It was really nice to see how we grew from a one-person team to three and now we are a team of six. Alhamdulillah. Everyone seemed to be getting along with each other and were very engaging.

The discussion went well, we mapped out the structure and processes of Maktaba Books. It looks really exciting. 2022 is going to be an interesting year for us.

I look forward to sharing more updates about this.

The post Maktaba Books – First big team meeting appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

As mentioned in the previous update, we went past 500 followers, so we did an achievement post (see image below). We discovered that we have had 41 books borrowed in total. And that was quite shocking to find out that the uptake has been that good.

Apart from those achievements, we also realised that the dismal conversion rate was not because our website was horrible but it was due to not telling users to borrow and what to borrow. We just needed more intentional traffic. So to do this, we started publishing book recommendations based on the categories we have. This lets our followers know what the categories mean and what books they should read, killing two stones with one bird . To make it more actionable, we reshared those posts as a story and included a link sticker to the book page to borrow it. It has been super effective, the new Instagram update has been super useful.

We also made another interesting discovery – our followers like to engage with content around questions or quizzes. This happened when we decided to share a random Malay vocabulary test by the Bulan Bahasa account asking what is a Violin called in Malay. It somehow blew up, we received 20 over messages answering it trying to find out if their answer was right. It’s still a preliminary finding, we will need to test this theory out more before we can confidently say that they love that kind of content.

We also have some internal updates – our partner, Quiet, have officially opened their co-working space. Their space holds our donated books and users can choose to do a book pick up there instead of a meet up of mail delivery.

Another news is that we now have a new Developer joining the volunteer team. We may also get another 2 volunteers joining our team – a UX Designer and another marketing team member. That would make us a team of 7 . Alhamdulillah, truly amazed and grateful to get to work with such generous people that want to contribute.

The post Maktaba Books – it’s alive and growing appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

Our website is getting a decent amount of traffic at about 10 – 15 user visits per day. But many of them or not doing much there – they land on the page, scroll through the list of books, and that’s all. 96% of them stop there without seeing more of the books or clicking any buttons. That’s a huge drop off. My hypothesis is that it is hard for them to find a book that they want or they don’t know what they want and there’s nothing to help them decide.

To improve on our 0.56% conversion rate (borrowing books), we will be spending more time to find out why users are not borrowing books and how we can improve that. So, we split it into two parts – asking users that have not borrowed “what’s stopping them?” and asking our power users “why they borrowed from us, what is the problem we solve for them?”. While that is ongoing, we will test my hypothesis that users need help to decide on a book by posting content around book recommendations and describing our book categories.

Some good news is that we’ve passed a milestone of having 500 followers. 99% of which were gained organically. Alhamdulillah, glad people find what we do to be useful.

The post Maktaba Books – Good views but not much action appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

Since I’ve decided to focus on polishing the product, over the next few months my main role would be focused on operating the platform – making sure everything runs smoothly and fix any automations that are not working. I expect this to last till the end of the year until version 3, which is getting build by an actual developer, is ready to run. This is a very painful process for me (maybe for everyone too?) because I’m not very good at doing routine housekeeping of any kind. But it’s something I have to do to help keep this going, so I just have to persevere.

While I focus my energy and time on operating the tech side of Maktaba Books, the rest of the team will be focused on growing the usage of our platform by our existing users. I’ve shared this mission with them and they were more than happy to take it on. I’m looking forward to what they come up with.

The post Makataba Books – Maintaining, fixing errors and increasing engagement appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

The new setup

When we started this, we were running it on Instagram – we had a Google Sheet filled with 400+ books and people had to DM us to borrow the books, it was very manual. Now we have a website for all the books (with photos & summaries) and the borrowing process is all automated using a combination of Telegram bot, Google Forms, Google Sheets, and Integromat.

Promoting the launch

We promoted it organically on Instagram and using Facebook Ads (we had free credits).

