Oprius: Organize and Build Your Business
Oprius is a new web-based CRM (customer relationship manager) for network marketers and direct sellers. It’s like Act, but better suited to it’s niche, and like 37Signal’s Highrise but more practical.
Oprius will be launching to the public at 5PM on August 17th. Business Opportunities Weblog readers can access it early and get a jump on their competition by using the early access code: 85821.
Not only does Oprius include standard CRM things like the ability to manage address information, take and review notes, and the scheduling of activities, calls and emails, but it also allows you to easily build automated processes so that you can be assured that each of your contacts will go through all of the steps in your sales system.
One feature that I especially liked was that it is possible to schedule telephone calls and emails not only for specific times or dates, but for a more fluid “before something else”. I need this feature every day
Other things I like:
- You don’t have to manually enter all of your contacts. Oprius can import Contacts from most sources. Outlook, Mail, and other software, as well as free internet mail services such as Yahoo! Mail or Gmail allow you to export your contact data in vCard or CSV formats (comma-separated values). You can then automatically import these files to Oprius, using our simple import features.
- You don’t have to worry about spamming your own contacts. Oprius offers a easy-to-use Permission Manager to keep track of which Contacts have given their permission to receive group mailings. It is important to ensure that your Contacts want to receive the Emails you are sending to them. Mailing them a Permission Request through Oprius will reassure them that their privacy is respected.
- You can schedule emails, like newsletters right from within Oprius. You can easily store any Email you would like to re-use in the future, and retrieve it from a convenient drop-down menu, whenever you need to send it.
- Because Oprius is web-based, you can use it from anywhere. All you need is an internet connection and one of the following web browsers: Internet Explorer 6 and up, Safari 2 and up, Firefox 1.5 and up.
Subscriptions are $15 per month. Oprius will be launching at 5PM August 17th. Business Opportunities Weblog readers can access it early and get a jump on their competition by using the early access code: 85821.
Disclaimer: I’m on Oprius’s Product Advisory Board, so I’ve had some input on this version of the software, but I don’t profit from it.
Stephen on August 14th, 2007 5:07 pm
The user interface makes my eyes bleed…it is among the worst I have seen recently. I would be suprised if a designer was even involved in the creation of this product…it looks like engineers trying to do design work.
Considering this product is supposed to be used everyday / regularly, the UI is particularly important.
Owen on August 15th, 2007 12:13 am
Stephen,
I’m wondering if you are referring to the old design as of a few days ago. We have recently redesigned and improved the graphics of the whole service. So far we have received a great deal of praise about the design of our user interface, yours being the first negative comment. As we are always striving to make things better, I’m curious what exactly you found to be poorly designed. You can email me directly if you prefer owen(at)oprius(dot)com
-Owen
Oprius: Organize and constitution Your Business (Learn About Network Marketing Opportunities Blog) on August 15th, 2007 5:15 am
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Stephen on August 15th, 2007 6:41 pm
The user interface of Oprius seems to try to include every popular “web2.0″ design element from the past three years.
For example, all of the graphical elements on the “home” screen have faded reflections below them. Why? Are these elements supposed to be sitting on an invisible horizon? or are these elements just “cool”
Where is the grid? Looking at the home screen on the demo account…the calendar box has at least five right margins…none of them aligned…the spacing between the elements in this one section is not consistent…padding and margin are not set to a consistent baseline. Check out http://bjorkoy.com/blueprint/
Text text labels on the large shiny buttons for “new email”, etc. are not centered vertically. The buttons look like they were created by an automated program instead of by hand. The grey border / shading does not jive with the glare on the top of the buttons…Why is the grey border consistent even on the area of the button that is supposed to be receiving direct light (the glare producer :)
http://app.oprius.com/calendar/cal - the intro video banner is not evenly aligned..
http://app.oprius.com/task/ - why doesn’t the border at the top of the tasks pane continue across the inactive tab? If the inactive tab is supposed to be behind the active tab, wouldn’t the border continue across the front of the inactive tab?
http://app.oprius.com/campaign/ - Click on the “New Plan” button and then put your mouse over the next button and watch the alignment break as a result of the rollover effect.
