CircleDog Launch Underway

Traffic is growing, downloads of the product are ticking upward. Thanks to everyone for helping–we really appreciate it.

We use CircleDog too–by the way! Stay tuned for some product news…

The CircleDog Blog!

The CRMbrella blog has been fun, but it’s time to move it on over…the big ol dog is movin in. Click here to get to the CircleDog Blog.

Marco Wins Most Persistent Award

I’m pretty sure you’re the last man standing. Sadly the others have walked away, disappointed and disillusioned, yet you keep coming back for more punishment. You should start a business!  Here’s the logo, btw:

circledog!

Finally! It’s taken a long time, a lot of thrashing about, a brand consultant, and about 230 suggestions from some great people. The winning name was submitted by Phil from Tungsten Branding. Others on the list were pretty good, but this somehow resonated with us.

In the end we chose a name that isn’t literal or business-y. Circledog is evocative, fresh, friendly, and in somewhat meaningless. We’ll modify it with a tagline–no idea what–that says what it does (Circledog–customer, contact, marketing and sales management for small business…yeah, that’s way too long).

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness and help! We hope you like the name. We do.

Next up: the logo! Logo contest anyone?

Finally! We’ve got our finalists…NOW VOTE!

First, THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to this process! It’s been hell for us, but the last 5 days have been a complete joy becuase of you and your great ideas here. 

VOTE HERE (click) 

I especially want to throw shout outs to Craig Lauer, who is a big influencer here at the company (freelance but for a long, long time) and has really shaped a lot of the product and language around it. Also, Charles Wilson had some great names.

I personally liked  Worksy–cute, fun, and will make a great product name for someone. Thanks, Tiffani. Ed Westin had some cool entries, as did Jasper and James David. Jason was relentless; my favorite of his was Fester, just for the Addams Family reference.

JBDean had flair for the functional, and Prajjwal won some fans with “IceCRM”, pronounced “ice cream”. Michael reminded us of works, works, works with about 20 entries; I liked Lucid from Walter, but one of our criteria was that we wanted the URL. Patrick’s Hermes was popular with one of our developers, Tony, who likes Greek mythology but conceded that we need to be a bit more mainstream.

Craigs’ SimpleWorkDay was one of my favorite’s as well, but Pink Girly won my support for EllaBellaU simply for the fun of it. (U for Umbrella or University, unsure).

We also hired a branding expert–PureTungsten.com. I read a number of Phil’s articles last week. Phil had a number that we liked–he’s really quite thoughtful and good.

You can vote on the finalists here: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB2283CYQSE3B

Thank you!

Name Our Software: Final Stretch

There have been some really great suggestions over the past 4 days! So a bit about our decision process. First, we have some internal names developed. Most of them suck pretty bad, so it’s unlikely they’ll get chosen.

Next, we’ve retained a branding firm, which has come up with 12 names, 5 of which we really like. On Friday we asked them to take another pass because we like the direction and some of the names, but we’d like to see what else they can come up with.

At 11 am tomorrow we’ll hear back from the firm. At noon, I’m buying the team lunch and kicking around the names you’ve provided along with the internal ones and the branding firm ones.

Sometime in the afternoon tomorrow, we’ll choose the name, and if it’s yours, bells will ring throughout the land and we’ll cut you a check.

I want to thank everyone for their thoughtfulness and creativity–some really great choices. Naming is one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through. And my guess is we’ll still end up naming it something that’s not perfect, just pretty good. I’m ok with that–the love of the product creates affection and respect for the name, not the other way around.

I do hope you’ll download and try the software!

Thanks. You can keep suggesting until 11 am Tuesday EST.

While we have your attention…

Things to know to help you name:

1) Download the software. Try out the sample database–get a feel for it.

2) The price is $129 for Standard and $299 for Pro (Pro is due Oct 1).;

3) It’s multi-user.

4) It runs on the desktop, but is integrated with web services like email marketing, mapping, Facebook, etc.

5) Post your name selection in the post comments of the PREVIOUS post–appreciated.

SOME BACKGROUND:
We make GiftWorks Fundraising software and have 7000 nonprofit customers. The new software, though, is for small business and is currently called CRMbrella (long story). We’re renaming it by Monday, and launching it in 2 weeks, though we’ve already got about 100 customers who really love it.

The Pro version will have a nice sales Pipeline, real-time integration with Outlook, Quickbooks integration, pretty cool calendar and task management, and a transmogrifier weapon throw in for good measure.

CRMbrella home page...

Coming down the road is remote backup and integrated email marketing. While the software runs on the desktop, it’s integrated with web services. Try the 30-day trial here: http://www.crmbrella.com/freetrial.html. Thanks!

Name Our Software!

Enter your suggestions as comments. You can try the software or learn more about it by clicking on the CRMbrella Website link on the right.

CRMbrella is really quite easy to use–very nice, elegant, simple interface, crisp screens, context-sensitive help. Pretty sweet. You can see it in action here: http://crmbrella.com/demo2.html

Thanks for your efforts! If we pick your name, you’re the winner. Pretty easy. And our friend forever. We’ll have ya over for pie someday. Oh, and don’t forget the $1000 you’ll earn for your efforts, plus 100 licenses to use or give to your friends and family!

Widgets

We’re working on additional widgets for the Dashboard. (At some point, anyone will be able to build them). What would you like to see?

Simpler Software: The Promise of Less Work, More Value

My mom taught herself how to use computers. She bought the Dummies and Idiots books, took a class or two, and wrote lots of step-by-step instructions on how to use software like Microsoft Word. I’d try to show her something, and she’d write down the steps. When she’d try it, her eyes would get that glassy look you get when you don’t quite know what you’re expected to do next. Frustrating.

Software like Microsoft Word can be very useful, but the way tasks are organized is difficult for a lot of people. Products like Word and Act contact management software are stuffed with menus stuffed with features, and as a result the classes for them are stuffed with people seeking understanding and the bookshelves in the computer self-help section are stuffed with Dummies books. But customers aren’t dummies.

We’ve been led down a path by Microsoft and other software companies from the 80’s and 90’s that established the convention of burying functionality in a series of drop-down menus. And instead of offering just what people need, these companies would build customer functionality for a few customers, then include that for every customer, regardless of the relevance of the features. It’s not wonder that numerous studies show that most computer users use less than 10% of the functionality offered in Word, Excel, and Act.

And then everything is available all the time through crowded and redundant menu-based toolbars, packed with so many icons you need a separate guide to learn what the icons mean.

So most software follows this convention. CRMbrella doesn’t. We chose to design around what’s relevant, rather than what’s possible. If software offers everything all at once on every screen, it’s very hard to understand just what is expected of you. So we make things much more focused, contextual, and relevant to your intended actions. Instructions are usually clear (let us know when they aren’t), and help is always available for the current screen–it’s context-sensitive so you don’t have to go searching for it.

We’re close to the goal of giving our customers deep, relevant functionality in the easiest way possible. You’ll notice we’re very careful about navigation and presenting relevant tasks only when, well, relevant. We’re still including two top-level dropdown menus–File and Help–in which a number of functions are, well, buried. And we’re considering how best to remove them. It’s not easy designing software this way, but we’ve found that most customers understand it right away: Sections are on the top, relevant tasks are on the left, help is on the right and follows you where you go.

If you find yourself stuck, if something in the software isn’t obvious and easy for you–please tell us. Your honest, open, and frequent feedback is so important to building better software. By the way–Mom uses GiftWorks fundraising software, available over on the Mission Research site.