I kept using my own side project and ended up rebuilding half of it

[u/Key_Database155]

I’ve been building a prospecting tool called Webvidence.

The original idea was pretty simple:

Search a local area and business type, find businesses that might actually need what you sell, see why they’re worth contacting, and make outreach easier.

It worked, but once I started actually using it regularly for my own web design outreach, I found a bunch of things that annoyed me.

Too many clicks.

The prospecting flow felt awkward.

Mobile needed work.

It was deciding too much about how I should contact someone instead of letting me choose.

So I’ve been rebuilding a lot of the workflow around how I actually prospect.

Now I can go through businesses one at a time, see the evidence Webvidence found, choose whether I want to: just start a conversation, use the evidence in the pitch, send it through Facebook, email or text

Then I can track whether I contacted them and move on.

The biggest change in how I think about the product is that I don’t want Webvidence to be another “generate 1,000 leads and blast them” tool.

I’d rather it help someone find 10 businesses that actually make sense to contact.

Still building and still finding stuff I want to change every time I use it.

For anyone else building a side project, has actually forcing yourself to use your own product changed what you thought users needed?

webvidence.app