Creately is an easy to use Online Diagramming software - purpose built for team collaboration. Powerful features and an intuitive interface make Creately ideal for teams working together on everything from Business Diagrams, Strategy Maps, Flowcharts, Web Mockups to UML designs.
Here we share our experiences and lessons learnt building a web-company.
When you are building a software solution to solve a particular problem, you would be very focused on solving the problem and solving it well. However, from time to time you need supporting components in your solution that are not directly related to the problem you are solving. These are components that are required to complete your solution.
Maybe its a payment system for your online greeting card service, or a spell checker component for your realtime note editor, you would rather look for something that’s already built and working well rather than building it yourself from scratch. This way you can focus on your “core competency”.
This is generally how everyone thinks. So did we. Here at Creately, we chose to use a third party solution to complete a product that we were working on. In the rush and excitement of getting the product out we signed up with the 3rd party service not considering some important factors that we should have. Even though the intention was to avoid reinventing the wheel and save time and effort, the out come was us spending double the time and effort to get the solution to work. Lesson learnt the hard way.
So I thought I would put together a simple flowchart to help us evaluate such situations in the future when such a need arises again. This flow chart explains the basic thinking, and the factors involved in making the decision can be found below.
Picking the most suitable solution
How well is my requirement met? Does the solution meet all the feature and functionality requirements I have? Does the solution meet the integration requirements I have?
Is the component build for me? Even if the solution meets all my functionality and feature requirements, one thing I have to watch out for is, if it does more than what I need. Will it complicate my product? or my users experience? or my integration process?
Is the integration and setup process straight forward? Time and effort required to setup and integrate?
What is the financial commitment?
Considering all factors above, compare the time, effort and cost involved in building the ideal solution against using the selected solution.
Assessing if the solution can be used to solve the problem
Can I use the existing features in the solution to make it do what I want it to do?
Can the solution be customized to fit my requirements?
What is the time and effort involved in customizing the solution for my need?
What is the financial cost involved in customizing the solution for my need?
Considering all factors above in A and B, compare the time, effort and cost involved in building the ideal solution against using the selected solution.
We normally use funnel diagrams to understand the flow of a user through our website, to the application, and then onto the purchase pages (or not). Some great tools are out there and just last week @Indu blogged about using Funnels & Goals in Google Analytics to better understand your funnel and conversion rates.
This week, we went and applied the same to our traffic funnel in three steps.
Identify how our potential customers find out about Creately. The ‘trigger’ to visit the site.
What their motivations are. Why are they here?
Identify the pages they land on, and craft a message that resonates with the visitor’s intent and motivations. This will achieve lower bounce rates and far better conversions in a funnel.
Ok, again: Being relevant is key. but how do we know what’s relevant unless we know what you want?
Map it out!
It’s easier to map this out in a diagram, and here’s ours - How People Discover Creately. Some of the bounce rates are guesstimates though.
We first identified the source for them to come to Creately, then we break them down by their motivations and where they would go on the site to what landing pages.
The next phase is to make sure the landing pages speak to them well and address their questions. That’s another post for another day
Before I go back to more diagramming and numbers, do you find this approach useful? How do you look at your traffic funnel?
Creately Video Tutorial #4 - Fast Flowcharts with Creately
Today, we show you how to create a fast and easy flowchart to share with your team and clients. In 3 mins flat, we’ll show you why our 1-click Create-N-Connect buttons, easy collaboration and built-in commenting features make Creately the best online flowchart software.
Creately Video Tutorial #4 - Fast Flowcharts with Creately
An application failing to respond is no big deal and troubleshooting is no rocket science!! But we end up cursing the application each time it fails to respond.
Not everyone is a techie; and every time we have issues we run to IT support or our friends for help. Now thanks to Thomas Boito (First Steps in Troubleshooting), you needn’t hassle your tech-savvy friends anymore.
This flowchart by Thomas created with Creately.com illustrates the first steps in troubleshooting your PC desktop problems and is very simple yet effective. I hope you’ll find this flowchart as useful as I did - I’ve got it up on the wall.
Last week before Charan left to Hyderabad to attend the TiE-ISB event, he asked me to come up with some useful diagrams to demonstrate the power of Creately. As usual I was active during my power hours of 10p.m. to 3 a.m. generating ideas. I had random ideas running through my head, but didn’t quite understand the importance of each of them. So even before I figured out the effort required to build a diagram, I spoke to a few of my online friends.
I asked them about their knowledge on Creately. I was excited to hear a few of them say, “I love it!!” They rate Creately 5 stars each time they used it, and they have recommended it to many of their friends. But on the other hand, I was quite surprised to see a few others say “What’s Creately?”
Well… that’s when I realized that a simple flowchart on Creately about Creately would be a great diagram. Since flowcharts are easy-to-understand, they are a great tool for communicating how things work and I believed this simple diagram will help people understand what Creately is all about.
So here’s a simple flowchart for all of you who want to learn about Creately!
Picking the most suitable solution
Assessing if the solution can be used to solve the problem
An application failing to respond is no big deal and troubleshooting is no rocket science!! But we end up cursing the application each time it fails to respond.