When new users sign up for jMockups, they are automatically sent the following email:

Subject: hi from Matt at jMockups

Hi – I saw you just signed up for jMockups, let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

I’m also looking for feedback on what to work on next. Which would you rather see:

a) The ability to convert your mockups to and from wireframes

b) The ability to link mockups together

c) The ability to export your mockups to HTML/CSS

d) The ability to produce detailed specs from your mockups

e) Something else? (Let me know!)

Matt

I’ve tried a number of ways to connect with user — feedback surveys, contact forms, and UserVoice, to name a few, but none have resulted in as much feedback as this simple email. (I stole the idea from Olark, which does something very similar.) As a part time sole-founder with a lot to do, automating this welcome email has made it it infinitely easier to do some quick and dirty customer development (and I make sure I respond to every email I receive).

I expected most of the responses to be a) The ability to convert your mockup to and from wireframes. Wireframes, after all, are all the rage. But a funny thing happened: almost no one requested that. I think its partly because the wireframing market is saturated and no one wants Yet Another Wireframing Tool, but because the way jMockups is built it doesn’t easily make you think “Oh, yeah, this could be a good wireframing tool.”

Here are a few of the responses I’ve received, almost all of which were in the last two days:

“If I had to prioritize I would choose (c) but only in case you think the quality of the generated html / css is good enough.”

“What hat I’d really like to see, is the ability for two people to work on a mockup at the same time (Google Docs style).”

“I vote (c) but I would use all the options you listed…”

“I’d rather see c) exporting mockups to HTML/CSS. “

“That’d make my job a hundred times easier. :)”

“c”

“Without doubt c)”

“As for a vote, i’d say C is the best.  It would get that initial headache out of the way, and it’d be great if it could also let me choose from a few CSS frameworks to build it on top of.  Ultimately if it got good enough at producing a usable export, and saved revisions, you could essentially become a visual version control for designers.”

“Definitely (c) ! Would be very useful in beginning the next step of web design!”

“I would be most interested in the ability to export to HTML/CSS.”

“I’d really like exporting to HTML and CSS. However, I can see how there is no way this type of exporting could generate good code, so I think the most viable and suitable option is a) The ability to convert your mockups to and from wireframes.”

“Probably the thing that would be useful would be organizing mockups into projects and linking them together.”

“I think you have already got d under control, so i’d go with b. =)”

“C!”

“The ability to convert your mockups to and from wireframes”

“Definitely c)”

“From that list that you mentioned, I think that the ability to export the mockups to HTML/CSS would be the most awesome thing in the world.  Right now jMockups seems like a cool enough product to play around with, and if I was within a company that paid for the product for me, I’d be happy to use it as it is right now.  BUT, if it had HTML/CSS export capabilities, I wouldn’t hesitate a second to pay for this out of my own pocket, as it would REALLY help in the development process.”

“I started googling around for how to export jMockup to html/css. I think if that was possible, only in the paid plan, I would have been a paying customer by now. If you added some more templates and a feature for export to html/css, it would be a huge time saver that I would gladly pay for.”

“The obvious next step for me would then be HTML/CSS export.”

“C”

“I think a valuable addition is to be able to “publish” a jMockups with a working navigation, working buttons, etc. This will allow a client to click through the mockups to get a feel of the website. I am not referring to an export to HTML feature, but rather a way to interact with a mockup.”

So, yeah… I think I’m going to start working on an export to HTML/CSS feature. I’ve stayed away from it because of the complexity of the undertaking, but I think it can be broken up into small, multi-week tasks that I can roll out into production along the way. We’ll see.

I’m not going to drop everything just to work on it either: there’s a ton of room for improvement in almost every aspect of the app that will slowly get taken care of in the coming weeks and months.

Again, thank you everyone who took time to leave feedback.

matt@jmockups.com