Dear @Gary-France thank you for your post. I'm glad that even though you're on the more critical side of MyRoute-app, you're still part of the community. It is important to hear what users have to say, even if this is in the form of criticism.
I'm surprised you were able to conceive such negative news from our post regarding MRA Video and the rebranding of all products: we've undertaken this because there has been confusion about naming since the inception in 2013. There's two choices to make there: either stick to your original plan or scuttle the entire enterprise and move on. We've chosen the former.
A key critique has been that the "-app" part of MyRoute-app is a very confusing name. We get tons of tickets from 3rd party apps such as "MyRoutes" "Routeme" and stuff like that. As you rightfully indicate: we've attached secondary services and products to the core idea of MyRoute-app but that fall completely out of scope of being part of a "routeplanner", yet are inherently attached to the idea.
Every motorcyclist has different ideas of what he wants with a routeplanner, a navigation system or a social-sharing system, yet sometimes these wishes overlap. For you Gary, I know that you for example would very much like a time-management feature in MyRoute-app as you are a professional tour organizer. I also know people that would like a technical service- and licence management module because they use MyRoute-app for commercial purposes. I also know that statistically, the majority of the "silent" MyRoute-app community wants an easy 2-click roundtour generator.
Which should I choose? The corporate solution, because that allows me to close a high value single contract? Your option, because that might attract more tour organizers and organic growth? The community-driven demand, because it's directly marketable? All these options should be explored. That's our ambition. We cater to everyone whose hobby involves travel.
As for the shop: I'm surprised in exactly the same post you're both against us moving resources there and then go on explaining exactly what is wrong with the current shop's mechanics. Perhaps we're misunderstanding eachother here: in my launch post I mentioned the importance of a high-conversion shop because it is currently confusing.
It's like having a very cool club that lots of people want to join, but they don't know how because you've made signing up worse than filing taxes. For that very club it's both important to allow easy signing up as well as organizing good events.
To make sure that what we do is clear we've cleared up our branding and design on https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/products/compare for clarity: MRA All-in-one, MRA Routeplanner Gold (lifetime) and MRA Navigation aren't new products or nasty marketing moves. They're simply clearer and more transperantly presented now. The fact you're upset over this means that we've achieved that goal, what's sad is that there are now a few members who feel that they have either the wrong subscription for their intended goals. That'll be next, one problem at a time.
Finally, the roadmap to community-driven features is coming in the next few weeks. We're finalizing it's contents and will broadly share it (I'm also quite confident you'll be glad to note it's contents once you see them, after all, I do listen 😉 ). The reason it's taking longer (I think I've said this somewhere else as well, not sure) is that simply slapping down the "most popular" features in an iterative schedule won't work. There's backlogs of bugs, processes that need to be optimized, old-todo's and features from both ourselves and the community that had to be tied in. We also need a nice email and place to broadcast the roadmap.
tl,dr;
Sell one product that includes everything and give it one simple name.
that's MRA all-in-one
Fix the bugs quickly. It sounds like you are hoping to do this. w
e're on this. improvement: changelogs, coming soon.
Develop the route-planning software to (where possible) to give users what they have asked for and release the suggestion list very soon. The list should be a firm plan, with guide timescales, so that users can see what will be coming in time.
Coming next few weeks. Final stages.
Drop MRA video future development until 2 and 3 are finished.
This will already organically happen somewhat.
