How "Pretty" Is The B/Assistant

[pugs]

Doris, I spoke to Ken Coldrick several times in the STW forum, yes he was/is a great guy. I was quite rude really, I told Sporting Lot that their pricing plan would drive all their customers away. I even put up a post to other STW users who were not going to pay the ridiculous charges to join me in offering “lay it you mug” (Gary Russell) money do develop his Betfair Trader.
Ken very courteously explained to me their overheads and why the costs needed to be so high, was it 10k or 20k a month just for their servers, I can’t really remember, but I know it was a huge sum. But I guessed the fate of STW after that conversation.

Yes it had many great features, I don’t think I ever worked them all out, and that was the free version lol.
I particularly liked the pop up that displayed every unmatched bet and the amount of ticks it was away from being matched (Gary I believe has just introduced something similar, per market). And your overall “global position” where it would display and continually update your figure if you traded out every matched bet.

What I didn’t like was the stability/connection to the API, it was plagued. Whether that was because the program was just too big, too many connections to the API, connections to their own servers, who knows. But yes it was an amazing program, and I thought about Ken and all his hard work, when I heard it had gone under.

[doris_day]

I think the instability was caused partly by the LOT technology just having to do too much and also because, if you remember, the API at the time wasn't very stable itself. We seem to have forgotten how bad it used to be because these days its much improved.
Yes, the Dashboard as they called it was fantastic, particularly if you traded numerous markets. Bet Angel have introduced their Guardian but this is a weak attempt to do something similar and its got lots of holes that need to be plugged. I have no idea at all why no other app followed the lead of STW as it was light years ahead of anything that was or is around at the moment.
That said, they had no Excel link or any automation, so it would be no good for what I do at the moment. And Gruss far outstrips Bet Angel for my current needs.

[Captain Sensible]

Everyone please feel free to state which application from the competition in your opinion is the most aesthetically pleasing and why. I would be interested to hear. It could give me some ideas

It is time BA had a facelift, of all the apps out there it sure has hit it's fair share of branches falling out of the ugly tree. It gives the impression of one of those badly designed webpages on the net which I've always found a bit strange considering the programming software out there has standard templates for forms etc you only need to look at the fairbots and Bfexplorers which use standard windows layouts but look hell of a lot better. I imagine the java stuff is only using the standard layouts from whatever program they've been coded in too.

For the majority using Gruss will be down to product loyalty from the early days when the prog was free, word of mouth stuff or possibly the price point but ultimately because of what it does for us. Whilst for most of us it makes no real difference how the software looks as we're using it for what it's capable of, anyone new to betting software won't know what's capable of and couldn't be forgiven for assuming it's an inferior product due to the pricing and looks.
'
No one can doubt Gary and Marks programming abilities but for Gruss software's long term future they should seriously think about overalling the interface and maybe even their marketing strategy. The majority of new betting software users will probably try out most of the stuff out there and to be fair most of the software out there does the same basic stuff so you need to be equal or better in all departments to keep them. Even things like adding PRO in the name is bound to convince some users that software is best

[Spike]

On a slightly different note- when I first came across Gruss I dismissed it because I didn't realise what it was capable of. This was solely because of the appearance of the website, which I gave a cursory glance to before moving on. I eventually came back to Gruss because none of the other API products could do what I wanted them to, but it took a while and if I'd discovered another suitable product before I got here I'd probably have stuck with that.

I think a few changes to the opening pages of the website would greatly increase subscriptions- the very fist page you land on should tell you exactly what the software (the main thing- BA) can do, rather than giving a brief history as it does now. It would probably also be worth hiring a graphic designer to take a look at the site- I know it's an expense but I do think they could make a real difference. Even without a professional designer looking at it there is a lot you could do just by tidying up all the fonts and improving the GIFs- they look like they need a little tweaking.

