OK - DIARY OF A NEW CUSTOMER !!
Today 2nd June. AM
Just signed up for the $50 + 50 plan (Apps & Hosting)
Impressed with the slick stripe payments. Its very good btw!
But apart from a 'Red Dot" in the Licence Field, I'm totally lost as to what to do now, or where to even look / go now !
I've so many questions now. I want to get started, i'm excited for sure, but I'm not been pointed in any specific direction.
First impressions - there are no obvious instructions to follow for a new user! At least nothing apparent to me, at first glance.
Like -
Where - do I go to "see' the back end of my potential new website?
Can - I start to experiment, build an "off-line' version, get my toes wet, see how it look and feels before going live?
What - happens now?
Today 2nd June. PM
Launching the launch window!!!!
OK - Licence Bought - Go to activate / Launch said Licence, and ran into problems with the correct naming of servers, again I feel the fact that I needed to summon Help to even activate the site was not good. Should be a case of; [ imput company name here ] & Click GO!! That said, getting help here, was super quick, through the UNA site. The new message alerts on my phone were also impressive, ditto for the UNA - device APP itself.
Overall
I feel the whole UNA "shop window' is very confusing indeed. I mean - I'm never quite sure whether I'm actually on my OWN SITE, or UNA's !!!! at any one time, it's very confusing, seriously. Suggest colour code, UNA have a different back round colour to own site.
Pricing
Probably be happy paying $100 p/m ok, (if I was actually making progress building a site) I'll talk about this in a while. In my opinion, having your 'business plan" priced at $800 a month (as it stands), when you can not tell me definitively, what exactly i will get for it!!! is plain pointless, to a small business, with a budget in mind!! Mind the Gap!! Big jump from $100 p/m to $800 p/m !!! My site could take anything from a few hours, to months to implement, and there is no apparent tangible way of telling me in advance, what it's going to cost me???, come on! and that's not workable for any business. Consider offering a "white label, ready to go template, out of the box, design and implementation for a set fee, payable per month, all I need to do is change the logo, up-load some pic's turn on/off the modules i want or need, and i'm LIVE!! A "definable feature package' memberships, forum, live chat, blog, photos etc for $xx per month, designed and implemented. That would interest me!
The Software itself
For sure, there is evidence of brilliance everywhere, Seeing how the template it looks and functions on my various devices, it's very impressive, the notifications everything, (on your own site that is! - UNA!) But the Achilles heal of the software is that it is designed by; Expert Tech geeks, for Competent Tech Geeks. If your not a programmer, your lost here. Its not for any "Idea Person" in my view. It's for a Competent Tech Geek, with an idea! In short - as it currently is - the software is not 'user-friendly" enough for the mass market your after. I've stated THIS as the standard you need to aim for ;-
http://www.vistaprint.ie/websites
The CMS is as easy to edit as a word doc, and modules and pages are simple ON/OFF options, money back guarantee, and outstanding tel support.
I feel, UNA would need to offer some form of "support" at the start in order to "be at the races" as a product. Assign each new customer of UNA, to an "angel" initially as part of the deal, supported via a "P.C anywhere" type support / with chat. Get um up and running with a revenue generating prod, and you have a good shot at retention. But after 1- DAY on this, I'm so far a little disappointed, I thought I would be able to do more for myself. I'll try again tomorrow!!
Good work. Very valuable informartion with many keen observations. We feel your pain but that's why it is called "beta." I suppose...
No doubt your review will be taken seriously and the interface will be clarified and simplifed. That's a good idea about the colors which might tell you which site you are at with just a glance. The url bar, of course, could do that but some folks hide it.
More bugs are being found and eliminated everyday. With the help of those such as yourself. You can track the progress on github.