Organically, we posted a couple of images on Instagram feed and Instagram stories. To maximise the reach we created a close friends list of all our followers and shared the post directly to them via Instagram messages.

For the paid ads, we were experimenting with placement, creative, copy, and audience targeting. This was mainly to reach new people.

I’m really happy and thankful with where we are, the help we’re getting and the team we have. I’m really glad to have Nurhadi Tahan, Izza Haziqah, and Abdul Aziz with me on the team. Alhamdulillah. Even if this go sideways, it is still a win.

The post Maktaba Books – Launch & Tech Dev Team Member appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

I was soo wrong about it. Only the borrowing automation was ready. I still needed to have a proper book catalogue with pictures and summaries, guide on how the new process works (for both borrowers and book owners), onboard the book owners, and plan out how to do the actual testing.

For the book catalogue, it took me about a week to finish. With the help of my girlfriend, I managed to update the images and summaries at a rate of 50 books a day. It now looks like proper digital library, you can check it out here if you want.

Creating a guide for the book owners and borrowers was tough. Explaining what they need to do step by step in a way that’s is very easy to comprehend took us a few revisions to get it right because we knew that we should spend more time here to avoid bigger headaches down the road.

You can have a look the book owner guide and the borrower guide.

After setting up the idiot-proof guide, we then proceeded to work on getting book owners onboard our Telegram process. This required a lot of cross platform communication. We had to ask their Telegram contact details on Instagram messaging and once we had the Telegram details and for some reason they don’t reply to us, we would message them on Instagram.

Last part was to actually plan out what we wanted to do for testing. After some discussion, we agreed to have it tested by ourselves (the team), our friends, and the existing Maktaba Books power users. That would total up to 10 users.

For the testing we wanted to get feedback on the borrowing process, and after returning the book. So we know exactly annoys/makes it difficult for users. To collect feedback, we created a Google Form to capture it, where it’s a mix of qualitative and quantitative questions. And in any situation we are interested to hear more about their feedback, we would actually have a call with them to dig.

So yeah, now we’ve been officially testing since 13 September. The next step is to go through the feedback, apply it and launch it fully.

The post Maktaba Books – Testing update appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

I am excited but kind of worried of the problems that might appear during the testing phase. I’m not worried about the number of problems that we are going to find but I’m worried about finding problems that we cannot solve.

I think the best way to look at it is to find all the problems as early as possible so that we have more time to fix it. Because at the end of the day, we want to have a system that works well and is easy to use.

As of today, 3 people have tested it and we’ve found quite a number of problems. It’s nothing too major that we cannot fix.

I’m looking forward to launch this September with the team.

The post Maktaba Books – Testing appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

But now, we face some dilemmas.

Since this was built using Integromat and SpreadSimple’s free plan, it had limitations, and we cannot operate within those limitations. We are aware of that and we have come to terms that we may need to pay for those no-code tools to operate.

But the problem now is – which tier of Integromat should we subscribe to? Is it the cheapest plan with a 5 min automation window (USD 9/month) or the next higher priced plan with a 1 min automation window (USD 29/month)?

The option that I was leaning towards was the higher priced plan (USD 29/month). It was faster and it will make the process satisfyingly smooth. I didn’t mind forking it out myself and get it crowdfunded later on.

However, I was reminded that I’m jumping too far ahead thinking that saving 4 min would add a lot of value to the experience. It was just a gut feeling and not based on actual data. So, if we look at how things are running right now, we respond to book borrowing request within 24h. So waiting 5 min would already be a huge improvement.

Apart from that, we only had 20+ books borrowed so far. Investing USD 29/month out of personal funds may be a bit too much and it doesn’t seem justifiable yet.

So for now, we’re investing USD 9/month for Integromat and USD 8/month for Spread Simple for our tech setup. We’re then going to test it and run it for a couple of months to see if it makes sense to have a shorter automation window or if we should focus on something else.