I know it's a small thing but I'd take a look at the logo(s) too- is it the square with the arrow or the circle with the arrow? Either way a little refinement could help. (I think the cricle is better)

A bit more explaination of what the software is capable of would also be a good thing, for example explaining (in a scentece) what Excel integration actually is and what it allows you to do.

Speaking as a professional designer/artist (in my other life) I think one of the biggest problems with both the website and the software itself is the colours. I know that the colours in the software are customisable but first impressions really do count. - I should say by the way that I'm not a graphic designer so I'm not angling for work here.

I think the website's green colour scheme is not as good as it could be- it looks very out of date. I also don't like the way it sits on the left hand side of the screen, I much prefer websites that auto centre and re-size (e.g. BBC news). I know this isn't difficult to achieve.

Sorry to drag on but now that I'm thinking about it there are a zillion details on the website that could be much better, here is few more:

The top menu (home, products etc)- the spacing between the tabs is wrong, they should butt up against eachother and the relationship between them and the bar immediately uunderneath could be much better.

The image bar immediately below has square corners where everything else has round corners.

The "Betting Assistant (and) Free 30 day trial" bit- it's not in the middle and it looks a bit wierd. Also- the blue that's used for the "30 Day Trial" is close to if not the same as the blue that used to indicate a link. It's nasty.

I don't really spend much time looking at the software as I operate entirely through excel but I agree that it doesn't look nice. I think it's all about refinement, again there is a bit of a mess of font styles, sizes and colours and the opening page looks a bit empty. The "link" blue is also in evidence- I'd favor a lighter, less saturated blue.

Looking at the box below "Field bets, Tick Offset etc..."- it should join seemlessly with the tab that you click on (whichever one is open) rather than being a different colour (the tab is white whilst the box is yellow- I hope you see what I mean). The same applies to the diffent tabs/pages- where the selected market range is highlighted in blue. It would be better if the tab joined up with the active page- also the blue/yellow combination is hard to read.

I don't like the mustard yellow but a different yellow could work, I'd lean towards a whiter, cleaner yellow (more saturated but also lighter). It's very difficult to put yellows or oranges across well on screens, or else even a light and fairly yellowish green.

Unfortunately I'm really busy at the moment but I do intend to have a better look at how Gruss looks and make some more constructive suggestions (rater than just criticisms) and possibly knock up some quick dummies in a few weeks time when I've got a bit of time to spare. I'm very gratefull to Gruss for all the money it's made me and I'd be glad to give something back. In the mean time Gary- I hope you see this as constructive criticism, as I have said before I love your software, which is far and away the best product avialable and I'm only saying these things in the hope that some relatively easy changes might win you some more subscribers.

[Captain Sensible]

I'd agree, spike, the website layout is a bit of letdown and I'm sure Gary and Mark will take on board any criticisms made as being constructive and any that aren't they're thick skinned enough to ignore them.

It'd be worth looking at all aspects of the opposition rather than just the layout and copy or tweak them, as you can be sure they'd happily do the same. Maybe consider affilate programs and offering 3 month comp prizes. Contact some of the bigger betting forums and offer a prize of some subs won't cost anything giving a new user 3 month free and will get the gruss name out there. Tie it in with a design a new logo comp and you might even get a free logo out of it

There are reasons why the competition may be doing better than Gruss and it isn't down to the software being better it's down to their marketing. Binarysoft, STW and others all had unique points about them but are no longer around for various reasons so it's in all our interests that gruss do well.

[pugs]

Spike, that’s a good post, with plenty of food for thought for Gary and Mark.

I particularly agree with (but never really thought about before) the website. I think the homepage should promote the many features of the Gruss software, with maybe a screenshot of the software faded into the background and put the “about us” in a tab. It should be very stylish, It is (mainly) all about first impressions.

I don’t mind the pale green background, but the darker green tab bar at the top doesn’t look like it’s from the same family of green. And yes, styling of all boxes and links should be consistant throughout.

