When marketing your software to developers, letting your product do the talking is the most effective technique to drive product awareness and adoption. Allowing developers to play around with your software, look under the hood, test its capabilities/limitations, and even build a proof of concept — these are the ‌experiences that technical audiences want to have with your product.

But it’s important to make the experience as frictionless as possible. If users have to jump through hoops or have issues with complicated installations, they will give up on your product and look for an alternative solution.

This was an issue that Hummingbot — an open source software that helps you build market-making and arbitrage bots that run on any crypto exchange — faced. Hummingbot wanted to find a solution that would enable users to trial their software without having to install it and face technical hurdles, such as system compatibility. 

Challenges: Onboarding New Users

Before Hummingbot implemented Appsembler, Hummingbot’s new users can install and use the application via Docker or install from source which could be challenging for non-technical users at first glance of the installation steps.

Hummingbot wanted to remove the installation barriers and find a frictionless way for users to trial their software. Hummingbot also wanted to provide training content to help new users to better understand how Hummingbot solved their problems.

“We wanted to find an easy solution to solve the difficulty of users who want to try and test Hummingbot before installing the real thing on their computer.” – Dennis Ocaña, Software Project Manager at Hummingbot

Solution: Appsembler Virtual Labs

When Hummingbot started looking for a way to overcome their problems, one of the first solutions they came across was Appsembler. The company was intrigued by Appsembler because it allows Hummingbot to provide product sandboxes to their users and will enable Hummingbot’s course creators to quickly build training courses for both internal and external users.

Hummingbot rolled out Appsembler Virtual Labs, which enables users to launch a browser-based sandbox environment of Hummingbot without having to install the software on their computer. 

Hummingbot is not like most web-based applications and has more complex requirements to run on the cloud. Despite this, Hummingbot was able to successfully deploy its software on Appsembler’s Virtual Labs and integrate it with the Docker containers that Hummingbot uses to package its software. Appsembler’s support team was always available to answer questions and offer technical support, enabling Hummingbot to easily and smoothly complete the rollout.

Benefits: Frictionless Test Drives and Better User Data

After implementing Appsembler, Hummingbot’s users can now take a test drive of Hummingbot’s software through a browser without having to go through a lengthy installation process. 

Because of this setup, it has been difficult to integrate analytics to track test drives and Docker container usage and installations, but Appsembler’s engineering and support team have been helpful in providing alternatives to help Hummingbot grow their user base. Users have been spinning-up virtual labs at a rate of around 50-80 every day and 6-7 every hour. This is better than expected, and user feedback has also been positive. 

And since users have to enter their email addresses to access the test drive, Hummingbot now has insights into their users, can explore who is using their sandbox environments, and even send product feedback requests to their users. 

“With the data from Appsembler, we can ask users for feedback on the onboarding experience, and get information on how we can improve, as well as learn what users like or dislike about Hummingbot’s test drive functionality.” – Dennis Ocaña, Software Project Manager at Hummingbot

The next step for Hummingbot is to create training courses that teach users, employees, and their support team how to use the software’s features for a wider range of purposes and use cases with the help of Appsembler’s virtual labs.