Sat 3rd June AM
After licking my wounds yesterday, (a day spent with little progress) I got a suggestion to watch some U.T Tutorials, (thanks Alex), which I did. In particular the custom page builder. I was struck by the amount of instructions required, even from a expert programmer, to get a simple page executed on the platform, there was even some HTML editing, which is, in my opinion a "no go" if your hoping to aim this platform at mass-market. Rather than give me some confidence, and encouragement, it left me feeling some what vindicated, that this was something outside my skill set. Now about me, I studied Electronic Engineering at college, I worked at senior group level for a Hotel Chain, in Quality Management, and Leisure Management, I worked as a consultant on the design of a Leisure management software applicationso i'm fairly competent with the basic P.C / software Applications / skills. I'm an Entrepreneur, self employed, business owner, and I built, and maintain my own website presently, so In my opinion, I'd certainly be your typical customer! But, as I see it, using this platform to build even the most basic website, is beyond my capabilities. (So If I'm not getting it, your in trouble!) I'm certainly not been critical, I SEE the potential and genius in it, I wish I could do it! But i'm been honest as balls of ice cream here!!! This is not, an "end user" product!
Consider for one moment your potential market, ideally "Idea People" who WANT this S.M platform! They want it to be their very own. Let further break down this group:-
What type of "Idea person" wants to build a social media site, as opposed to a regular website? The answer is of course People who want to Connect other People! At present, unfortunately, (the devils work) facebook, have that market nailed, i can simply build a secret group for free. Sure, facebook is crap! but nevertheless 1/2 of the globe is on it. So that leaves the "Casual Dating Market" as your primary customer, of which I'm one of. I note also, in your own blog, you have just signed up a new customer "Friends with Benefits" so that confirms my theory in part.
Now as it stands, UNA is trying too hard, to;- "be like facebook" in my opinion, certainly from the "customer front end", and gentlemen, in my humble opinion this is not the answer! You see Face Book, revolves around. "the person" ONE person! Casual Dating sites need to consider TWO people and a lot more!
For example, can I build a COUPLE profile, combined M/F profile, using the existing, core apps in UNA? Perhaps its possible, but it's certainly not screaming at me!
Can I have a Couple "Primary Member' and a "Linked' profile Partner/Spouse/ F/Bud ?? And IF so, how will a message sent to a "Couple Profile" be handled by the platform??
Also requried, (someone mentioned it already in a blog post i read) a sort of; Administrator / Moderator Assignable - "Profile Verification" Badges. "Verified in Person", "Verified by Camera", Verified by Government Photo Document". fakes / spam / trolls, are a huge problem on casual dating web sites btw! A white label platform, give me, custom; members / levels, a forum (the one you have is great btw) a blog, Live Chat, Moderated (supervised / delayed ) Messages, (needs to be for casual dating) particularly at "unverified" membership" level. Event Calander, Info Pages.
Gentleman all this and more it needs to be, out of the box, otherwise it's about as useful, as an ash tray on a motorbike! I'll have a go at some more building later.
Gentleman
Site load speed, is a serious issue too. No doubt, many have copped this too! And jeasssssus I've hardly anything in mine!!! Concerned.
Interesting... I got a "developer" version running and the main page loads were almost instantaneous. Bang. There are a number of cache settings which can affect the load speed as you may be aware.
Well, if if helps, what I'm seeing is: the site loads the skeleton of it, but uploaded images can be seen trying to " peel themselves on screen slowly"
Hmmmm. Couple of more ideas but maybe not relevent. Is your site being hosted thousands of miles away from you? My site which loads with a "bang" is hosted with all ssd drives and is just a few hundred miles off.
Also, cameras today - even cell phone cams take photos with huge file sizes. These pics must be optimized for web sites otherwise they will take forever to load.
Good luck! And keep us posted.
There is a known issue when cover images in profile preview snippets load the large size version of the cover image. It has already been fixed and will be applied in the next update. Since these photos may quite large it would appear that member browsing pages load very slowly.
T
hi,,when we upload profile image and cover image both then save. i am only getting profile image, cover image is not showing.
i have to upload cover image again in second attempt.
Issue is only when we upload both and save while creating profile.
Please fix this one also. Thanks
Yes, your quite right! Hosted in Texas as far as I know, err I'm in "Ireland" !!!! not exactly down the road!
OK. , " Show me the money " and a FINISHED platform. talk to me about UNA as it is, as a "product" unfinished and at €800 a month with zero guarantees or a definative cost!! VRS https://www.chameleonsocial.com/buy.php
Honestly, I think the is too much emphis on "building something, at some future stage...." rather than delivering measurable, and tangible results, for customers NOW. disillusioned.