What website would you model your business website after?
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
The new Zone Labs[^] website is alright. Intuit[^] is good too, although some pages get somewhat cluttered ... I like sites that make it simple to find their products, and then the products they sell should be listed in simple form with a listing of basic features. One thing I feel is a must, if you market/sell a product with multiple levels (e.g., basic, adv, pro) is a comparison chart that shows EXACTLY what the differences are. Something else I think is a must on a site, the phone number should be clearly visible on the FRONT PAGE at the TOP. Why? because sometimes a website just pisses me off and I want to talk to a person; nothing's worse than trying to find a phone number burried on the "About" page (don't get me started on the word "About"). My thoughts on the matter ...
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |Development Blogging|Viksoe.dk's Site -
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
Marc Clifton wrote:
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after?
None. :) I'd look at my competition... major: https://simdis.nrl.navy.mil/[^] http://www.multigen.com/[^] http://www.quantum3d.com/[^] and minor: http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/survey_toc.html[^] and simply make the site better than my competition's. ;P speaking of which... we need to push our new flyer through approvals. ;) but the point is moot, I have a product, but we don't sell it, only the service: http://newtecllc.com/CapabilitiesENG.htm[^] pay no attention to the man in the beard in the back... that picture is old... but even that decision is moot... someone else does the websites... :rolleyes: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -- modified at 0:14 Sunday 23rd April, 2006
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Marc Clifton wrote:
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after?
None. :) I'd look at my competition... major: https://simdis.nrl.navy.mil/[^] http://www.multigen.com/[^] http://www.quantum3d.com/[^] and minor: http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/survey_toc.html[^] and simply make the site better than my competition's. ;P speaking of which... we need to push our new flyer through approvals. ;) but the point is moot, I have a product, but we don't sell it, only the service: http://newtecllc.com/CapabilitiesENG.htm[^] pay no attention to the man in the beard in the back... that picture is old... but even that decision is moot... someone else does the websites... :rolleyes: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -- modified at 0:14 Sunday 23rd April, 2006
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You're not on the "special" list? Pictures of the menu available at the drive-thru
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You're not on the "special" list? Pictures of the menu available at the drive-thru
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
WholeTomato[^] except for the fromtpage (no animations, and entrance points for new / returning / returning customer)
Some of us walk the memory lane, others plummet into a rabbit hole
Tree in C# || Fold With Us! || sighist -
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
Marc Clifton wrote:
for a software product
I like the presentation found at http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/[^] Clear links to the child content. Although it would be better it not quite so much on the front page. At least I would take the right hand col and place it under the left one. "Every new day begins with possibilities. It's up to us to fill it with things that move us toward progress and peace.” (Ronald Reagan)
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
Divelements has quite a good layout and is very consistent Ed
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
seems to be off limits.
that's okay... it is a lousy piece of software anyhow. Which, of course, is why it is the standard. :rolleyes: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
Marc Clifton wrote:
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after?
To be honest, I've never come across a decent site. Most are either too "corporate" or too 'Flash'. Have looked through this thread so far, only the http://www.divelements.com/net/[^] page really appeals to me. I like the Visual Studio home page, http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/[^] - but it has a lot of content to link to which is very difficult to have for most software products. http://www.dundas.com/index.aspx[^] is also fairly nice, for selling a graphic intensive product. http://www.theultimatetoolbox.com/[^] works well for me, apart from the cheesy graphics. http://www.frontrange.com/index.aspx[^] is also nice. http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz/[^] is probably the nearest to my ideal site. (Although I'd lose the left hand testimonial bit) A lot depends on what your target market is. I like to see lots of screenshots of the product in action without having to hunt through masses of pages. Corporate customers probably look for different things, otherwise we wouldn't have all that "corporate language" on most sites. Michael CP Blog [^] Development Bl
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
Some random thoughts: ----- So few people do any kind of market research before starting their product development. Geeks just like to code, and then hope that their product will sell. There is zero market research, and zero effort to get any traffic to the website. Go to http://www.wordtracker.com[^] and http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/[^] to find out what keywords people are actually searching for. Then, when you have an understanding of the market needs, see what skills you have that matches those needs. Love to do image processing? Great! Don't just blindly start coding a tool that flips all images vertically. Find out if anyone wants it first. Or, better still, find out what problems people are trying to solve, and which of those are related to your image processing skills, and do something in that area. ---- If you are a geek, please don't design your own website. I can guarantee you that it will be horrible. Just because you can code some HTML, it doesn't mean you can design websites. If you are launching your website as a serious business, then treat it as such and get a decent web designer to do the job. You can do all the backend coding yourself, but don't touch the front end design. ----- Web design != graphics design. The purpose of a website is to sell, not to show off cool graphics or color schemes. A whole book can be written on this topic, and I don't even know where to start. ----- Features and benefits mean different things to different people, and for different products. Programming controls, libraries, etc sell more if you list their features - "Office 2003 like classes," "Automatic layout management," etc. Products for end users, even if they are programmers in their day jobs, sell more if you list their benefits - "Be more productive and obtain faster results," "Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams," etc. And remember, these same benefits/features have to be presented in different ways depending on whether a manager or a programmer is seeing the page. ----- It's not enough to have a "Products" link, button, drop down, menu, or whatever else. I am not on your website so I
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Marc Clifton wrote:
If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after?
