On Friday 30 November 2007 09:15:31 Kay Schenk wrote: > Hi Graham... > > Graham wrote: > > (I hope people will excuse me for posting this here as well as the wiki, > > but it seems there is little if any discussion taking place there ) > > > > As the old saying goes "You can take a Horse to water but you can't make > > him drink" > > > > And therein it seems, lies much of our problem. > > > > There is I believe a confusion of goals at the homepage. > > yes... > > > We are getting people to the download page but that is not the end goal. > > You have to give the horse a reason to drink, Either, make him thirsty, > > make the water desirable beyond his need for water or wait till he is > > thirsty before you take him there. > > > > The three tenets of Marketing > > *Create a need > > *Create a desire > > *Fill a present need > > OK, and here is where our confusion begins. Is the homepage about > "marketing" or simply resources? We are, in some ways, like a commercial > entity trying to sell a product, and in many ways, not. The dicotomy > of marketing vs technical was brought up about a week ago by someone > lese (can't remember who now), and I guess we should have discussed this > aspect in more detail.
As far as the homepage is concerned I don't think that there should be any dichotomy. Heh, it's the old Lowest common Denominator theory and I think that this is probably what Louis was trying get at with the Portal. The OOo community is incredibly diverse in it's User Base. www.openoffice.org is the first page that they ALL > > > Right now we do none of these well, we simply shove the Horse at the > > trough, only to make it doubly difficult, we blindfold him, block up his > > nose and force him to sup it through a straw after he has learned that > > drinking some types of water.will be bad for him. > > well...I personally feel this is overcritical, but that's just my opinion *Cough* Are you accusing me of overstating my case?? Heaven forbid! ;) I'm on a dialup connection so it feels like that to me. :) Basically what I'm saying is that we provide little or no information to the new arrival but we expect him to blindly download an unknown piece of software. > > > People come to a website for two main reasons > > > > *Curiosity > > *To solve a problem > > > > They will leave for more reasons: > > > > *Their curiosity has been satisfied and they leave informed > > *They find a solution to their problem > > *They can't satisfy that curiosity within a reasonable time and they > > leave frustrated > > *They can't find the solution or it is not obvious and they leave > > frustrated *Fear of the unknown > > > > Our problem is right now, and the discussions up to this point are > > reinforcing this point, we are not asking the User what he wants to do we > > are telling them what we expect them to do, We inform them where to > > download, but we don't give them information that will make them feel > > comfortable about hitting the download button, or to stretch our metaphor > > a bit further, we talk to our horse about the trough but not about how > > good the water is, while the horse is still worried about drowning.. > > I think we're all concerned about ALL of these aspects, but we're our > presentation is flawed. There seems to be an emerging philosophical > discussion, on this list and elsewhere, about just HOW MUCH information > a homepage should provide (that old how many clicks will it take Marta > to really get what she wants), vs a more uncluttered presentation. This, > in essence, is what we're grappling with I think. I, for one, having > used open source products for quite some time now, don't have a good > feel for our "average" user if you want to know the truth. Maybe one of > the user support folks could weigh in more here. > > > So I've put together a draft of a front page continuing on the simplicity > > idea which I'm a fan of. The difference is that we provide "Answers to > > the Question" > > > > "You have arrived at OpenOffice.org what would you like to do now?" > > > > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/mwiki/images/a/a3/Home_page_draft_11- > >27.jpg > > Well...this is actually a somewhat reasonable approach. I kind of like > RJ's version(s) a bit better, > also simple, because it seemed to provide > a bit more sophistication than your design but I think the basic idea is > the same. Actually I agree that Randy's is excellent, but I like this one even better http://www.patentpending.co.nz/images/openoffice/siteconcept1.png From IvanM off the art list, a variation on one of Nik's, except I would substitute the Statements as I have written them on mine rather than the How, where, what questions. At this point, I'm more focussed on the language we use to help the New Arrival because that will tend to define the next level pages. > I do feel, as some others have also said here, that *some* additional > elements, like a few "news" items, are good PR. At this point in the New Users connection with OOo I think News is unnecessary, that's the job of the why.openoffice.org page or similar I think we offer, at the first connection, as few options as possible. That's what my design was aimed at. Basically four choices all answering that question: "What do I want to do now?" Detail can be added further in and that detail can be geared toward the user. For instance someone clicking the "I want to know more before I download" would want to know about news of Major Deployments of OOo, or maybe testimonials, but probably wouldn't give a toss about really cool developments around UNO or Extensions Development. I think we provide that detail after we find out a little about the new arrivals. They will give us a clue as to what news they will want to see simply by the choices they make from that first click. PR is good but it works better when tuned to the individual. Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, INGOTs Assessor Trainer Moderator New Zealand (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