Things are looking good for Maktaba Books. We have a good team and we are progressing well. Alhamdulillah

The post Maktaba Books – Tweaks and dilemmas appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

I was just toying around to figure out how we could make the first iteration of the automated borrowing process smoother and easier for users,

The 1st version of the automated borrowing process was like this:

1. User decides on a book after browsing the book gallery and goes on a form to submit a borrowing request.
2. In the form the user is required to fill out their Telegram username and Telegram ID to register. To get their telegram ID, the users need to take another extra step – they had to retrieve it from a telegram bot caller @userinfobot.
3. After filling up their details, they will be brought to the section in the book details. This is pre-filled, so users do not need to do much here, they just need to decided how they want to collect the book.
4. They would then go to the last section of the form to inform of the borrower of 3 timings that they would like to do the pick up. If not, they would skip this step.
5. They would need to make a $5 deposit and upload a screenshot of the transaction.
6. The form is submitted and the book owner will receive an update via our Telegram bot. Which includes all the details captured in the borrow request form and they will make a reply through the Telegram bot. At the same time, the bororowing user will receive a confirmation from our telegram bot and the book list is updated to show that the book is on loan.
7. The book borrowing takes place.
8. On the week and a day before the book loan is due, the borrower is reminded to either schedule a book returm with the book owner or extend the book loan via a form.
9. Two to three days after the due date, an automated message will be sent to the book owner to confirm that they have received the book in good conditio.n. They do so buy submitting a form by clicking ‘yes’.
10. Once that is done, the borrower is receives a message to share their paynow number to receive their deposit back.
11. The team receives the bank details, we return the $5 deposit to them manually.

The two most painful or confusing part would be the step where users have to find their Telegram ID and they have to reply through our Telegram Bot. We have to counter this by having clear instructions and a super basic UX that is not overwhelming.

This is the first iteration of the steps to get the Telegram ID (yes, it’s a whole document)

This is the newer guide – it is embedded in the form.

This how the messages relayed by the Telegram bot looks like and how the instruction to reply looks like for the first iteration.

I updated the format and split the messages into two – 1 is the message from the other user and another would be instructions on how to reply. This is how the second iteration looks like for messages and guide to reply.

Apart from having a guide on how to retrieve their telegram ID, I wanted the user to only do it once. We need to find a way to remember it. The users would only need to share with us their telegram username and we would pull up their other information for them.

Initially, I thought the solution would be a searchable drop down list of all returning users’ telegram username and ID. This would be done using a google form application – called Form Ranger.

However, that didn’t work well as it was a drop down list which you have to scroll to find your details. A total no go because if we have 1,000 users in the database, it would to take forever.

In the end I decided to use a combination of Google Sheets and Integromat to cross refer the submissions of returning user’s username with our database to pull their Telegram ID for us to use and send messages. Making it a more pleasant experience if they are constantly using our platform.

Next is to just piece everything together and get help with the copy and we would be ready to test it for a couple of weeks before launching it. In sya Allah.

The post Maktaba Books – No code user database appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.

Since none of the team members were techies or have working knowledge on programming or coding, we had to build it using no-code tools. For our first iteration, we used the following tools:

1. Google Sheets – as the database to collect book requests and messages from users
2. Google Forms – to collect book loan requests, manage the book list, and to start the conversation between the book borrower and lender
3. Telegram – where all the conversations takes place
4. Integromat – an automation tool that connects everything , similar to Zapier. This will help to put everything together

It took us about 3 – 4 hours to setup something that could work. It isn’t the best looking setup but it works. The most important thing is that the borrowing process would be automated! The UX of it can be improved later on when we have a proper dev team to build it properly.

Once this has been polished & tested. Our next step would be to grow it. Get as many people as possible from free marketing.

This is a huge achievement – we managed to build the whole setup without a tech team. Alhamdulillah, I’m happy. Hopefully it works well and enough to keep us going for awhile before we have to fix something again.

The post Maktaba Books – Making our own tech appeared first on Azrin Hamdan.