Show HN: I built this CRM Tool for Windows. Thoughts? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I built this CRM Tool for Windows. Thoughts?

crmfly.com

42 pointsdalacv50 comments

First of all, props for making a desktop app.

Don't mind what others say about the UI, I know how hard is it do something that doesn't look like butt on Windows. Yours has a good balance of customization, the native look and feel and a reference to the Office. I wouldn't worry about the UI, it's solid. Everyone picks on it, because it's the easiest thing to critique.

There are few things that I don't like, in the order they stuck out."Fly! CRM! Fly!" in the page title - this is buddy-buddy and cute, but you aren't selling a social app or a game. You have to get your first impression right, or you won't get a download. To that end, you must have an About section with at least some details on where you are and the contact information. Similarly, there must be the Support section, ideally with some sort of public Forums sections, because not everyone is comfortable emailing the support.

Secondly, you must absolutely have a free/trial version. As low as your current price point is, Windows users are not used to paying for trials. I'm sure you know that.

Third, the name in combination with the logo - again, too playful. And this leads to the most important part - this playful, less serious feel combined with $5 price point says "here's a toy program I made for the lulz." It's a complete miss in terms of branding.

Overall, the program doesn't come across as a professional product. It looks like one, it is certainly aimed at a professional crowd, but it doesn't have all expected supporting attributes that would confirm it is one. The good news is that all this is very easy to fix compared to what you already accomplished.

Once again - good stuff, just needs a bit of a positioning polish.

Love the comments. Thanks tons for the feedback. Just curious... What is your thought on the fly icon? Keep it or dump it?

Designer here. Dump. You can find a better representation of what you're doing. I'm not getting the connection between CRM and fly, besides a fly is a negative connotation to begin with.

Rework it, on low priority. Get rid of the trail, and try and rework the symbol into a more squarish shape, because that way it can be used as the app icon. If done this way, the the product logo will be a combination of the symbol and a wordmark (CRMFLY) - "[X] CRMFLY" - which is, in my experience, a very practical arrangement that maps well to all common uses.

nice. i will give it a shot later.

Less software, more people.

Outline benefits not features, no one cares that you have slick-reports generation, they care about "Reports that will land you your next bonus". Same with the desktop thing, why should I care that people say the Desktop is dead. Instead say "Access your CRM while you're in the air for FREE" and then put an infographic together of how much the average business person will save in one year in wireless charges accessing Highrise from the plane.

Product looks completely sellable, marketing does not look like it will generate many sales.

You're completely right. I will work on changing the content to highlight value vs. features.

Thanks!

It looks nice, but it also looks like Office 2003. Have you looked into matching the 2007/2012 UI?

Also, I think $5 is way too low. The people who need CRM would probably doubt the product's quality at such a low price point. Better to have 1 customer at $50 (or better yet $99 or more) than ten at $5.

Good point. I will look to see if I can raise the price. Just have to make sure the value is there.

If you don't believe your product is worth more than $5 then it'll be hard to convince others of it.

What I'm saying is pick another equally arbitrary price point and then see if you can sell copies. I think $5 will be an active deterrent to sales.

Awesome. I will make the change tonight and will offer a trial version.

My suggestion is to charge at least $49 for it, at $19.99 it's still very low and you won't be able to sustain that price. You need to sell A LOT of copies to make any money :)

Put a trial version and change the price to $95.

Also I would update the UI to look more modern. At worst take screenshots from a higher resolution screen so it doesn't look so cramped.

Good job launching something!

I haven't tried it so these comments are just about the sales pitch:

Have you talked to potential customers? What do your potential customers want, what needs aren't being matched by someone else?

Your opening sounds empty to me. Your product doesn't look like every other CRM tool, it doesn't look like peoplesoft, salesforce, sugarcrm. To me it looks a bit out of date. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've worked with plenty of people that feel far more comfortable with something "more traditional". I would go with an opening selling the straight forward to the point nature of the product.

Personally I prefer to see the price/buying options before I click a buy now button.

You are selling a CRM product but your first screen shot is of a task list with personal items on it. Loose weight etc. As a customer this doesn't shout this software will help me manage customers and make more money.

The description on the customers screenshot is incorrect.

It looks like this is a product for a single person/freelancer as it doesn't allow sharing of data. That's going to limit your audience.

Personally I'd sell/develop the customer management/communication features more - how is it easy to keep trac of conversations, does it hook into email can I merge my calendar? I'd consider a mobile version for people visting clients on site.

