customer portal allows them to chop and change what they're subscribed to.
Lastly, there was some bug fixing. I noticed a major problem in the sign-up process, but as I have a lot of error handling built-in, it wasn't an obvious error though there were scenarios when a potential new subscriber couldn't sign-up. That's all fixed now and I've also tweaked it to take into consideration Stripe and the extra changes I've been working on.
"So, what's next?"
Well, I've got until the end of July to get all the coding I want to do completed. August is about focussing on my Go To Market strategy and putting all that together then September to December is a huge push to get more subscribers and I'm going to be going no-code until Christmas so feature requests will have to wait.
I'm still working on integrating Companies House data into our Discovery tools and then figuring out what to do with it and I think, once I get it right, that's going to be a game changer. I'm working to build Cardly into the YourPCM platform for easy print-and-send to any new contacts we discover.
I've enjoyed all the coding I've done so far this summer.
Love, light and logic ...
STEFFI LEWIS
The CRM designed exclusively for UK small business owners ...
Foodie, sci-fi nut, cat lover, brain aneurysm & cancer survivor, countryside dweller, SaaS entrepreneur, developer and networker.
Published my first website in 1993 for the Open University and am highly experienced with Windows Servers, SQL Server, HTML, Classic ASP, JavaScript, and CSS.
I've also worked as a professional photographer in Los Angeles, USA and been a vision mixer and producer for live television in my time.
I live in a village north of Milton Keynes with my two cats, Baggins and Gimley, and a large planted aquarium full of unruly tropical fish.
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