New Scalix Home Page

[acodring]

Hello all,
Judging by our site analytics many of you skip by our home page to get to the good stuff inside, but some may have noticed that we've put a new coat of paint on the front door of scalix.com. Most of the site navigation remains the same and only a few new pages of content were added.

Your feedback is welcome as always. Either here on the forums or to me by PM or email (andrew dot codrington at scalix.com). If you're into twitter or identi.ca I'm on both sites as @scalix.

One big element of the new homepage that still needs work is the imagery. With a global reach it's difficult to pick three pictures that represent the three audiences we speak to. We'd love to see what kinds of images you'd like to have up there. Use my contact info above or post images right here in this thread.

Post your ideas with the Img tag like this:

Code: Select all

[img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1197/1134522271_41d72a72f1_m.jpg[/img]

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Best regards,
Andrew

[PaulHerron]

I noticed the new home page last night when I visited the Scalix website. Actually, what I really noticed was that the link to the Community page was no longer at the top of the page with the enterprise and solutions links. For a moment, it gave me pause whether Scalix was abandoning the "community" (which would be a very bad thing in my opinion -- even though I am a paying small business customer). It took me a little while of searching before I found the Community link at the bottom of the page.

Truthfully, I don't like the new page. It makes it much more ambiguous what Scalix is... is it e-mail server software? is it a e-mail service? is it a wholesale service provider? If you read all the print, you can probably figure it out but, just glancing at the page, I don't think that it is as clear as it had been. I also feel, for whatever reason, kept more at a distance with the page - like its meant for bigger, more sophisticated organizations than mine and more sophisticated people than me.

I tried Scalix because I was looking for a Linux-based open source mail server that was free or had a free trial. Scalix was one of several sites that came up in my search. The page was easy to read and made it clear that it was an enterprise-class mail server with roots in the open source community -- a fit for me. After playing with the server and liking what I saw, I became a paying customer. If I stumbled onto the site today, I don't know whether I would ever make it to the playing with the server stage.

I didn't buy into Scalix because of a corporate name, if I was looking for that I would have bought Exchange SBS. I bought into Scalix because of the vibrant open source community and the ability of the community to help each other improve upon and integrate Scalix with other software. That's an asset to Scalix. I think that you are hurting yourselves by giving the Community less prominence on the home page than the business and provider audiences.

[acodring]

Firstly Paul, thank you for such a thoughtful, kind, and eloquent post.

I have to admit we've struggled with this internally. I didn't want to 'lead the witness' by mentioning it in my first post, but I am interested in how that change will affect site usage, and your perceptions.

it gave me pause whether Scalix was abandoning the "community" (which would be a very bad thing in my opinion -- even though I am a paying small business customer)

That sentiment has been brought up here often since I started. "If we do that the community will think we're abandoning them." I can understand the concern, but to me it doesn't seem like a sensible thing for us to do.

In the snippet above you seem to exclude yourself from the community because you're a paying customer, but I don't think that's the right way of looking at it. The heart of our community is about people working together. Those people are partners, customers, supporters, and employees. To 'abandon' the community would be like cutting off our legs.

As we reach out to a broader audience we're experimenting with how we present ourselves to new site visitors, and trying to strike a balance with site usability for long-standing users like yourself. We're watching site analytics to see how the new page performs, and are already making tweaks to navigation. If it looks like our changes are slowing returning visitors down unnecessarily or turning off new visitors, we'll revisit them.

[jangi]

Everyone's a critic, so I applaud the direct solicitation of feedback.

I find the fact that "Support" is two-clicks deep rather odd.
Is there some place (even obscure - next to community? ;o) that the current version could go? When I'm bored and want to see if 11.4.4 is out I like going to scalix.com. Now even clicking around the site it isn't obvious where this information is (except the announcement forum).

[billb3]

I notice that "Open Source" is not listed on the new home page at all. To me, "trial" is very different and (not always the case...but) usually means a time-limited or crippled version and/or being hounded by sales people. When I hear open-source, it usually means that I can try and test software as I wish, rely on the community for issues/questions and then purchase if I need commercial features or support.

I realize you are here to make money, but I think providing an outstanding open source solution is one of your strongest points and you shouldn't hide it. Although, I think the new homepage makes it clear that Scalix is heavy duty software that can compete with the big guys.

It almost seems like there should be a scalix.com homepage with this content and then a scalix.org for the community...

--Bill

p.s. I am a paying enterprise customer who just started with Scalix in late '08 after testing numerous groupware solutions.