(I should just point out before going on that I have sensitive eyes any ANY pale background colour gets the thumbs up from me, anything but WHITE. Looking at white screens, Outlook express, Betfair, Gruss forum, for any longer than around an hour give me a mild form of “arc eye”. So my views on “colour” will always be biased.

The BA, betting options tabs, “it should join seamlessly”, I agree. Plus all boxes in “betting options” could be the same styling as the back, lay ladder, buttons.

I think it’s fairly unanimous the “mustard” is a poor first impression. I personally would have it the same colour as the grid background but a shade or two darker.

Gary has stated he will only make “prettying up” changes if and when he can, but the more constructive criticisms we can throw at him, the more ideas it will give him, plus some of them may be quick and easy to implement but make a big difference. So keep throwing

Captain, "it's in all our interests that gruss do well". Never a truer word spoken.

[doris_day]

Captain, "it's in all our interests that gruss do well". Never a truer word spoken.

Don't quite follow the logic of that one.

It's in my interests that no one use Gruss other than me seems more appropriate

[pugs]

Doris, yes the "dashboard", how could i forget it was called the dashboard

[pugs]

Gary, I learned how to find the exact colour value in Windows "paint".

I am a PC and I'm only 49 years old

http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/vv326/beany24/G1.jpg

[GaryRussell]

22.5% commission

If you see a colour anywhere on your screen that you like then here is a useful program to grab the RGB values.
http://www.iconico.com/colorpic/

[pugs]

I have studied in particular the “betting options” and here are my constructive criticisms.

Colour. Nuf said.

The “tab” area (field, tick, ect) layout is mostly good, but as “Spike” says the tab should/could run seamless with the open tab box.

The “stake” and “odds” boxes in “field bets” are not centred between the “tabs” and “back field/lay field” buttons. All opened tabs should be checked for this as some are slightly better than others.

The “override odds” area. No need to write override odds twice. The top “override odds” could have the tick box after it, and then all three nicely centred in the “override odds” area.

Betting options “minimise/maximise” tick box, should that be moved to the top far right of betting options? It would unclutter the left hand side, and the top right is where all windows pop ups/programs have it, so people would be more familiar with it there anyway.

“Ladder Interface” Should it be in there? Should/could it go next to “Excel” at the top?

The “refresh rate” Should that be in there? I personally do not like losing my refresh rate when I minimise “betting options”. Could it go at the top? Or perhaps next to the manual refresh and put the “matched” amount somewhere else? But the remaining four tick boxes could then be nicely spaced.

Ian mentioned the “staking mode” is that a betting option? Should that have a tab in, or just be put in “betting options”?

The "quick pick" below betting options is certainly not pretty but extremely useful, so don’t really know what to suggest. Perhaps adopt the same background colour, and round the edges to match the rounded outline

In general all tick, price, amount boxes (everywhere) look like they have been jig sawed out of a sheet of plywood and price/amounts are often far from the centre, or boxes too big in relation to the figures in them, and with the background of these being white it makes the Gruss background colour look dirty. Whereas the buttons “back field/lay field” in field bets look very classy. Plus by adopting the Gruss background colour to the boxes, if in the future you add a colour option to change the background colour, these could all adopt the same colour. WHITE for those who like the clean Windows/Betfair look

[pugs]

Cheers Gary, I will save and have a look at that.

Did you like my “betting option” addition. If you could add that

[GaryRussell]

I missed that one. I am struggling with the algorithm on that one

[throwmeadisc]

Hey,

Great comments for Gary and I hope he makes use of them. For me, yes it is a bit ugly but 90% of my betting is automated through Excel so I don't even look at the BA screen.

One thing I would like to say is please keep the option to change your own colours for different object as I am colourblind and I do not get on with the default options with BA and Betfair website etc..

I'll leave other suggestions to the rest of you, but that is mine.

Cheers,

Al

[pugs]

I missed that one. I am struggling with the algorithm on that one

, I find sticking a pin in helps

Thanks for the "colorpic" link, thats super. Knocks spots off "paint" [/quote]