Gumroad

Sacha Greif is a designer from Paris, France. He’s worked for Hipmunk, Codecademy, and Sharypic, and currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. He started selling his eBook, ‘Step by Step UI Design,’ (deluxe version here) on Gumroad last month, and has seen thousands of dollars in sales so far. We chatted with Sacha last week about his book and experience with Gumroad.

What are you selling? What’s the story behind it?

I’m selling my eBook about user interface design. A lot of tutorials and books on UI design use fictional projects and goals, and I really wanted to showcase my design process with some of my real work. I decided to unpack my process of designing Kandan, an open source chat app, from start to finish. I wanted to show how and why I made each decision in the design process — it’s called ‘Step by Step UI Design.’

Why is Gumroad a good fit for it?

I originally sold the book only through PayPal, but I realized that it’s not always the best solution for selling things online. There’s many people who can’t pay with PayPal because of the country they live in or because they don’t have an account, and it’s complicated to use, so I decided to add another payment option. I wanted a simple way for buyers to pay with credit cards, and Gumroad gave me just that. The UI is great, it’s well-designed, and it provides me with a super simple solution.

Did you hear any feedback from buyers on the Gumroad buying experience?

Actually, I didn’t hear from 99% of my buyers, which is probably the best answer I could give you. It means that everything worked and went smoothly like it should. I got a few emails about positioning and clarity of the Gumroad purchase button, but nothing negative about functionality or the user experience.

What are you favorite things about the Gumroad platform?

I like the simplicity of the whole experience, and I really like the design. It looks great when you’re using it — that’s super important to me. I really like the stats that the sellers get to see about views and purchases for their items in the new admin panel.

I tried out a ton of your competitors, but one of my favorite things about Gumroad is that you have lots of AJAX and other fancy things that make the user experience fast and simple. You don’t need to reload the page or visit multiple pages to make a purchase, so it feels much quicker than other platforms.

What could we do better?

I was going to suggest having stats for sellers, but you’ve added that. I think things like the Modal should be broadcast and promoted more clearly — there’s lots of really great features, but sometimes they are hard to find on the site.