Using its open-source platform, Requestly streamlines frontend developers' testing and debugging procedures. By enabling developers to capture, modify, and mock HTTPs requests across browsers and mobile apps, the tool ensures a more efficient and collaborative working environment. With over 200K installations on the Chrome Store and adoption by developers across more than 10,000 companies, there's a clear shift towards reliable solutions like Requestly that bypasses VPN and proxy issues.
The background
Today it's essential for developers to have the right tools that allow for swift and accurate testing. Traditional tools like Charles Proxy and Fiddler, though reliable, come with their own set of challenges.
Requestly firmly believes that the future of debugging and testing lies in modern interfaces that promote collaboration and do away with outdated issues like proxy and VPNs. By integrating their solution directly within browsers, they've positioned themselves as a game-changer.
Having its roots as a passion project in 2014 to address the founder's own debugging challenges, Requestly formally came into its own in 2021. With the backing of YCombinator, a seed round led by PeakXV Ventures (previously known as Sequoia Capital, India), and support from influential figures like the CEOs of SendBird, Instabug, and RainforestQA, Requestly has solidified its place in the market.
With a strong bottoms-up motion with organic traffic on Chrome Store and on their landing page Requestly is seeing great signals of PMF.
The Challenge
For Requestly, it's more than just understanding individual usage—it's about seeing the bigger picture within entire companies.
When a single developer starts using Requestly, it's often a signal that their colleagues are grappling with similar challenges. Given that many users discover Requestly through colleague referrals, gauging the tool's adoption rate across entire teams or companies became a blind spot.
While they tried different tools like Amplitude & Posthog to track user interactions, these solutions fell short of providing a holistic view. Especially, understanding whether more or fewer developers in a particular company were adopting Requestly was a struggle.
In short, Requestly main challenges were:
- Understand engagement at a company level
- Making sure every new feature they add is something users truly want
The solution
Company-level tracking
Initially, Requestly's approach was somewhat manual. They would study user patterns individually, identifying how one recommendation rippled through an entire team or company. Through this meticulous process, Sachin and his team formed a clear image of how teams adopted their tool.
This graph below shows the evolution in time of the number of invites sent.
However, as the tool gained traction, and the number of developers using Requestly surged, this individualized approach became impractical. With a product that thrived on referrals and was being adopted across developer communities rapidly, tracking each team's behavior individually was a colossal task. Hence, the team realized the need for a more scalable solution. Requestly began exploring analytics tools that could provide insights into group-level behaviors.
June, with its focus on group-level analytics, appeared as the ideal solution. This shift not only streamlined their processes but also improved user engagement by offering insights tailored to entire teams.
Taking a leaf from their earlier manual approach, Sachin segmented the team adoption journey based on specific behaviors. A pivotal action he identified was the point where a team expanded its use of Requestly beyond the initial referrer.
Sachin uses this Monthly Active Users graph on single companies to measure account expansion.
This behavior, indicative of Requestly’s integral role in a team's workflow, became a key metric.
Sachin set benchmarks around account expansion to classify teams. This data, reflecting the depth of Requestly's integration within a team, was stored as a unique trait, enabling the company to offer targeted support and resources, further enhancing team-level adoption and satisfaction.
Feature adoption
Sachin and team have been using June not just for understanding team dynamics but also in shedding light on feature adoption. A prime example is the release of the "Session Replays" feature.
Introduced last year, Session Replays were designed as a novel tool for users to record their browsing activity, effectively capturing any hiccups or issues in real-time.
This was especially revolutionary for non-tech personnel within companies, such as Support teams, Product divisions, and various Operations teams.
The core idea was simple yet powerful: instead of tediously explaining a bug or issue, these teams could now just share a 'session' encapsulating the problem, making the debugging process faster and more accurate.
However, while the feature held immense potential, its adoption was not as widespread as anticipated. Delving deeper, with June's Feature report insights, they identified two primary user categories for this feature: those who "Used Once" and those who were "Using Most".
With this segmentation, the team initiated focused discussions with representatives from both groups. The users from the "Using Most" category helped us understand the feature's strengths and what appealed to them. In contrast, the "Used Once" category provided invaluable feedback on the feature's shortcomings and barriers to more frequent use.
These discussions were illuminating. While one group affirmed the feature's utility, the other highlighted areas for improvement.
Acting on this feedback, we introduced changes that significantly enhanced the user experience. As a result, the Session Replays feature, post-refinement, began seeing a surge in adoption (see chart below), reinforcing the value of targeted feedback and the role of June in facilitating it.
The outcome
Integrating June into our workflow has been a great addition to our stack. As we navigate feature releases and adoption, June provides clarity. While we've always paid attention to our individual users, June has highlighted the importance of looking at things at the company level too, giving us a more comprehensive understanding of how Requestly gets used.
With June's analytics, we can see not just how individual users interact with our features but also how entire teams and companies do. This broader perspective ensures that our features cater to both individual developers and larger organizational needs.
Simply put, June has become a valuable asset in our toolkit. It reinforces our commitment to a product-first approach, balancing between individual user feedback and overarching company trends. This dual focus ensures that we remain responsive and adaptable, continually refining our offerings to meet the needs of our diverse user base.
