Product Review

I asked for a product review over at the BoS forums (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.558734.23) and got a lot of responses. According to Google Analytics, I have had 207 unique visitors visit the site and 45 people download the beta (44 really because 1 was me testing it.) Not to bad. The feedback was great as usual from the BoS crowd. They pointed out some minor issues that needed to be fixed (and could be fixed quickly.) I've got quite a few of those done already. I want to thank Joel Rein and Patrick McKenzie for their input. There was a host of others, but they didn't provide site that I could reference.

There were three major issues that came up.

The first one was something I knew about. Patrick pointed out that it really needs to have some sample data. I had been meaning to do this, but it is tedious work. I'm going to try to find a trouble shooting guide on the web and ask if I can use it if I give credit to the author. Related to this is the fact that the app is not really useful until you enter all your data into it. This is very true, but true of a lot of other applications in general. But his point is that it will hurt the conversion rate. I'm not sure what I can do about that.

The second was the limited use of single user app. I knew that going in and I already have the design to make it multi user. But that is a big effort.

The last issue is was from Doug. T who provided some great feedback. He was trying to figure out what the app is trying to be. It is not a issue tracker (it lacks to many of the tools required for it.) Perhaps I overshot with the name a bit. But it was available.

Right now if I had to define Omni Customer Service, I have to define it as a customer service knowledge base tool. Now that might limit the market quite a bit. But right now I don't have the resources to try to make it more than it currently is.

For now I'm staying the course. I'm updating the software to catch the low hanging items. I think have just about all of those. Then I need to flush out the website and take off the beta tag. It will be tight getting it all done before my deadline runs out, but I think I can do it.