My customers point the way
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- Scott
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 112
- Thanks: 43
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I LOVE gantry 5 .... I love its power and totally configurable
BUT
3 out of 3 of my last customers ive done a gantry 5 website said gantry 5 was too difficult for them to learn even after spending an hour showing the power of gantry and how easy things are - they requested I go with an easier to use admin panel
All 3 choose an opisition product and can fly around it dragging and dropping and adding modules very much like gantry but the interface is built for the idiot
9/10 of my .org customers are idiots when it comes to anything CMS - they can write an article ok but thats about it. I was proud of what I thought was the worst of the bunch building amazing pages wqith this product
Whats the difference?
Gantry 5 is built for the developer - from customer feedback its worthless to the end user. the whole concept confused them
The other product is built for the end user and has an almost identical way of achieving the same result without even looking at docs
sort of like gantry 4 on steroids
The other product I have listed in the secure tab - im not going to promote them here
What was the outcome?? 3/3 customers choose a competitors template and extentions
It seems no matter how good the future templates are unless Gantry 5 is changed in focus away from the developer and towards the end user with customer flow specialists like this company used my future sales of gantry/rocket products is going to be zero
Abandonment of phpBB CLUBS will be the final nail
If its zero I will have to look for another provider so I have 2 companies products to offer my end user again
I will still follow gantry forever - im sure with user feedback/time things will change. please dont take this as a bad thing . just the outcome of my last 3 sales (the forth choose a gantry4 template and lo
My customer base is 70%.org 15% business 15% personal ppls sites
The main change that would help most without touching a line of code
Make the current docs for the developer and those who need all
Make a set of docs like "Gantry5 for dummies" for the technophobes who have no hope of grasping simple concepts
So gantry5 team ..... back to KISS (keep it simple stupid)
kia kaha Gantry5
Scott
*** files for dev/mods attatched to /secure *** - Last Edit: 8 years 5 months ago by Scott.
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The following users have thanked you: Brian Shea
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- David Goode
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 17058
- Thanks: 890
- Web Designer and Host
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Hello Scott,
Thanks for your feedback, it is always appreciated.
It is inevitable that end-users will always go for the simplest option as they don't really want to be editing a website anyway, it is just cheaper than constantly paying people to do it for you. I have found that those type of users normally fall into the category of doing just 3 things...
- Add a new article/module
- Edit or delete an existing article/module
- Add, edit or delete a menu item
It is very rare for those types of users to want to create new module positions or make dramatic changes to layouts. That is why they paid to have a site built in the first place. And on that principal I tend to change Gantry 5 layouts to use the module positions and then use custom html modules for anything that may change in future.
Bearing in mind the customer only does 3 prime tasks I only ever train them on those 3 things so they never need to see template admin or complexity etc. because they will break it.
Because of that I also drum into them the importance of backups and how to use Akeeba.
I will refrain from making any product comparisons because it will serve no real purpose as we would be comparing a full framework with an extension that controls some of the page layout.
Your comments about documentation are valid though and we do need some more basic information to help users understand the differences. Perhaps with some real life examples of how Gantry 5 can emulate some of the comfortable and well known features of Gantry 4.
Once again thank you for your feedback. -
The following users have thanked you: Brian Shea
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- Scott
- Sr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 112
- Thanks: 43
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Awesome reply david ..... good discussion
thanks 4 not comparing products - they are like chalk and cheese
Thes 3 customers wanted a basic setup they would build on. they had reasonable knowlege but are in section4 - wanting to build thrit ownoverides/pages that are very diffrent to the /home page
that extn does simple article pages
BUT it has 2 parts
it has a powerful feature to build pages/overides wiith modules/components the works in same way as gantry 5 but with workflow experts bought in for the project they havre managed to do it in a way where you do not need to look at a maual
As mentioned this mentally challenged client took my front page as ideas and built a totally different blog page with components/plugins/modules i had not covered in training using this one tool
maybe its time now gantry is getting close to an end product some outside people be bought who specialise in user enviroment psychology and work flows to spot stuff us advanced users and dev take for granted and with simple modifications be made easier for newb users
I dont want to see a product thats perfect for developers and the equivilamt of a brick to others
Im just getting very scared with the many rejections for gantry5 and happy customers for a stupid component that fit into type 4 (making pages)
I would love to be part of "gantry 5 gor dummies" ..... ive got lots of examples where during training they do not grasp simple concepts yet i understand them (with more tech knowledge) as written in docs
This type of documentation could save many hours in support forums
sorry im parapalegic and the pain is not helping me think this through tonight (and typos)
kia kaha gantry5
scott -
The following users have thanked you: Brian Shea
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