None. :) I'd look at my competition... major: https://simdis.nrl.navy.mil/[^] http://www.multigen.com/[^] http://www.quantum3d.com/[^] and minor: http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/survey_toc.html[^] and simply make the site better than my competition's. ;P speaking of which... we need to push our new flyer through approvals. ;) but the point is moot, I have a product, but we don't sell it, only the service: http://newtecllc.com/CapabilitiesENG.htm[^] pay no attention to the man in the beard in the back... that picture is old... but even that decision is moot... someone else does the websites... :rolleyes: _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -- modified at 0:14 Sunday 23rd April, 2006
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
simply make the site better than my competition's
Shouldn't be too hard. Multigen and quantum3d text were too small for me to read and the huge table on the tec.army.mil site stunk. My 2 cents worth :) Paul
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Some random thoughts: ----- So few people do any kind of market research before starting their product development. Geeks just like to code, and then hope that their product will sell. There is zero market research, and zero effort to get any traffic to the website. Go to http://www.wordtracker.com[^] and http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/[^] to find out what keywords people are actually searching for. Then, when you have an understanding of the market needs, see what skills you have that matches those needs. Love to do image processing? Great! Don't just blindly start coding a tool that flips all images vertically. Find out if anyone wants it first. Or, better still, find out what problems people are trying to solve, and which of those are related to your image processing skills, and do something in that area. ---- If you are a geek, please don't design your own website. I can guarantee you that it will be horrible. Just because you can code some HTML, it doesn't mean you can design websites. If you are launching your website as a serious business, then treat it as such and get a decent web designer to do the job. You can do all the backend coding yourself, but don't touch the front end design. ----- Web design != graphics design. The purpose of a website is to sell, not to show off cool graphics or color schemes. A whole book can be written on this topic, and I don't even know where to start. ----- Features and benefits mean different things to different people, and for different products. Programming controls, libraries, etc sell more if you list their features - "Office 2003 like classes," "Automatic layout management," etc. Products for end users, even if they are programmers in their day jobs, sell more if you list their benefits - "Be more productive and obtain faster results," "Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams," etc. And remember, these same benefits/features have to be presented in different ways depending on whether a manager or a programmer is seeing the page. ----- It's not enough to have a "Products" link, button, drop down, menu, or whatever else. I am not on your website so I
smaaaart wrote:
I could go on, but I think this is enough for the time being.
Absolutely fantastic advice. Thanks for taking the time to write that up. I'm printing it out and taping it to the wall. Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson
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Some random thoughts: ----- So few people do any kind of market research before starting their product development. Geeks just like to code, and then hope that their product will sell. There is zero market research, and zero effort to get any traffic to the website. Go to http://www.wordtracker.com[^] and http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/[^] to find out what keywords people are actually searching for. Then, when you have an understanding of the market needs, see what skills you have that matches those needs. Love to do image processing? Great! Don't just blindly start coding a tool that flips all images vertically. Find out if anyone wants it first. Or, better still, find out what problems people are trying to solve, and which of those are related to your image processing skills, and do something in that area. ---- If you are a geek, please don't design your own website. I can guarantee you that it will be horrible. Just because you can code some HTML, it doesn't mean you can design websites. If you are launching your website as a serious business, then treat it as such and get a decent web designer to do the job. You can do all the backend coding yourself, but don't touch the front end design. ----- Web design != graphics design. The purpose of a website is to sell, not to show off cool graphics or color schemes. A whole book can be written on this topic, and I don't even know where to start. ----- Features and benefits mean different things to different people, and for different products. Programming controls, libraries, etc sell more if you list their features - "Office 2003 like classes," "Automatic layout management," etc. Products for end users, even if they are programmers in their day jobs, sell more if you list their benefits - "Be more productive and obtain faster results," "Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams," etc. And remember, these same benefits/features have to be presented in different ways depending on whether a manager or a programmer is seeing the page. ----- It's not enough to have a "Products" link, button, drop down, menu, or whatever else. I am not on your website so I
smaaaart wrote:
I am not on your website so I can find out what cool products you have, so don't be arrogant and expect me to go digging for each product and find out if it matches my needs.
