After hearing about Customerforce.com through an associate of mine, I opted to give the site a brief, fifteen minute review in several categories - design, features, and general commercial viability. While the concept behind CustomerForce seems to have merit, the site’s current implementation leaves much room for improvement.
“you need to be memberâ€: Too critical? Perhaps. Relevant? Of course.
One of the hallmarks of a properly designed, commercial site is the visibly apparent presence of proper proofreading. If a specific section is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, it instantly makes the site less credible from a commercial, authoritative perspective. Not only does a hastily-composed paragraph seem unprofessional, another point that becomes
I felt unable to create an account, as the terms of service to which I was apparently agreeing seemed inaccessible. (I later was able to access the appropriate page through a link in the site footer.)
What to Click, When To Click: Elements of Poor Design
By far, the most visually offensive part of the Customerforce.com site is the design. The fonts used on all the pages are too small for the standard size; attempting to expand them using Web browser controls results in text overflow and poorly-proportioned text boxes. While CustomerForce seems to be positioning itself as a “Web 2.0†company, one of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 sites generally involves standards compliance and extensive, cross-platform testing. Running Safari on Mac OS X, the default view of CustomerForce extends login information boxes and border corners beyond their given frames.
Another key issue involves the “favorite†boxes on the side of the site. Depending on the particular page you might be viewing, these links change drastically. Several of these modules display duplicate items. Other boxes contain content that appears to be present for sponsorship purposes, defeating the entire concept of the links being related to user votes.
The final most pressing design issue involves navigating through the most popular content. The particular item selected appears in the right frame, with a simple link to the external source (such as YouTube.) Initially, I wasn’t able to figure out where the content actually was located, which again, does not bode well for the site’s target audience.
Customer Interactivity: Failing Grade
The situation with CustomerForce becomes even more puzzling considering that the CEO’s blog - which hasn’t been updated since the site launched - reads like a cross between a complete PR site and a plea for public attention. Phrases like “Right then I knew I had seen the futureâ€, in reference to viewing a few popular TV shows and a smattering of preferred musicians - on a default search page - don’t exactly instill a sense of confidence. Future plans for a web browser toolbar give another clue as to how the company might achieve profitability. Furthermore, nearly all the entries contain reference to “future plansâ€, which, two to three months later, have yet to make an appearance. Fewer of these weasel words would go much further in convincing critical users.
In conclusion, the concept of aggregating content from pre-existing social networking sites makes sense - but the CustomerForce implementation of this concept is severely lacking, at best.
Review by Jake Billo, ev98.net
4 comments ↓
Thankyou to Jake Billo for writing this awesome review. It was real and it made the company think! Your definatley going to make a difference to the site.
If you can make a review on our site please do and post it on your blog. PLease contact floetic@carolina.rr.com when you do thankyou!
Tyler,
Just a followup on my review here. While it may seem unnecessarily and overly critical - and perhaps unfair, in some people’s minds - it comes from a few different perspectives.
I’ve had experience working for software companies in the marketing field. In my time doing this, one of the most important things to focus on was a professional appearance. Even if the product required special coddling to get it to work; even if the launch was haphazard at best; and even if we were unsure about what might happen in the coming days and weeks, we still attempted to maintain some semblance of professionalism. That meant proofreading the hell out of advertising copy and getting multiple people to look each page over.
Even when I was just a lowly marketing assistant, I still had a significant amount of input into how campaigns were conducted and whether they’d go out as planned. I recall one particular instance where we halted an email campaign for two days, because of a minor HTML issue in the trial run message to select customers. The issue was fixed, and the second run - while putting us behind schedule - ended up giving a significantly higher clickthrough and conversion rate.
Dave had mentioned that you’re an intern for Customerforce. Do they listen to your suggestions and then actually follow through with them?
I have no doubt that Customerforce could fix the grammatical errors and CSS stylesheet issues in a day. In fact, they’d be incredibly minor issues for a company with an already-established customer base. The primary concern I have with Customerforce is that it’s a new site, trying to take advantage of new “Web 2.0″ media, and there’s these minor issues *still* present three months after launch. It’s almost like the testers for the site ran through the motions and testcases (please tell me that more than one person gave the site a serious testing) without actually *reading* the content.
The second major flaw I want to point out is the business plan for Customerforce. I have a new theory behind the success or downfall of businesses: if I can describe your complete business plan in a few lines of PHP and SQL, then it’s not a sound business plan at all. Customerforce seems to have a business plan that relies on “SELECT `movie` FROM `topmovies` ORDER BY `votes` LIMIT 5;”. Customerforce relies on users contributing the best aggregated content, and then having other friends of these users voting on it. It’s too many steps for the average MySpace click-copy-paste profile whore. Never underestimate the stupidity of users; and never underestimate the concept of “less is more.” So it’s not just the design elements - it’s the whole flow and process that Customerforce effectively forces on people, who really couldn’t be arsed to copy content from one site to another.
Relating back to the first point again: the whole concept of professionalism. Believing in yourself is definitely necessary to sell a product. I believe in the work I do right now being 100% useful and practical for people.
Where it’s OK to start looking at the bigger picture is when you have all these plans for the future, and none of them appear within grasp. It’s something I’ve been criticized for before, called “feature creep.” The CEO of Customerforce has all these ambitious plans in his blog - yet when the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service don’t even link to the right pages on the signup site? Come back down to earth and start streamlining with the good, working features that you do have.
I’d be more than happy to discuss my opinions further with yourself or any representative of the company. I’d also be equally willing to write a less-negative review, or revise this one, based on what happens to Customerforce in the next few months - and I’d consider signing up for an account to give it a more thorough testing. (Some of the Terms of Service are fairly ridiculous, though. You really should get a legal-type person to look them over, and I’d probably ignore them myself as they’re completely unenforceable in my jurisdiction.)
Keep this in mind, though: I am not your target audience, nor am I an optimal focus group. I’m a web developer and CS student who absolutely despises MySpace/Xanga/LiveJournal. I’m willing to make suggestions and give constructive criticism, based on what I perceive your target audience would want and do. Most of your users won’t even get that far if they can’t figure out how things are supposed to work.
As an intern im giving different jobs and i have the ability to create my own goals to help the site. I decided to get recieve 5 reviews of the site by the end of the week. And i recieved 2 so far saying exactly what you said in your review. And its made the team of the website THINK! The other interns agree with you as well.
[...] haven’t written a scathing Web 2.0 review since my Customerforce piece for an intern there; since then it looks like CustomerForce has gone under significant [...]