Cool news! Some hints: 1) I don't think you should bother too much with the CMS engine for now. You'll have to rework the HTML template + storyboard anyway, so may be do that first, keep running a crappy CMS and only after that may be consider moving to something better. Spending time on the engine and not on the templating/storyboard would just be a failure instead.
2) Login box: I think users expect that to be on the top left on the page like all popular sites. No need to be fancy here, that's just taking to much space at the wrong place. A 'login' button instead of the full blown panel would even be OK. Then a popup or the login panel would appear. I think is currently not worth the space it takes. I think you could also bother with the SSO later on. Motivated people can afford login several times first. 3) News and Events panels: they are somewhat redundant. Not to say this is somewhat redundant with the planet stuff. The news panel sounds somewhat dead or it seems it could be replaced by the calendar stuff. This is alright you have some corporate events and a planet, but I would try to put order there and make it simpler. May be only the small events panel and the news from the planet. Not sure but I think there is some entropy hidding arround here. 4) Flash demo: nice and dynamic, keep it. But I think you should not communicate to partners there at the top page. You now got a name, and potential partners could really afford a click to see their shiny flash demo and some partner/partering tab. This looks like Openbravo, they do that because they have a poor product and should make their money out from partners instead of customers because they will never convince those one showing their product, but you have a wonderfull product, target customers and show them what OpenERP is all about instead. 5) Demo stuff: this the big mess! you have online demo, dev demos, old demos, BI demos, really I find it really messy. Basically I would keep that kind of organization: http://openerp.com/demonstration.html BUT: Your presentation are quite good, make sure you can't miss them. I would add some caption or even directly put a miniature of one demo or something like that. I'm sure lot's of people miss them. You can do some a lot better too. What about upgrading the old 'inventory traking' and others old demos? What about having a few eTiny demos? Really, that's not a lot of time considering how you master your product, so I would do that. and in that page, if I click on 'demo for developpers', this is all screwed up, I'm getting on a page that has noting to do with the 'demo' or 'Demonstration' links on the openobject page http://openobject.com/ 6) What to show on the home page if you get rid off what doesn't matter then? Well I would put a flash demo of the product + possibly 'corporate everybody is happy in my company' pictures inside. In that animation, I would show up key screens and quick actions in a very rythmed way. No need to show the full process their, only things differents like paying an invoice, showing the workflow image, showing creating a CRM case by e-mail, adding a field to an object, designing a report, looking at the sale cube, adding a module or stuff like that, but again really fast so you don't try to understand here, you should simply say wow, it does all that, let's take a look then. And differently to lots of others ERP's OpenERP really does things for real and make its really relatively easy to integrate, so I think you can simply show it. 7) OpenERP on demand: 'beta testing until september' Come one, this doesn't look serious, September has gone unfortunately... And I'm sure 'Dirigez votre entreprise à la demande !' doesn't speak to French readers: I would rather write somethink like "Pour vous, Nous hébergeons OpenERP sur notre propre infrastructure". I just mean 'à la demande' or even on demand doesn't really speak to non IT folks. And I would highlight here that it's just the same OpenERP running, so people instantly start wondering what the f... is that OnDemand stuff. 8) OK, actually I think you have too many menus around: the three top tab, the top menu, the left menu. I would put order there, may be have a unique two level menus at most, always showing were the user stands and how the current page relates to the whole site. 9) The wiki is not user friendly. I would in priority work around the links stuff. I think it's to sad you can't navigate to the next section when your are visiting a damn page. Also I would emphasis the last changes page as it is were stuff happens, it's too hard to find right now, users will hardly look for it. I would also provide a feed for it. Openbravo for instance has a better wiki engine (okay, they should have paid a lot for all that shiny infrastrcuture), but then they can use it all the way in clevers way, like were to specify the new devs instead of using yet an other tool. If you used the MoinMoin python based wiki for instance (just like Ubuntu), you would a have a great wiki you would master and could use it more effectively. Or If you prefer, then why not using your own eTiny wiki (won't handle the traffic?). 10) success stories: lots are missing, make sure every customer/partner put all ther success stories, put them in an other color if you don't have details yet. OK, aside from that, I think you made great proposals and I'm sure they are other area of improvements. Also as I said, I think you should indeed streamline some getting starting page, possibly merging the travel module stuff and the new trunk integration features into simple tutorials and also by improving the windows install. User generally have problems running the OpenERP server on windows but too often it's too hard to get clues on what is going on because it's to hard to look at the logs or change something in the source to apply a patch/log something or start with command lines. But, as all that this will lower the entry barrier, that would be honest to communicate strongly about either the skills and time required to implement OpenERP oneself, either that you really should consider hiring some consultant because there is no free lunch yet with ERP's, be them open source or not. Too many people start thinking OpenERP would be like Firefox as you lower the entry barrier, this could lead to frustration and bad fame while the product is actually incredibly great. Okay, enough said, hope this helps. Raphaël Valyi. ------------------------ http://www.smile.fr -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openerp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=25338#25338 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ Tinyerp-users mailing list http://tiny.be/mailman/listinfo/tinyerp-users
