suges.
SardaukarFritz,
Congratulations with your progress so far with the tutorials. They are a great way of showing off what Podium is capable of. Keep them coming, I’d love to see what else I can do.
I have another suggestion. If you truely believe in the flexiblity and potential Podium has to offer, I love to see your main web site sell it more. What I mean is….impress the reader.
Your front page is a little bland (functional yes) but bland. I speak from experience from browsing web pages of computer applications. I WANT the web page to give me all the sales speach…I want an impressive list of features (which Podium does have).
Yes you have a guide. However…its a guide. Its not a sales pitch. Your front page should be full of good things about podium. For e.g, look at the page for fruity loops:
http://www.e-officedirect.com/FLStudio/English/frames.html
Its got flash animations, a link to a list of features. Its looks and sounds superb….
Got me excited about the product when i read this. I immediately downloaded the demo to try it out. Would have loved the Podium web page to have got me as excited. I would have put more effort into learning the product as soon as I could, if so.
Its only a suggestion im making. But an important one, I feel. Get Podium in a stable state that you are happy with, with a defined feature list, put some effort into the web-site, and advertise it wherever you can. Sell the shit out of it…Get people interested and a community forming.
After all, your trying to sell the product (which is a very good one) to make money…and that can only aid in the development of Podium itself.
Dan.
ZynewaveThanks for your feedback Dan,
Your front page is a little bland (functional yes) but bland
I agree. When I originally started the design of this site, I intended the home page to contain a list of the latest news. I since integrated this forum software and I have grown very fond of how it allows me to communicate with users. This has also become my preferred place to post news etc.
So I need to spice up the main page. Being a new company with a new product I cannot post pictures of awards and articles where famous people rave over how great Podium is.
I was thinking of dropping the two column format and moving the online videos from the presentation page to the home page alongside the screen shots. Also adding price info and direct link to download and purchase.
I will try to improve it for the 1.00 release.
I welcome any suggestions you may have.
ZynewaveJust a short note to say that I took your advice and have just uploaded a new home page. The videos are now included on the home page. The home page now also contains a short sales pitch and I even threw in words like ‘unique’ and ‘innovative’ 😉
I hope you think this was an improvement.
duncanparsonsFrits…
Much better home page! I lke it! (Not that you need my approval…!)
Duncan
SardaukarOh yes definitaly an improvement :D. But room for much more I feel. Not to take anything away from FL studio…a quote from their front page…
FL Studio is the most complete virtual studio currently available.
and,
We can assure you that the stunning, photorealistic interface will push your creative forces to new heights.
Now FLSutdio is a good product. But, I’ve tried it, and the above is certainly not true 😯 . I’d use Podium over this any day.
But hey….their website looks the buisiness…Lots of the sales-speak. Yes its exagerated….but thats how stuff gets sold unfortunatly.
You know how to design and write high quality software. Thats what you do. Unfortunatly, people dont know this. Initaliy, they only have your front-page to go by. So this is where you have to grab peoples attention. Advertise it as ‘A brand new, feature packed addition to the sequencer market’. say that ‘ it contains none of the out-dated and tedious concepts of current virtual studios’. You need to keep everything on the front page, short and snappy.
You need more colour on the web-site. the ‘ windows’ gray, is not a good choice to be honest. Try and fit in a bullet-point feature list. You’re missing so many buzzwords that you could use…like ‘ Total PDC thoughout entire audio engine’ (They might not know what PDC is…but it sounds good!) and ‘Fully automatable parameters – Every aspect of Podium can be automated to the finest detail’.
Also, try and come up with a less dull looking colour sceme in the screenshots. Colours can be customised. So shouldnt take too long. The videos you have as a guide is wonderful (nice job on that). However, if any video belongs on the front page, it is one about 30 seconds long, with buzzwords flashing up, and windows flying across the screen, and all the mixer faders moving,
Put on some favourable quotes by people (quote me if you like 😉 ).
Also the links at the top of the page, are almost invisible (that includes the ‘purchase’ link). Not good.
I know this sounds like alot of work, but it would really sell the product. If you’re really confident about the current state of Podium. Show it off (and I really do mean: show-it-off).
Hope I havent been to blunt in this posting. But if your web-site (front page at the very least) was as good as your product, you’d be onto a real winner.
Regards
Dan.
p.s Sorry about the grammer and/or spelling mistakes. Its late and Im tired.
ZynewaveHow about I just put a link to your post onto the front page 😉
I know what you’re saying, but I am a little wary of boasting too much here in the beginning. There still are some essential features missing that ‘professional’ users could not do without. With time I intend to advertise a little more agressively.
Frits
SardaukarIm glad. I agree with your hestitation to sell agressively, if you feel podium has a little more developing to do, which I why I mentioned it above.
The web-site is already looking a darn sight better than a few weeks ago, with the very useful mini-tutorial videos, and yes…when I watched the hirarhical engine one…I did let out an pleasent ‘ah!!’. 😉
Zynewave@Sardaukar wrote:
…when I watched the hirarhical engine one…
Can anyone recommend another word for hierarchic? 😉
I am having difficulties myself with pronouncing hierarchic and I got to be careful every time I type it.
kevlingoHello,
I am new here. Podium looks promising!
As for “hierarchical”…
How about coining an abbreviation, like HMx Engine…or something like that? In your help, you can explain that HMx means “Hierarchical Mixing”, but all your ad copy and news releases can use HMx… 😉
sugesThe HMx engine…awesome!
You should go with that. The only other word impler than “hierarchical” I can think of, for this context, would be “nested”, and that kind of sucks I think.
Sardaukarlol. Well I’m glad at least you fellas can spell it! 😉
Yeah the hierarchical engine is a very unique feature. Deserves an abbreviation as kelingo said. ‘HMx’ is good. Or maybe even ‘HMix’.
Plus it saves me having to keep type it. 😀
duncanparsonsHMx is a good abbr! (even HMx ™ for good measure!). I think you should stick with the term heirarchic and it’s derivatives, after all, it’s what it is, and it doesn’t half sound good!
thesaurus.com doesn’t suggest anything useful.. just checked!
HMx… hmmm…
DSP
ZynewaveGoogle HMx and you get 104000 hits. So much for the trademark. Somehow it also gave me the association of BMX bikes.
I would rather use a nickname that can be pronounced without spelling out the letters. How about ‘Himie’? 😉
duncanparsonswould that be HiMiE? good idea – google return links for a clarinet player, so no trademarks probs. (I did look up HiMix, but that has been taken!)
and, yes, one can say it without losing your tongue down your own throat!
DSP
kevlingoYou can trademark a phrase, though. “HMx Engine” is not currently being used.
If you don’t want to go the route of an abbreviation, how about using the word “nested”?