Company and Product Blog
Try it FREEAs promised, page dividers and information on hover have just been released. Page dividers are text blocks that can be used as a type of category header under which you can group similar items. Dividers are automatically saved to a “Dividers” folder and when edited, will be updated on all pages in which they appear.
Information about items (full name, description and internal comments) and dividers (title and text) will now display when you hover your cursor over item and divider names (for about a second and a half) in the item/folder list in Create/Edit Page and Create/Edit Collection. This is helpful because item and divider names are truncated and can often appear too similar when displayed in lists.
A big “thanks” to our users for offering great feedback and providing us with insights on how you’re using CorePage. The feedback link in the upper right hand corner of CorePage has proved to be one of our most appreciated features and we’re thrilled with the comments, feature recommendations and yes, even an occasional bug report. Just a reminder that we announce every new feature first in the sidebar of CorePage itself with a yellow message that looks like a long sticky note (which you can dismiss after reading).
I’ll tell you about some of the user-requested features that we’ll be releasing in the near future at the end of this message.
First, several weeks ago we completely revamped item re-order - at the request of users who were putting a lot of items on pages. It’s now drag-and-drop and can be accessed via a link under the item list on the right. As a part of this upgrade, we’ve done away with the “click-to-remove-items” function that mirrored “click-to-add-items” (also a request). You’ll now see a remove link for every item.
Next, we’ve just released contact import (in the Settings section) and we’ve included some special touches designed to make this process easier - which I’ll explain shortly. You can import Microsoft Outlook and Entourage CSV and tabbed-text files directly (without modification); a feature we’ll mirror for ACT! files soon. CorePage simply ignores those columns that it does not need. You can, of course, import contacts exported by any program, as long as you include the first name, last name and e-mail address at a minimum. We’ve provided a downloadable sample CSV showing the column names (also called a “header record”) for all available fields. There is a minor caveat though. We’re currently only able to accept files that are less than 64K in size. This means that larger files will have to be broken into smaller ones or files with more info than needed (like Outlook or Entourage may have), will need that extra info stripped-out (columns deleted). This is a limitation imposed by one of the 3rd party components used in our infrastructure. If we hear from a number of users that this is really a problem, we’ll look into solutions.
Remember those “special touches” I mentioned? Anyone who imports data from one program into another program has probably had some of that data rejected. Usually it’s a painful process to deal with this. We do it differently, and I hope much better. After an import, we tell you how many contacts were successfully imported, how many were duplicates of contacts already in the system (based on matching email address), and how many were skipped for some reason. You can click on links to download files that will show the duplicates and another file which shows which ones were skipped and the reason for each (usually a problem with the email address or missing information). You can fix the data right in this file, and upload IT, rather than going back to your original import file. We hope that this is a big time saver!
One other minor change that we’ve made has to do with the link pages themselves. We learned, much to our surprise, that some of your contacts didn’t recognize the item names as links (which were underlined when you rolled-over them with your mouse) and didn’t know they were to be clicked. So, we turned the underlines on full-time and they now become bold when rolled-over.
The next few features (all user requests) that we’re working on for you include dividers for the link pages that allow descriptive text to act as separators for groups of items, making more textual information information about items available during the page creation/editing process, and a better way to manage the moving around of folders and items after they’ve been created. We’ll release these one at a time as they’re ready.
Thanks again for your great feedback. Please keep it coming!
You know how it works, right after your first phone call, before you’re allowed to schedule a face-to-face meeting, your prospect gives you an initial task to complete. Often, he’s qualifying you — he wants to see how impressive you can be, both on the timeliness and quality of your follow-through. Of course, you can use this exercise to qualify him too. If he engages with you during this little test, he’s probably open to the possibility of doing business with you. If he doesn’t, he’s probably just used a delaying tactic that will cost you time and energy… and made it clear that you may either have to try a different approach, or abandon him, as he may simply be one of those people who can’t say “no” - and could be a HUGE time waster.
Usually the follow-up to that initial call involves getting something about your product or service offering to the prospect. This is especially true in the world of custom work-for-hire, which can include everything from creative services like design, advertising, writing, photography, interactive and video production to craftsman services like custom home and furniture construction, specialty painting and more. In these worlds, prospects tend to want to see work that you’ve done for someone else that’s similar to the work that you propose to do for them. Hiring a new service provider is often accompanied by some fear of failure. One way to help mitigate the risk is by selecting a provider with the specific and demonstrated experience desired.
Since CorePage is the perfect way to keep samples of your work at the ready, and you can choose the perfect ones for each prospect, you can play the game quickly (in as little as 30-seconds) and perfectly, following-up with your prospect in a minute or two instead of a day or two. That is sure to impress! And, since you can see if your prospect has clicked on any of the links to what you’ve sent him, you’ll know if he’s engaged or not. If he doesn’t click, you might wait a few days and call or write just to confirm he received your email (containing the link to the page you created for him). If, for example, he confirms that he has it, and still hasn’t clicked within a few days more, he probably isn’t interested, so you might do best to let him go, and put your time and energy into other prospects.
Whatever the result, it’s best to know, so you can make the best use of your valuable time.
You always thought a web page was intended for a world audience, right? Most are, but there’s a lot of web-accessible content out there that is either password protected or simply not linked from anywhere, so only the people who know the exact URL can find it. You could call those “private” for that reason. Similarly, extranets, review sites and collaboration spaces, which are all are password protected, could be considered a type of private web page.
CorePage defines a private web page, or in our case a “private link page” using both definitions above, and adds to that the idea that it’s intended for one person.
