

Ask HN: Review my site, CureCRM.com - alexS
http://curecrm.com
Please candidly review CureCRM.com.
======
azanar
I'll cover initial impression first, and then go from there into specific
things I notice.

First impression: way too much pimping, way too little describing. The front
page seems more focussed on who uses it and how awesome they think it is than
on _what_ it is. I have a vague idea from your bulleted list, but no idea what
differentiates this from all the other CRM systems. The companies you list
might, but that is of no use to me. I'm not about to waste my time and contact
them to tell me what you should have told me. The video might tell me, but I'm
not compelled to watch the video. That combined with the odd and elongated
layout would have the average customer uninterested in learning any more about
the product.

Specific things: * Please, _please_ remove the scrolling images part of the
way down. They are distracting and get annoying after more than a few seconds.
* Your page goes on below the fold on a 1024x768 monitor, and you have
marketing content below that fold. This is _very_ bad. I would honestly take
the box of specific features and shove that near the top. In fact, that and a
2-3 sentence description of what the product does is _all_ I could imagine
being necessary on the front page. The client list and press hits could either
sit at the bottom, or go on another page. * The page flow is very odd. I'm
having a hard time figuring out where my eyes ought to be going. There is that
weird block of white space right below the press icons, and on either side of
that irritated scrolling thing, which make it hard for me to keep track of
where I am on the page. I get the sense that you could solve the page flow
problem the need for scrolling at the same time, just by taking advantage of
the space you haven't used yet.

I should add the disclaimer that I am not a professional designer, and so some
of the things that bother me might be considered good practice by people in
the know.

Hope this helps.

~~~
alexS
how about something like this? <http://screencast.com/t/OGU2NWE0YT>

~~~
azanar
Better. I still have some more comments though.

Since this article is pretty much dead, you can hit me up by email if you're
interested. :-)

------
bugs
To be honest I would leave very quickly because I can't see what you want me
to buy. (In other words you need to tell people what you are selling them,
even if it is just a bulleted list).

~~~
artagnon
10 seconds into the site, if I don't know what it's about, I leave.

------
wanderingmango
Regarding the home page:

Good: (i) Sign up for a free trial button obvious; (ii) Your logo at the top
looks good; (iii) the one-minute tour is a good idea (but I couldn't get it
working in Safari, so I couldn't watch it).

Needs improvement: (i) there is too much going on, (ii) it looks cluttered, so
I'm not sure where to focus my attention; (ii) you might have your 4-picture
header scroll automatically (I like 2 and 3, 1 looks way too busy, and 4 looks
way too sparse); (iii) under "Customer Testimonials" (plural) you have only
one testimonial - rather than announcing that there are testimonials, reduce
cognitive load by having a bit quotation mark or something instead; (iv) I
like the "the world best sell with CRM", but perhaps have it closer to the
bottom; (v) perhaps have one "download now" button instead of several links
(for the sake of appearing cleaner); (vi) I really don't like the "supports
mobile e-mail" banner at the bottom: I know it's the sun, but it looks like a
nuclear explosion, and apart from my own personal feelings about it, the
colour scheme looks misplaced compared to the rest of the page.

If I had to sum up: make it simpler. A few (2 or 3) bullet points, a download
button, a big "sign up" button. A testimonial.

~~~
alexS
here's a direct link to the video: <http://screenr.com/Kg2> \- please feel
free to provide feedback on it.

regarding vi: this is a very common complaint from all of the designers i've
chatted with.

------
timdorr
"Start for free" neon green on light yellow/orange is bad, even with the text
shadow. I'd dark it up for more contrast.

The 1->2->3->4 thingy should move a little bit faster.

The sidebar under the Learn More section bolds the text when you hover over
it. This pushes the subsequent items down a pixel or two, causing the whole
thing to wiggle when you hover over it. Not an easy fix, but it's the kind of
thing that bugs me :)

The video pop up should play immediately when I click on it. I should have to
pop it up and then hit play again. I bet you'll get more views on that video
that way. Actually, it shouldn't even pop up at all. It should just be set to
play right in place. That way I don't have to feel like I'm navigating away
from the content to this other place to watch a video. That way if the video
bores me at any point, I can still see the rest of the site and be sold to.

On a larger scale, the landing page needs some work. I would have something
that points out that you can access the system via your existing email clients
or via your web interface. That seems to be the power in it, so make it super-
clear.

~~~
alexS
what do you think about swapping "2" with "1" in the top carousel?

~~~
timdorr
It's close, but it's not quite the quick summary you need. Try to get the
phrasing down as small as possible and avoid platitudes. "Track sales leads
using your existing email!" or something to that effect.

------
zaidf
EDIT: Just saw the video! I think you should delete 90% of the text you have.
Make the video demo the focus. And go from there. Way you have it right now, I
almost didn't see the video even after spending a minute or two on the site!

\--

1\. Great play on salesforce no-software mantra! As someone who has had a few
people intern for sales in past months, I was immediately taken in by "no
sales rep headache" pitch. Resonates well, at least with me! Now, can you meet
my expectations?

2\. From there on, unfortunately, your pitch goes downhill. Too much text. I'd
start from scratch. Use your no-sales-rep pitch to grab attention. Then have
4-5 bullet points, each explaining a problem your app fixes. And later in the
page, the finer details for the people _still_ unsure/have questions about
your app.

~~~
alexS
Check the site in about 5 seconds - we're "live" implementing a lot of the
comments... outsourcing our web design to you guys...

------
motters
An email I received this morning:

"Hope all is well. Would you guys mind upvoting this? This is my new company:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013389>

Best, \- Emil Gilliam"

Surely begging emails like this are an improper use if the voting system.

