What are good products that enable a software startup to interface with customers online?
I'm working on a software app that I will sell online. I'm going to go with the "release-early, iterate quickly" plan, so rapid customer feedback is all-important.
I'm looking for a web app for my site that can handle any or most of the following: forums, feature suggestions, bug reporting, voting on features, release notes, mailing list.
I'm just starting off so I don't need something enterprise level - just something to get the momentum going.
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+1, great question. – Chris W. Rea 14 years ago
7 Answers
http://uservoice.com/ is what you want. There is a free version that allows 100 voters and 1 forum. Once you need more then that you can upgrade accordingly. But this is great as a start.
I'm not sure there's one tool for 100% of the above. For example, there's UV and GS as suggested here but they're useless for release management.
Which is fine! Just know that you'll have to piece together a few things.
FYI since others have avoided "releases," I suggest a blog -- easy to post updates and easy for your customers to subscribe via RSS or email as well as search an archive.
Same with a mailing list -- consider having that just be "your blog with comments." If you want lots of discussion on the mailing list, use forums instead -- it does the same thing but Google will index it, etc..
http://uservoice.com for the front end
http://batchblue.com to manage leads
http://outright.com to track their revenue to the bottom line
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Great point @raminf I missed ZenDesk which doesn't fit in any of those groups. You need a support queue and ZenDesk is fantastic – Paul O'brien 14 years ago
Google Analytics to see which pages are getting hit.
Kiss Metrics to be able to easily ask users what they want.
Uservoice.com is good for Q&A forums. It'll save you a bundle in support costs.
Use a wiki for registered users. It will provide them a way to capture knowledge which your product or documentation didn't make easy or obvious.