Once you are on the 5 step “new campaign” plan page, the alignment of the font across the buttons is not consistent…the “activate the plan” button is clearly out of line with the “save plan for later” button. The rollover effect also breaks the buttons on this page.
http://app.oprius.com/garbage/ - why is the word “garbage” so close the vertical rule?
http://app.oprius.com/calendar/cal - The “This month / day / week / month” header is about 25 pixels our of line with the actual calendar below it. The items in this menu are not centered in their boxes…the select groups button on this page breaks when you mouse over it.
Across the application, elements are not treated consistently. For example, on http://app.oprius.com/email/ some of the buttons have a rollover effect, but not all of the buttons…the “new email”, “list mailer” and “permissions” button don’t have any visual feedback when you rollover them, but the less important “Sure” button promoting the intro video does?
The color combination is not great…more importantly…the colors are not presented consistently. The orange used in the tasks icon is not the same as the orange on the calendar icon and both appear to be different then the font color used on the section footers (…and 0 more unread emails in inbox)
On a side note…this version IS an improvement over the previous version and I really like the functionality of the product, but the UI just feels like it was created by a programmer or amateur. Take a look at the excellent UI on relenta.com or highrise…they are not flashy or “cool” for the sake of being cool…they are effective.
I am writing this before my head hits the pillow for the night, so please excuse typos if you find them. I am sure Dane can provide my email address if you want to follow up with me directly.
Owen on August 23rd, 2007 12:32 pm
I want to thank you for your feedback. Something you may not realize is that we do usability interviews with network marketing distributors, as they are the people that Oprius is built for. A lot of the design decisions were based on these sessions and feedback. You definitely can’t please everybody, but from all the feedback that we have received, with the exception of yours, distributors and trainers alike have been very excited about our UI.
All of your comments are small graphical criticisms, which is only part of the story in creating an easy to use interface. Contrary to your criticism, our placement of labels is very standard, as supported by research articles such as these:
http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/WebForms_LukeW.pdf
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000107.php
With our usability interviews we had a number of people use our software to complete a number of tasks. From that we made several changes to our interface to reflect how our target market, largely non-technical people, uses our software. Yes, there are small graphic tweaks we can make to further improve our software, and I appreciate you highlighting some of them, so we can fix them right away. For our launch, we decided it was far more important to focus on making Oprius the easiest to use CRM for network marketing distributors, rather than spending all of our time making minute graphic changes.
Some of your feedback I agree with. Inactive tabs should have a solid grey border on the bottom to indicate that they are behind the content. Some of your other comments I would question. In the calendar box on the home screen the elements are left aligned. The color background does not expand to the full column because we found if it did there was too much different color on the screen and it took away from the overall clean feel.
The grey border on the buttons is the same color to make the button more pronounced. With a gradient border as you suggest we found the button would fade more into the screen and users would more easily miss them, based on our usability interviews. The text on the home screen buttons is one pixel vertically lower as it made them more readable. The video banners all use the same layout, and on the many computers, browsers, operating systems that we tested were indeed evenly aligned. The “Activate This Plan” and “Save This Plan For Later” buttons are vertically center aligned, and are on the many configurations that we tested. The orange is indeed exactly the same. Surrounding colors, borders, and content will “pull” color from the orange towards the surrounding elements. Your eye thinks the color may be slightly different, but use a color picker and you will find they are all the same (Web #E58E1A).
I have put some of your comments into our feedback tracking system, and we will make improvements based on them. So thank you for those.
Ashley on August 24th, 2007 3:00 pm
Wow. I don’t really know much about graphic design, but I think the new changes look great! ^_^ Many of my friends who were using the software in its beta form are also very excited about both the graphic changes and the new features. I especially love how I can customize my groups and contacts. Some of my friends in Mary Kay and Epicure are also exited to start using the phone assistant. Some of my friends in Mary Kay and Epicure are also exited to start using the phone assistant. I can’t believe no one has ever done that before.
Startup Signal - Today’s Top Blog Posts on Entrepreneurship - Powered by SocialRank on October 1st, 2007 3:22 am
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