TMI
Follow us along on a journey, a journey of web page development.
When DDH first started in 1997, I was designing the web site using animated gifs galore and Netscape’s Composer to design the web site. I remember when the HanDBase gallery was a single page of listings and submission involved emailing me the files directly so I could edit the ever growing listing manually. My how things have changed!
Through the years we get asked a lot of questions about the products we sell. And each time we get asked a question a bunch of times, we often would add it to the site, either directly to a product page, or placed with the knowledgebase. The desire to have everything available ’self-service’ to customers is both benevolent and selfish by nature; benevolent, because we want users to be able to enjoy using the product and not having to contact us with questions we have already been asked, and selfish because- well, the same reason applies!
In the quest for completeness, we have developed web pages that are pretty long- not a page on our site can be visited without making judicious use of the scroll bar even on a 1920×1200 monitor. And in that sense, we’ve created a monster.
A new user who visits the site could potentially find the answers to all of their questions, but because of TMI, too much information, they see a large page with way too much text, and skip it entirely. The end result is that they either move on completely or still wind up having to contact us to find their questions answered. This TMI thus works backwards to its intended goal.
So now we’ve been going back and redoing a few pages at a time, using less text, providing less answers per page, and hopefully raising the chances someone will actually read the text on there. Hopefully we don’t ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ and lose the valuable answers, which we’re moving into their own FAQ or Knowledgebase (KB) articles. So far, the iPhone main page, the Mac Desktop, and the Mac iPhone related pages were updated- take a look:
HanDBase Plus for iPhone Mac OS
and we hope to use more of the same on other pages as we update them. That is, less text, more readability and making use of embedded video tours and such to show the way.
Please let us know how we’re doing in that regard- we want to create a site that is readable, friendly but still informative!
As a professional in the medical field, I get the chance to see a lot of technology apps to solve various problems. It’s great in a way, because the medical field is all about solving problems. On the other hand, it’s often horrible in a way, because folks in my field sometimes only have enough tech knowledge to feel totally inadequate!!
For a minute, let me take off one hat, put on another and submit a brief comment on DDH Software. HanDBase is probably the coolest handheld product I have ever used. It’s potential is truely limited by one’s imagination. I literally think about how to apply this product throughout my practice on a daily basis. I have never seen a product this powerful, that still gives the user such a high level of “freedom to design”.
On a more fundamental level, I have had the privilege to meet Dave Haupert several years ago, while he was still in Florida. I was not prepared for the level of kindness and humility coming from someone with his level of success. David is a true gentile man, the kind of guy you want as a neighbor. The incredible thing is that a guy like this really does exist, and makes a real personal committment for his customers. HanDBase is a phenominal product, but moreover, it’s a real reflection of it’s creator, Dave Haupert, a phenominal guy.