~~~
rms
It's pretty much an inevitable use of the voting system.

~~~
motters
Yes, there's nothing you can do to prevent people from doing this, but I
notice that on other voting based news sites such gaming has reduced the
quality.

------
jrockway
Too noisy. The circle-with-slash is tacky, as are all the logos.

JMHO, however, as I am not in this sort of market.

~~~
alexS
In our space, logos drive credibility... and you need credibility if you're
dealing with people's sales emails.

~~~
jrockway
I can put the Google logo on my site too. How does that make me credible?

------
dmix
I'm not trying to be harsh generic SAAS salesforce clones are a dime a dozen
these days.

It's not about the software, it's your customers/network + your ability to
sell it that will make or break this type of product.

~~~
alexS
we're not actually competitive with salesforce - most of our business comes
from our email integration products with existing CRM systems; in other words,
we're not exactly a CRM.

search for "email" on appexchange.com (Salesforce's app store)

------
lawn
My knee jerk reaction was - fight or flee? As others have pointed out if I
don't see what the page is about almost immediately I just close it. When
skimming through the site the only thing I see is boring business talk which
quite frankly bores the hell out of me.

Another thing I noticed on my second visit was how absolutely crammed it was.
There are links everywhere, which is fine, but they're screaming 'Hey Look at
Me!' and the next 'No Look at Me!' and so on. A clean page goes a long way for
me but yours went the other way I'm afraid.

------
johnnyg
After ten seconds on the website, and reading 1-4 on your banner, I'm not sure
what you do or how to buy it.

I think I can track sales leads and data over multiple platforms (salesforce,
gmail, etc).

I also don't understand why I'd need an assistant after I loaded calendar
events into gmail. I already get reminders.

I'm not trying to be a wise guy, just giving you my experiences without
filter.

~~~
alexS
The scheduling assistant sends out personalized emails to meeting colleagues
reminding them to make your meetings - something like:

"hi, i'm jeniffer schwartz, alex schliker's assistant. i am very persisten
about scheduling so you may receive a reminder (or two) from me

i have you scheduled with alex 1/15/2010 at 5pm

\-- forwarded email --

blah"

------
weaksauce
The images load on your site pretty slow for me on a fast connection. If this
is systemic you can seriously influence the bounce rate by upgrading your
bandwidth or using cdn's. I don't have the study in front of me but I recall
reading the average amount of time a person will wait for a page to load
before hitting the back button incredibly short. Think about offloading that
to s3 or a cdn.

~~~
alexS
this is useful - thanks. we're using a tiny 256 meg instance for our static
files (images, etc).

~~~
weaksauce
What is it running? You should consider nginx for the static stuff if you are
not already using it. It really is fast and low memory usage on a small server
such as that.

Edit: Looking at your source here are two suggestions:

The load time is getting hurt by the 75 requests for small images in the
success area. You should consider an ajax approach that lazy loads those
images and doesn't request a ton of images. If that is too much just pick 5-10
randomly and serve just those on each page load. No one is going to wait
through the 75 success stories without clicking on the link.

Also, you should minify the javascript and css to cut down on requests and
request size.

------
cubicle67
Just had another look after first looking at it a few hours ago. Wow! what a
difference.

Changes I noticed: * Looks far less cluttered * Video now works for me (didn't
work previously) * minor text/layout changes

All in all looks much improved. The video explains things much better then the
page itself, I think, although I'm not exactly target audience.

Good luck :)

~~~
alexS
thanks for the comments - i agree, the cover page is much improved.

------
PebblesRox
I'd reword that "sales scheduling, email to crm syncing, customer followups"
like this:

Schedule sales Sync email to CRM Follow up with customers

I think bullets would be good too, because I thought it was "sales scheduling
email to CRM, syncing customer followups" or something like that. It was
confusing.

~~~
alexS
bullets are good - just added them.

------
brandon272
Your homepage tells me I can "access my sales conversations anywhere" but
doesn't tell me what you're selling.

~~~
alexS
right - i think i've addressed this one in one of the other comments... good
point.

------
shrike
Maybe I'm dense, but what is it? A service, a product, a what? Does it replace
Salesforce?

~~~
alexS
it basically records relevant sales emails into salesforce leads and contact
records so you know exactly who's been contacted and who hasn't.

~~~
bugs
You shouldn't have to be telling people what it is in the comments is probably
where he was headed with his "what is it" comment.

~~~
alexS
it's surprisingly useful interacting with you guys - i may actually use my
"what it is" comment on the site.

~~~
donniefitz2
I would agree that you should be more clear about what your service does. Not
trying to rip on you or anything. Just trying to help. It's not easy to get
your concept across quickly, and it takes a lot of time to nail it concisely,
but you should be able to sum it up in a few sentences and maybe with a super-
short demo video.

------
Tichy
Triggers an immediate back button reflex. Maybe it looks too much like very
unfun business stuff. No idea what it is about either - I suppose you only
understand it if you are in the business?

------
rlpb
Redo the audio on your video with a decent microphone! It sounds bad and the
echo is distracting and makes it harder to listen to.

Edit: also, it sounds like you're shouting at me.