My suggestions: 1) Mention that it is Windows only and supports Windows 8 2) Take the screenshots with the DevExpress Metropolis skin if your app doesn't look too bad with it. It looks like a "modern" windows 8 app 3) Big free 15 day trial button 4) Basic version for $20; Advanced version for $99 (e.g. Report designer only in Advanced version)

Thanks. This is why I love hackernews.

Here's my laundry list of feedback:

- The lead text is too chummy. Make it concise and professional.

- When facing a blank page, one copywriting technique I've come up with is to make a list of all your features, and then next to each write the benefit. Now flip each around and write a sentence matching the "get benefit x from feature x." Group and edit from there.

- "Who said that the desktop was dead?" is too defensive when the desktop should be one of your selling points. You may not read about it on HN, but many people prefer desktop software over web based and mobile tools. And many prefer one-time purchases to ongoing subscriptions.

- There is very little text for search engines to crawl. At the very least, add a blog and start writing about CRM and related topics.

- You need an About page. People want to know who they are buying from.

- You should have a privacy policy as well.

- Cannot order more than 1 license at a time. E-junkie is a good interim solution for selling via PayPal.

- Why is there a link to Mixpanel in the footer? I'd remove it.

- The video is full screen and blurry at my monitor's resolution. Also, if you're creating a screencast without sound, you need to use text bubbles so viewers can follow along.

- Why does the Support link go to another site? A simple contact form would be better than taking visitors off site.

- Chrome gives a security warning for the download. You should get a real digital certificate as opposed to self signing. K Software (http://codesigning.ksoftware.net/) sells code signing certs for a relatively low cost.

- The installation has no instructions. Unzipping and running the setup file may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people would get tripped up by this. Technically challenged people have money, and they do buy software.

- The download isn't very fast. It looks like you're deploying the entire DevExpress library. Do you need to deploy all those components?

awesome. Thanks for the feedback. I will work through some of those this week!

I used to work for a company that customized Microsoft CRM. Im not sure I understand this, do your client's have to buy a Microsoft license to use this? You're using their API right? It looks just like out of the box Microsoft CRM, are you sure your not going to get sued trying to sell this?

Sorry if im being negative maybe with some more explanation on the site it would make more sense to me and your customers who are probably doing the same comparison I am.

This was done in a very short amount of time using DevExpress' XAF. Also, this CRM looks like every other CRM. That is also true. But that is the nature of CRM tools. They all look the same.

No they dont, this looks exactly like MS CRM 4.0 not like Salesforce.com or CRM using Google's apps or even the latest version of MS CRM. Also MS CRM has all the same features as this.

Is this hosted or clients have to host it themselves? Do you have support or tell people what they need to get this running? Im guessing a server, windows server license, a MSSQL license and Outlook licenses at the least right? Or does each person have to have his own copy of the data? And the pay with paypal link even feels wonky.

Im sorry to have to say this but this feels like a scam and if it isn't then I think you really need to focus on the design of your website and customer education.

You're right. I was definitely generalizing a bit. This is a thick-client 1-user app. It can be multi user, but that is coming down the road.

wavesounds made a really good point, your product looks exactly like Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. I don’t know who your customers are and what are their needs but I think the first question I would ask myself is why your customer would choose you and not MS CRM or any other CRM if both offer the same functionality.

I know nothing about CRM tools, but I have some superficial feedback about your landing page.

In "Take control of your leads, customers, products, projects, tasks using a modern interface [...]", you probably want an "and" before "tasks".

Underneath your "Customers" screenshot, it looks like you pasted in the same description as for the "Goals" screenshot.

Typographically, your double spacing between sentences makes the left edge of the text look horrible, both in the opening blurb at the top and in some of the screenshot descriptions. The text does not line up vertically on the left-hand side.

Finally, this is less objective but "DangerousApps" seems like it might not be the best name for your enterprise software company. That name might fly for a funky indy game company, but to most businesses, the word "dangerous" is just about the last thing they want to be associated with their software.

I clicked on Buy and was greeted by a screen with DANGEROUSAPPS all over it. I suppose most users have reflexes to hit the back button now when they see a warning like that.

Yup. Definitely the worst decision I've made so far. I am in the middle of registering a new LLC. It will take some time. For now, I have included the DBA of Rakesoft into the EULA.

My nonprofit is in the market for a CRM tool, but none of us would be able to use this — we're an all-Mac shop.

Does your app have any way to import external data sources (preferably automatically)? Lots of organizations looking for CRM tools look for features that allow them to plug them in to tools they're already using.

It will, but that will need to be way down the line. I can basically use an ORM layer to handle the integration with legacy data.

