You may have noticed some slight changes around the site. If not, take a look in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. We’ve just begun introducing the new Batchbook Logo. It’s part of a larger re-branding effort for BatchBlue.
Since its beginnings in 2006, BatchBlue Software has been a one-product company, and our product and company identities have been somewhat interchangeable. For a while, we were so focused on making our product as great as we could that we didn’t worry about it. But that’s changing as we grow.
This past year, in addition to introducing some cool new integrations to Batchbook, we’ve been hard at work building some new tools. These new products will obviously have their own respective names and logos, and we’d like Batchbook to fit in with the family. If you look around, you’ll see that we’ve rolled out a new identity for Batchbook.
The mark, Flippy (as he’s affectionately known around the office) is lighter and open at a more comfortable looking angle. The pages are lighter and the progressive gradient makes them double as motion lines a little more readily. We simplified some fussy details, and finally, the geometry of our well-loved laptop actually works now.
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Tags: batchblue, batchbook, design, logo
Last night we made some (mostly) cosmetic updates to BatchBook. Here’s how she looks today:
The highlights:
- We consolidated help text and screencasts into a context-sensitive footer that provides support options for the tab you are currently on.
- We reorganized the rest of the footer as well.
- We anchored the primary column to better establish the visual hierarchy of the main column vs. the sidebar.
- We removed redundant headers to make more room for the data that matters.
- We moved the search bar to the header, bringing other sidebar elements up the page a bit more.
- We used more subtle color to cater to those not in love with blues and oranges.
- We made an assortment of other minor tweaks.
When it was all said and done, we removed a lot more than we added. To me, that’s the sign of a successful redesign. 
We’re curious to hear what you think!
Tags: batchblue, batchbook, design, small business CRM
The lawn needs mowing and the Red Sox are on a winning streak, so that can only mean one thing… it’s spring! We have a bunch of cool things under development (if I do say so myself), but before we start adding more to BatchBook, we felt it was time to do a little spring cleaning. The community over at the BatchBlue Forums has helped us so much along the way that we consider it an additional team member. For that reason, we’re giving the forum users a sneak peek at the updates we’re making.
If you’re a forum user, we’d love to hear your feedback. If you’re not a forum user yet, we’d love to welcome you to the community. As forum user Kenny recently said:
One of the key benefits BB is becoming for me is an excellent source of tips on new or emerging web sites / services that I hadn’t been aware of previously, via users on this forum.
This is great! Thanks all for participating on this board
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Tags: batchbook, Community, design, forums, interface
Last month we officially launched BatchBook for Real Estate, a version of BatchBook customized with SuperTags for the real estate industry. The response has been great.
We know SuperTags are SuperPowerful and the data management possibilities are endless. But giving users a pre-built set of SuperTags pertaining to their industry is a great way to get them off and running.
Today, we’re launching another customized version of BatchBook—BatchBook for Designers.
We worked with several designers, asking them what their data management needs are. From this information, we put together a set of four SuperTags just for designers—”client”, “project”, “partner”, and “new contact” (to manage potential relationships and follow-ups).
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Tags: customizable crm, design, designers, small business CRM, supertags
You may have noticed that your BatchBook account looks a lot different today!
While we have revamped features every now and then, we’ve never done a full design overhaul of BatchBook. Until now.
First, here’s how it looks:
(click the image to go to a slideshow on Flickr)
We’re not fans of redesign for the sake of redesign, and there were lots of goals for this change. Some of the driving factors:
- A lighter design. The previous design had a lot of boxes with thick borders and background colors. This was fine when we tended to have one main column and a couple sidebar items. But as BatchBook has matured, we have added more useful features. The pages were starting to get heavy and this certainly lightens them up.
- Better use of space. The boxes in the previous design had rounded corners with padding… and internal rounded corners with padding… and then some more padding. A lot of space was being allocated to… not much. Now everything has a lot more breathing room.
- Faster, faster! My favorite thing to point out about this redesign is that we deleted a whole lot more code than we added. As a result, BatchBook uses far less javascript and images, so it runs a lot faster.
- SuperCute Quick Add. With all of this space that we gained, I decided to take some of it and invest it in promoting a feature that didn’t get enough real estate last time. Instead of a skinny little dropdown menu, Quick Add has a click-reducing icon approach. Because our users are so smart, I tip my hat to forum user Kenny for inspiring this change.
- And more to come! Let’s just say this design is far more flexible, and that will allow us (and you!) to do more things with it. Stay tuned!
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Tags: batchbook, design, small business CRM