That’s why we put the phrase “This page has been created exclusively for: ” in the upper-right hand corner. So, why do we do this? Primarily because we want to be able to provide you with a reasonable likelihood that the person who clicks on the links on that page, is the person to whom you sent the link to that page.
So, can you provide an exact duplicate page for others? Absolutely! In “Page Details,” which is where you end-up at the end of the page creation process, and where you go whenever you click on a page name, there’s a link called “Copy Page for New Contact.” In fact, we recently added a new feature that knows when you have personal comments (on items) on a page that you’re about to copy, and asks you whether you’d like to include those in the copy or not.
Now certainly, a person getting an email from you (or a link in an instant message or over the phone) can forward it to other people, but chances are they’ll look at it themselves before doing so, and pass along recommendations about what to look at on that page. If, however, you ask your client or prospect if there’s anyone else that should receive that page, you can then send that person his own private page, and you’ll be able to see what he’s clicking-on too.
More about deriving meaning from clicks in a later posting.
Many thanks to our great beta testers, who provided such invaluable insights and suggestions.
Prior to our launch on Thursday, April 24th, we were able to:
> Improve the welcome message to include a clearer recommendation about what to do next
> Improve how we communicate how to make the same page available to multiple contacts
> Improve the clarity of information on the “details” pages
> Improve the tag functionality
> Improve the performance of the preview function
> and more…
We may be live, but we’re nowhere near finished. CorePage will be a work-in-progress for its entire life. We may be developers here, but we’re also users of a great many online tools, and we recognize that the best ones grow to be the best by listening to their users, and that’s our plan too. In fact, we built that ability right into CorePage. In the upper right-hand corner of the interface is a “feedback” link which provides direct communication with the CorePage developers. There you can give us your comments, bug reports, feature requests and user stories (so you can tell us how you use CorePage.)
Yes, every message from you is important, but doesn’t mean we can build every feature that you request. As responsible developers, we’ll be looking for trends and common themes across all the messages in order to help us identify what we should build, and in what priority.
We’re launching with a couple of “coming soon” items in the settings section, and those are first on our list. The next is the set of group features for CorePage PRO, which you can see on the pricing/sign-up page. We recognize that for CorePage to be really valuable, we have to allow users in work groups, departments, divisions and other organizational structures to share a common library of items. That way, one group, say marketing, can be responsible for adding items that are approved, and then everyone else can use them. We have lots of plans for these features, and we’re in active discussions with a number of companies about how our planned features align with their needs. If you’d like to offer some thoughts on that, we’d love to hear them, and again direct you to the feedback function in CorePage as the place to send us your comments.
Again, our sincere thank to our beta testers as we begin an exciting new phase of operation. We now invite the word to join us, and tell us your stories about how you use CorePage, and what you’d like from us.
Greetings!
We’ve started a new software company called REVIXIO, to create “revolutionary online sales tools.” In particular, we’ll be addressing the needs of people who sell products and services one-to-one. If you think about it, that describes a lot of people, in almost every industry you can imagine.
Our first product, CorePage, is the answer to a question posed to me in 1997, when I was working at an advertising agency… “how can we use the Internet to get more business for the agency?” It’s certainly a familiar question — across all industries. As you read further, I think you’ll agree that the solution we conceived initially for ad agencies (and other creative shops), will be valuable to those who sell in other industries too.
Like most forward-thinking agencies at that time, we had a website, and it had some small portion of the agency’s portfolio on it. I was new to the agency world and learned that new business efforts often started with a conversation that ultimately included some form of the question, “so, who are some of your clients in my industry?” The conversation often progressed to awards won and particularly relevant experience that warranted the agency some consideration. Being able to demonstrate some of that experience - and soon - would be helpful in getting to the next stage. At that time, agencies usually followed-up with an overnighted brochure (containing portfolio pieces), a video demo reel and more. Ah, remember when overnight was fast enough?
I’d always had the general sense that an agency’s most valuable assets are its employees, its’ current book of business, and its’ past book of business — represented by its portfolio. So I asked myself, how could a “new business” person best present only the most relevant examples of the agency’s work, whether in the portfolio or not, and do that immediately after that introductory call? I reasoned that pieces excluded from the portfolio might still be valuable as illustrations of certain strategies or executions discussed with the prospect.
Such was the birth of the concepts behind CorePage, as a way to route the most relevant work samples (and other things) to your prospect (and only him) — online, instantly. Of course, to be able to “close the loop” and see if and when he actually looked at any of it would be tremendously valuable insight; helping you to time and strategize the next call.
So, did we build CorePage in 1997? Nope, the barriers proved too significant. The bandwidth for a great online viewing experience wasn’t available yet (online video was still postage stamp sized), the task of reviewing, cataloging and converting a huge library of materials was daunting, only some of the technologies were in place, and frankly… the agency had other priorities. We did build something…but that’s another story.
Fast-forward to 2008 and it’s the “perfect storm” of bandwidth availability, proven online application technologies and workflows that include data about the creative work, making reviewing, cataloging and converting a lot less necessary. It’s also a time in which people from almost every industry are using sales materials, animated demos, videos, shared files and web pages that are all stored online (or can be) — making them instantly accessible, if you know where to look. The really interesting part, though, is what you can learn about your prospect, when you control the process. Stay tuned and we’ll tell you more about that here, and on our website.
CorePage will launch soon. It will be FREE at a basic level, so that you can test to your heart’s content. You can use the “Try it FREE” button above to get started.
Thanks for your interest.
David Peltz
Founder & CEO
REVIXIO Software