| | 5 | |
| | 6 | I'd like to lay out a few of the ways we were using that data for our plugins. |
| | 7 | |
| | 8 | Knowing at least some details about active install growth allowed us to proactively plan for support needs. We currently have two full-time staff handling support tickets, and over 90% of those are support requests from free users of our plugins. Knowing how quickly our active installs are growing is a key leading indicator that we track to determine when we need to start the hiring process to add to our support team. That process can take weeks or even months as we're small and hire carefully, so it's really important that we're able to be proactive about the process to hire at the right time. Without that data, we have to rely on lagging indicators like support volume alone, which means we might make important hiring decisions too late and the quality of our support might suffer. |
| | 9 | |
| | 10 | Additionally, when we release new features or make large changes to our plugins, we always closely watch the active install growth numbers in the following weeks. Without access to that data and having to rely only on the public rounded number, we could lose 50% or more of our active installs without knowing it. We know from experience that only a tiny percentage of users will file support tickets if there's a problem and an even smaller percentage will leave reviews. Without active install numbers updated regularly, we have no reliable way to judge whether a change to a plugin was a positive or negative one until much later. And by that time, we may have permanently lost a significant portion of our users. |
| | 11 | |
| | 12 | Another key leading indicator we were tracking was the number of support requests per active install. Whenever we've seen that number tick up, it's been a sure and early sign that there's an issue in the plugin and we've been able to have everyone drop what they're working on to focus on fixing the issue and minimizing the impact to users. If we see an uptick in support without knowing our active install numbers, it's not possible to tell if we're growing and gaining more installs, or if there's an issue in the plugin that needs an urgent fix. Without that data, we might figure it out too late. |
| | 13 | |
| | 14 | Our only interest in the active install numbers is for our own plugins. It was all data we were using to make good decisions with our plugins. We'd be perfectly happy to have the data kept private per plugin and only available to plugin authors. |