Why keep a changelog?

We remain focused on delivering a great product for our users. Since our launch, we’ve released many new features that make a real difference and improve our product. But shipping new features is only half the story. We also need to inform users about recent product updates so they are fully aware of all Archbee features.

At this point, to fill the communication medium between our users and us, we decided to keep a changelog. It helps us to notify users about changes, improvements that we made. It is a very basic but effective way to communicate with users.

Keeping a changelog for the Archbee is first and foremost about documenting the product changes we’ve made. We publish every update and enhancement in chronological order so any user can trace Archbee’s progress and evolution. It’s one of the best ways to communicate what’s new in our product.

Besides this main point, there are also a few more points that we solve with the changelog.

Increase feature awareness#

Since our launch in June 2019, we’ve released tons of new features, made many improvements, and fixed so many bugs. In most cases, users are not aware of these changes. That’s not what we want to happen since we do a lot of work to improve our product and create value. We want users to be aware of these improvements. Keeping a changelog helps us to deliver the value that we create for the users. As we release a new feature, we publish an informative post about it to inform users about the feature. The changelog service that we use offers an eye-catching in-app widget, which helps us display product announcements inside our web application.

Build trust#

Building customer trust is a worthwhile objective for any business and a motivator that turns visitors into customers. Even if your product offers every feature visitors need, they also want confidence that it won’t be dropped. No one would invest their time and buy a product they don’t trust. People don’t buy features; they buy trust and relationships. By showing our product’s progress, a changelog helps us maintain that trust.

Collect feedback#

Customer feedback is vital and foundational to sustainable product improvement. Yet collecting it is difficult, because few people want to take boring product surveys. The changelog service we use includes a cool feature that lets our users leave feedback right inside our changelog. It’s an effective way to learn what your customers need and improve your product in that direction.

Changelog, product updates page, release notes, whatever you call it. Mostly it’s been underestimated, but as you see in our case, it has many benefits and is very important. If you like to create your own changelog, we recommend AnnounceKit. It offers beautifully designed newsfeed powered with in-app notification widgets, email notifications, and feedback collection.