Issue #353 (AnnounceKit Review, Vue Tools, JSON/DB, Mobile)04/23/20
The following intro is a paid product review for AnnounceKit, a hosted changelog or product update service that provides a communication channel between your product and end-users.
What's the best way to inform your users that your product has been updated? This is important especially with web apps that are able to update behind the scenes and users are often left in the dark on what's new.
Of course, if a user wants to know what's new, they can check GitHub or look for the product's social media channels. But how much better if your product's updates are integrated into the web app itself. That's where AnnounceKit comes in.
AnnounceKit: A product updates and changelog service
AnnounceKit allows you to add posts that are hosted at a location like "changelog.example.com". That location holds a series of updates that itemize your product's changes, and they're searchable and filterable by category, as shown in the following single post example:
A single product update, categorized and filterable
Posts can be created using a WYSIWYG editor that includes ability to add styles, embed video, and an option to label your post according to some predefined categories:
AnnounceKit's WYSIWYG editor for posts
You can integrate different types of widgets within your app to notify users of changes and updates. The widgets point to your posts, as shown above. One of the widgets offered is the animated Count Badge Widget that triggers a dropdown on click:
AnnounceKit's Count Badge Widget
There's also a Sidebar Widget that opens when the user clicks something like a "What's New" link:
AnnounceKit's Sidebar Widget
In addition, there's a widget you can embed directly into a page (like the sidebar or footer of your app), displaying product updates in blog list format:
AnnounceKit's Embed Widget
AnnounceKit also gives you the ability to integrate with popular apps you already use like GitHub, Slack, Twitter, and lots more. These integrations allow you to quickly and easily push out product announcements and changes.
AnnounceKit integrates with apps you already use
Other features available in AnnounceKit include the ability to:
- Collect user feedback about updates
- Enable users to sign up for email notifications on changes
- Send different updates to different users via Segmentation
- Publish in multiple languages
- And lots more
Because I write this newsletter, I deal with a lot of tool websites. And I can tell you from experience that it's often difficult to find out when a product was last updated and what those updates were added. A service like AnnounceKit removes that hurdle so everyone is up to date and the updates are easy to find and integrated into your application.
AnnounceKit offers
a 30-day trial for the highest tier as well as a free-forever version that's useful for trying out the basics, or if you don't need any of the advanced features.
As a promotion for this issue, AnnounceKit is offering 20% off their "Startup" plan. Just use discount code
WEBTOOLSWEEKLY. So
check out AnnounceKit if you're in the market for an easy-to-integrate changelog for your product or service.
Now on to this week's tools!
