The Business of Software

Hi,

We've been reading this forum regularly for the last couple of years.
Learned a lot from it.
Best place on the Web. Eats up a lot of valuable time... ;-)


We've just released our product.

http://www.sharepoint-im-alerts.com

May I ask for opinions, please?

Is website usable?
Is the home page descriptive?
Can a visitor figure out within a few seconds if this product is something they need? Keep reading or leave the site?
If you or your company were looking for some software of that kind, would you consider buying it from us or elsewhere?
Etc...

Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,

Dmitriy Gorbachev
Accio Intellectum LLC

http://www.sharepoint-im-alerts.com

Web design feels late 90s. Try http://www.gettemplate.com/

My 2cts on that matter.

First of all, you definitely need a good designer.

Secondly, I bet that default Windows Messenger used wider in business than Jabber. And maybe a Yahoo Messenger too. The more messengers you will support, the better.

Dmitriy,

Congrats on releasing your product.

Hopefully you have or soon will have good feedback from your target customer market.  If you don't have much feedback I recommend you search for people using sharepoint and offer them free licenses if they will take a look and give you feedback.

- I agree with Joannes, the website doesn't look good.  And probably it's not a case of modifying it but starting again.

I have had great experiences getting custom web templates at low cost from www.designoutpost.com or you can get a premade template very cheaply from many sites.

- The text on the front page does explain clearly what the product does. 

In my opinion there is too much text on the front page, and it would seem most other pages.  The test is too small, its hard to read.

- The left hand side menu is too small, it takes a moment for my brain to make sure I am on the right item.

- When i click the screenshots I want to see screenshots, instead I get more text, with the tiny screenshot thumbnails below.

The pop-up screenshots are nice, although there is some problem where a broken image icon is displayed on the screen.

- The 'Accio Intellectum' logo almost looks like a search box.

- The title of your homepage (that appears in the browser tab) is 'Jabber....'  shouldn't it be your product name ?

- Your 'Benefits' are all too general.  'Boost your productivity', everyone and everything claims to boost productivity.  I think these should be very specific benefits that your program provides.

Very interesting product, but please hire a modern Web 2.0 designer. I think you should be able to do great.

My best wishes to you.

I'm not sure what Jabber is, I can only venture a guess.  When you say it supports Google Talk, that makes sense.  Jabber XMPP is gibberish to most people.

The design does feel dated.

You are clearly using a Microsoft trademarked name in your URL and throughout your website.  I am not a lawyer, but we've seen others on this forum have to change their domain and product name because of this.  Something to check out.

I clicked screenshots and screenshots didn't just pop up.  Why are you explaining the screenshots to me?  I went to this page because I didn't want to read anymore.  I'll just click the images and not read anything anyway, it's the pictures that will determine whether or not the program is right for me.

Lastly, the screenshots didn't come up big enough.  I couldn't even tell what they were images of because of the blur, which is completely defeating the purpose of one of your most important pages.

THANK YOU!
Thank you very much!

It actually hasn't even crossed our minds that our website design sucks. These comments came as a shock.
We'll change the design as soon as we can.

And, the other comments - regarding site usability - are also priceless.

Thanks a lot, guys !

Now, getting back to work... lots of stuff to improve...

It's hard for me to comment, because I'm not your target audience (and I'm not a designer either) - but it would be great to have a large-font headline of "Instant Messaging Alerts for SharePoint", to basically orient the reader. Perhaps put it in place of the "home".

As it is, there is so much text, that nothing stands out. Also, the "benefits" font is large, but that's got to be secondary to what the thing actually is, hasn't it?

I think the biz art/stock photography gives it a corporate feel... although the only place I see that is in webhoster's homepages, and in pretend websites that do that Tim Feriss thing where they prove out demand but don't have an actual product.

Out of curiosity, I just checked microsoft's and oracle's homepages (surely the epitome of corporate software websites), and they have no photography at all: http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx http://www.oracle.com/global/au/index.html  But it depends on your target audience.

For me, I have just copied the basic feel (layout and colours) of websites in my space that I like (figuratively - not literally copy the stylesheets or html, but I do look at how they've achieved it).

Congrats on getting it started! Having something concrete gives you something definite that others (and you) can see, and to push against, so it can be improved. Without the experiment, you cannot move forward! But take a step and another step, and soon you've gone a long way.

lol. i can't resist. you were hibernating :)

get[1] inspired[2] .[3]

[1]: http://www.lokad.com/
[2]: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/
[3]: http://www.zendesk.com/

Not "hybernating", but "old-fashioned" (or, is it just "old"?..).

Obviously, we've been paying waaaay too little attention to marketing and design.
[Although a lot of attention to the product itself, which IMHO is near darn perfect.]

Now that we read, and re-read again all the comments, we are definitely going to focus on the design.

Thank you very much!

--Dmitriy


P.S.: The company is 2 people, and none has English as a native language.
Since there have been no comments on the wording of the site's pages, I'm guessing one of the two things:
- either the language on the website is good;
- or the site itself sucks so much that everything else fades in comparison.

Hmmm... curious... meditate on this - I will...
(@ Yoda)

> Can a visitor figure out within a few seconds if this product is something they need? Keep reading or leave the site?

In the first few seconds, scanning the top of the page, I saw,

* Stock photographs
* A meaningless-to-me company name or product name

Your title, "Instant Messaging Alerts for SharePoint": maybe that could be sans-serif, otherwise if it's the same (serif) font as the text then my eye (which scanning the page to find a title) doesn't notice it. Maybe bigger too, and a different color than the text.

Your tag-line, "SharePoint Alerts. Anytime. Anywhere.": maybe that could be higher, and more centred or more left (low and to the right isn't the first place I look).

Instead of "is an enterprise collaboration solution for", maybe say "works with".

Avoid parentheses, and prefer the present tense, i.e. instead of "... SharePoint (for example, a document has been modified, a new Task has been assigned, etc.). " say, "... SharePoint, for example when a document is modified or a new Task is assigned. "

Instead of "or any other XMPP network", "and other XMPP ('Jabber') networks."

Bold text isn't necessarily more readable. It's quite a small font. There could be less whitespace on the left, leaving more room for the text/message.

I'm not sure about the benefits. One possibility might be to spell out a scenario in which it improves someone's ability to do their job (e.g. "more responsive" instead of of a generic "improve collaboration"). Another possibility is to reduce the number of benefits: two identifiable benefits might be more persuasive than 5 weak and unsubstantiated hypes.

I'm going to stop here after just reading the front page.

Dimitry
The product looks really interesting and best of luck with it.  In terms of stressing the unique features I think the very fact that it is IM for SharePoint alerts should say enough for most people.

About your website: don't worry about the design, I really don't think this is going to stop people buying from you, we have had a less than lovely website for 4 years and have been selling SharePoint add ons very successfully from it - only just getting round to changing now.

I think at your stage in the game your time - which I am sure is scarce - will be better spent refining your product, rather than messing around with website design.

Best of luck!

Clare S