This is a big issue IMHO. For an example, it is a pain to see just what Adobe has to offer. I go to thier site and you would think they only had PDF tools. There is no links from the main page to their products other than PDF unless you choose different classes of products and then drill down, PAIN in the BUMM.. It amazes me that many large scale companies have such horrible navigation on their sites. I know they have a large number of products, but there should be only one click to any product they offer. Rocky <>< Latest Post: SQL2005 Server Managemnet Studio timeouts! Blog: www.RockyMoore.com/TheCoder/[^]
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If you were to put together a website for a software product, what websites out there do you like, that you would model your own site after? Marc Pensieve Some people believe what the bible says. Literally. At least [with Wikipedia] you have the chance to correct the wiki -- Jörgen Sigvardsson -- modified at 22:44 Saturday 22nd April, 2006
One site that I have used in the past (which I did purchase their ASP.NET grid) that seemed fairly complete is: http://DevExpress.com[^] The site is a little slow, but I like how I can find most things from thier home page and they provide plenty of graphics (not really screen shots but more like clips) showing a specific product. As an example, when you click on the "ASPxGrid and Editors Library" on the main page, it takes you to a fully detailed product page that clearly shows many of the nice features of the grid without having to dig for them, although there is plently of more information as links on that page. The page for the product also gives you the like to purchase or download a demo. Another nice feature is that the price is clearly visible on this product page wtihout having to dig. Personally, I think they did a great job given how many products they offer. Only wish other companies like Adobe would design their sites as clearly. Rocky <>< Latest Post: SQL2005 Server Managemnet Studio timeouts! Blog: www.RockyMoore.com/TheCoder/[^]
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Some random thoughts: ----- So few people do any kind of market research before starting their product development. Geeks just like to code, and then hope that their product will sell. There is zero market research, and zero effort to get any traffic to the website. Go to http://www.wordtracker.com[^] and http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/[^] to find out what keywords people are actually searching for. Then, when you have an understanding of the market needs, see what skills you have that matches those needs. Love to do image processing? Great! Don't just blindly start coding a tool that flips all images vertically. Find out if anyone wants it first. Or, better still, find out what problems people are trying to solve, and which of those are related to your image processing skills, and do something in that area. ---- If you are a geek, please don't design your own website. I can guarantee you that it will be horrible. Just because you can code some HTML, it doesn't mean you can design websites. If you are launching your website as a serious business, then treat it as such and get a decent web designer to do the job. You can do all the backend coding yourself, but don't touch the front end design. ----- Web design != graphics design. The purpose of a website is to sell, not to show off cool graphics or color schemes. A whole book can be written on this topic, and I don't even know where to start. ----- Features and benefits mean different things to different people, and for different products. Programming controls, libraries, etc sell more if you list their features - "Office 2003 like classes," "Automatic layout management," etc. Products for end users, even if they are programmers in their day jobs, sell more if you list their benefits - "Be more productive and obtain faster results," "Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams," etc. And remember, these same benefits/features have to be presented in different ways depending on whether a manager or a programmer is seeing the page. ----- It's not enough to have a "Products" link, button, drop down, menu, or whatever else. I am not on your website so I
I noticed that you mentioned that the dundas.com web site does not make it easy to download or purchase. The top of every page has a standard menu that lets you go directly to the purchase page, and the download page (along with other popular links). Since you missed this, I am wondering if other people miss this as well. It would be great to get feedback from you and others about our top menu and overall site navigation. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Troy Marchand Dundas Software Ltd.