Small thing—but not sure I'd buy a product from a company called "Dangerous Apps"

It's been a while since I've used Goldmine, ACT, or any of the more SMB focused CRM apps but it's definitely not clear why I'd choose CRM Fly vs those products. i'd emphasize simplicity and ease of use—there are a lot of folks out there who benefit from sales tracking tools who simply don't need everything out there.

Would, however, suggest things like XL exports and perhaps consider SaaS opportunities or partnerships around things like invoice printing/automation. If your approach is "simple, easy, helpful" (cause the other guys are complicated bloatware) then think how you can do this end-to-end for whomever you are designing/building for.

Some of the points already covered in the above comment.

Some use cases you can think over: 1: The Tasks created in CRMFly gets synchronized with Outlook tasks. 2: Same goes for Calendar. 3: Have the app as Web based and use the windows client to provide offline access.

Change the name of the Company and raise the Price a bit higher, $5 is too low.

BTW, another approach is eventually tackle a vertical... perhaps you'll end-up being the #1 CRM app for small practice attorneys, dentists, accountants, etc... you can potentially carve out a niche there, give yourself more focus on whom you want to build for and what their problems are, and find venues for better addressing those markets. I know several folks who started out thinking "broad", received limited but helpful initial adoption, talked to their customers and saw patterns of the types that seemed to have the biggest unmet needs and were actively seeking new ideas/solutions. Then you start to double down.

Definitely hear you on this last point. I am currently planning work with a buddy who is the expert in a niche area. We will spin off and work in this area to tailor it for his (and hopefully others) needs.

I think you should give it for 3 to 6 months free trial. Anyone who will use it for this long will be your happy customer anyways. Then you can charge a reasonable amount. Putting prices low may not help you much.

I love it, and I'm definitely the target audience. There is, however, one question that it leaves hanging in my head: can I use this with my colleagues? Where is the data stored? Can the data be synchronized?

My biggest reason for using a CRM and not a paper notebook for sales data is because I want to know when my colleague claled Customer Joe, so I can refer to that latest call when being in touch with him again.

This functionality is coming. It basically works with SQL Server and Oracle, but I need to do more validation before releasing.

Interesting Application. I wonder what the overall prospects of a Windows Desktop application are these days?

One thing I would mention, test it on different versions of Windows. CRMfly does not appear to work post-install on Window XP --> https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6629489/img/CRMfly.png

So, I tested this on Windows XP and you'll likely have to do a check for .NET 3.5 and have it installed before the application gets copied. As per Devexpress:

"This may happen if you try to launch an XAF Windows Forms application at the workstation with Windows XP or an older Windows version installed. These systems do not have Microsoft .NET Framework installed by default. Download and install the .NET framework of the appropriate version from the Microsoft website (version 3.5 for Windows XP or version 2.0 for earlier Windows versions) or upgrade to Windows Vista or Windows 7."

These things are brutal. You'll loose a possible customer the second he/she sees a non-descript error like this.

Looks cool.

Out of curiosity, did you ever consider building it as a web app or only plan a native windows app? Do you think there is an untapped market for native Windows apps? I guess people will be attracted to a one off payment for a desktop app versus a recurring subscription for a web app.

Btw, can multiple users share the same database or is it single user only?

Very interesting. Looks great.

First question: How can I sync the data with others on my team? (ie. is it possible?)

The questions page isn't working.

If a user ends up using this product heavily and then decides that they need to migrate to a different product, how easily can they export their information and in what format? As a user, I'm very hesitant to put all of my information in an application if I don't know that I can easily get it back out.

From the screenshots it looks promising. Even though $5 is a low bar of entry a trial version would be nice.

I would remove the "20+ Skins" item from the grid on the sales page. That is not what get people buying (I hope). This does not provide business Value and it's the last thing I want my employees to spend time with.

I didn't see any email integration. Does that feature exist? Being able to have your interaction history (email, phone call notes, etc) for your clients in one place is important for many people.

Nice a desktop application.

Congratulations on that.

Regarding customization, what business really want in a CRM system is the ability to add/remove modules (extra functionality), and scripting abilities to drive campaigns.

I do a bit of consulting for MS CRM and this looks like a straight ripoff of the UI from 4.0.

What differentiates CRMFly from any other CRM product? Are you competing solely on price?

The divs "Customers" and "Goals" have the same text. I think the price is too low. Also, a screencast would be nice.

It just doesn't have that HTML5 feel.

"Modern interface" - looks ancient to me.

downvote for noticing the app looks like a decade old windows app? Seriously... have you looked at salesforce.com?

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