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!
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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
Hope to see you on the forums soon!
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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).
I’d like to thank Danny Chapman, Davvi Chrzastek, Mikey Hougland, and Alex Taylor for being a wonderful advisory panel.
Here’s a secret, though. Anyone can add these SuperTags to their account (not just designers!). This is possible with the SuperTag Library that we launched along with the Feed Reader SuperTag field. Every time we launch a new customized version of BatchBook, we’ll put the SuperTags there. Not only so you can add them to your account, but so you can get more ideas of how to use SuperTags in your industry.
Are you interested in seeing a version of BatchBook for your industry? Please let us know!
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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!
Just to touch on some other updates that happened over the past week or so:
- As mentioned on the blog already, you can now complete To-Dos from the Activity Log.
- The very same Live Search that we have for Contacts and Communications is also available for the To-Do List.
- A personal favorite, when you export contacts to vCard or CSV, each person’s contact info will be combined with her/his company contact data. So, when I export my own contact record, not only do I get my personal and work email addresses and phone numbers, I also get BatchBlue’s main phone line and fax number.
- Finally, when you export to CSV, you can choose to include a contact’s tags in that export.
We hope you like the new changes! And we have so much more up our sleeves…
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Tags: batchbook, design, small business CRM
Here’s Kemie!
When building a screen for BatchBook or batchblue.com, there are a lot of things on my mind—user interface design, user experience, visual design, front-end coding, and more. I’m not afraid to admit when I need a little help. And time and time again, I have found that help from iStockPhoto, the wildly popular user-generated stock imagery web site.
iStockPhoto has an enormous user base that contributes photography, illustration, video, and more, making the media available for a fraction of the cost of larger, established stock companies. The end result is a massive user base purchasing from an equally massive database of superb imagery. Luckily, when I need to turn to iStockPhoto for icons, I don’t need to sift through the seemingly billions of thumbnails. I now visit the portfolio of one designer, Kemie Guaida.
While Kemie is an accomplished web designer/developer, photographer, and illustrator, to me she is our resident icon designer. Every time we launch a new feature or need to make an area of a page “pop” a bit, I turn to Kemie. Her style works perfectly with BatchBook’s and her extensive portfolio means I always find what I’m looking for.
You may recognize her work below (these are the icons we use to represent each main BatchBook feature on batchblue.com):
I am a huge fan of Kemie’s work. And like bands I like to listen to or the baseball players I followed as a kid, I generally like to know more information about people who’s work I greatly admire. So I recently emailed Kemie to find out more about her (and let her know I’ve essentially adopted her as an honorary staff member).
Kemie is originally from Mexico and “lived there until a few years ago, when a Swede kidnapped me and brought me to the far north”. She has been in Sweden for a few years, living the web worker life. She originally dipped into stock imagery and iStockPhoto because expensive stock imagery was not compatible with her or her clients’ budgets. She explains, “So I thought I could borrow my dad’s digital camera, upload some photos, and earn some credits to be used for my projects.”
While iStockPhoto has led to increased exposure and additional client work, she cites the free market research as one of the key benefits to contributing to the site. She explains, “Being able to present your work in a market like [iStockPhoto] has really given me insight on to what customers are looking for in terms of style and subject, which has influenced all my work, in and out of microstock.”
This resonated with me because it reminded me of one of the original cases for corporate blogging. By sharing information with the public and allowing readers to comment, you can garner invaluable insights from your readers about what they are currently looking for, where you should focus your future plans, and how quickly to get there. Kemie is doing the same through creating and sharing gorgeous imagery.
I have always focused on making sure BatchBook lets you complete your tasks as easily and intuitively as possible. Adding Kemie’s work has brought an additional focus—better exposing our company’s personality. We know our users are a fun, bright bunch. I think Kemie’s icons give BatchBook that same feel.
Thanks, Kemie!
Want a t-shirt with a Kemie-inspired design? Vote for your favorite Kemi icon in the comments and we’ll send you one. (She’s got some more here and sprinkled throughout BatchBook).
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Tags: design, istockphoto, Kemie Guaida
