Actisto is a service fo people who need to share files quickly, online, without registration and installation. For free.
Target Audience: Anyone
Website URL: www.actisto.com
No. of Feedback Providers Requested: 5
Note to Feedback Providers:
Please note that businesses are looking for in-depth feedback that gives them thorough, insightful and actionable input. A ‘superficial’ submission that does not add value, is not thorough (i.e. written in a hurry, with poor grammar, punctuation etc.) and does not offer any concrete, constructive feedback is not helpful and will be rejected.
Feedback sought:
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
I see several people talking on the phone and smiling. I like the fact that immediately landing on the home page, I can easily see what this site is for and what it offers. Everything that I needed to know is on the home page. I just simply have to scroll down to learn about the site.
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
It was very easy to open a temporary online room. I was able to do after reading the walk through steps on the home page.
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
It is very confusing now that i opened the chat room. I am trying to figure out how to connect with someone. I do see there is a code, but I need to figure out how to get back to the home page so I can finish reading the steps. I am finding step 2 a little confusing. So am I supposed to call the person first and give them the code over the phone or do I email them with a code? I can’t find the step to contact the person through this site. Also, I am clicking on the different symbols on the top left of the chat room but nothing is changing other than their color from green to blue. I do see that my webcam is working great though but I am still confused on how to invite someone in to my chat room. I would think there would be a link or something where I would just enter a friends email address or phone number so they would get the invite from me with a link on the site and the log in page. I find it very easy to type in a message but I tried to open a file and drop it in there and it is not working right. Maybe because I tried to send a picture?
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
I think if I could figure it out, I would definitively find this service useful. I love to have different ways of contacting my son over the internet since he lives over a thousand miles from me.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
I really love the fact that there is no installation of anything, that it is for everyone, that it’s free and that I don’t have to register either. If I could figure out how to get a friend in there, I would love to use this service.
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
The webpage has a nice layout and colours; after a bit of scrolling you can see what you can do on this page.
Going through all the steps listed on the page to see how it works is a bit frustrating: lots of empty white space and a lot of scrolling, it looks different on different browsers.
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
It doesn’t seem very easy for me. You can open an online temporary room after doing a lot of scrolling and trying to understand how it works. On some browsers it works better and everything is displayed better, on others you have to scroll a lot and some pictures don’t appear.
It took me some time to read and understand how you can do it.
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
I didn’t manage to connect with anyone. The other person entered the code and the room didn’t open. I also uploaded a document and I think it was not uploaded at all. It looked like nothing happened after I tried to upload a picture.
It’s confusing for the other person. The Join field would look better underneath the Open room option. Otherwise you think both are for the same action of opening a room and also joining one.
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
I find the service very useful, as long as anything you share gets deleted after an online room is closed and sharing is safe.
It’s a very handy service to be able to share documents and others through an online system easy and fast with no need to create an account or with some more complicated steps.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
– I would expect the Invite/Join part to see after reading the text which explains what is Actisto. First thing you read when you open the page is Open and Join and not what you can do on the website. Switching their position would help.
– Opening an online temporary room should be a a more easier process and generate code should be more visible and intuitive. It took me some time to understand how it works and re read again the steps and did a lot of scrolling in order to open an online temporary room.
– Also the service should work on most common browsers properly(I noticed on some it doesn’t, tried FF, IE and Chrome).
– I wasn’t able to upload and the other party couldn’t join the room. It did not open when the generated code was used. All these (upload document, join online temporary room etc.) are the main functionalities of the website so they should work.
– The steps should be written more compact and more concise so that not much scrolling is needed and that it looks good (no empty parts when scrolling or pictures not displaying) on most common browsers.
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
My first impression of the website is the nice blue color I first see when the page loaded. Then looking at the question that is prominently looking at you: “What is Actisto?” and the description below the question, it has already peaked my interest because it is explained that I do not have to install anything to share documents, talk or message. So already, it seems that it will be a web based application.
Upon scrolling down from this point, I can see that this page is going to answer the questions that is in the heading, because now, I see the question “Why Actisto?” And the other thing that impresses me is there is ‘no registration, no installation.’ By not moving ahead from this point, I am curious how this is going to work for if I am calling someone or trying to share a document, how will this page know who I’m sending it to, if I don’t register, hmm. I can see the example of how the call would take place and the sharing of a document. Being that this is free, how will Actisto make their money?
Scrolling from this point, “How does it work?” is now being answered. I can see that by using my email address to open a room, that makes the session unique. And by using a code, that is how I can securely send a document to the other person and connect them to me. And then voila, the other person and I are in our own chat room, via the website and nothing is installed. I like that.
I like all the different features that are available with this webpage. How I can chat with the person. How I can send the document that I would like them to look at. The tools to browse through the document.
My impression is a good one. I can honestly say that this looks to be something worthwhile for people to use. There are many other sites that offer this kind of service, but you have to install something in order to use the service. Or in the other case, register to their site. Here, it’s type in an email, get a code to share, the other person plugs in the code and your started. Very quick. I like that.
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
Easy? Really much so. With the instructions on the home page on how to do it, I entered my email address, clicked invite and already I’m seeing the chat page. I don’t know how much easier it could be for someone to get started on this page. The web browser asked that my microphone and camera be used for this session, I said yes, and I can now see my self live in the video part of the screen. It works beautifully.
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
I connected with my wife on her computer. The connecting to her computer was very easy again. Just type in my code and immediately we were connected. Because her computer does not have a camera, I can hear her, but she can see me. That is very cool. Plus the quality of the video feed is excellent for the live streaming, almost with zero lag and very fluid, not shaky.
When I shared a file with her, the only time it took was for the file to upload, but other than that, it works great. Nothing we find is confusing. She did ask what the buttons at the top of the share side was for, so we had to click through the different buttons to see what they did. We noticed that we can’t use the highlighter on pdf files.
Now, trying to setup another connect with her being the host, I ran into problems, because we can’t seem to get it to work. Don’t know if it is just the connection to our computers, or if something going on with the server end. Also, in trying to access another file while connected, it wouldn’t let me add another file to share.
In using this web based app, it is easy. The only confusing thing is what does all the buttons do. You give a little explanation of them as you scroll down the page, but if people don’t read (like most people don’t) then I think some explanation of what can be done with documents share would be necessary in the beginning. Like when you connect, it would show a darken screen with the quick explanations of the buttons, with a “Got it,” clickable button in the lower right so everyone know how to utilize the page.
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
I do find the service useful. As I explained before, not having to install anything and get right into a conference with someone, to talk, video chat and share files, real easy. Having to do this without the necessity of registering, makes it even more appealing because now there is no having to input all this information. Noticing that the page is secure so when you send files, there is some security involved.
Overall, this would be something that I would use if I needed to send a file to someone. Like my colleague who is in Arizona. We used to live in the same state, but I moved and so did he. We kept in touch and recently, he just started his own business. Asking me to help him with the creation of forms and such, this website will benefit us, because I just connect with via the web page, show him the document and we can both be looking at the document together. Instead of calling him, sending him the file via email and talking him through what I want him to see.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
The feedback that I have is the couple of things that I had mentioned. 1.) Just explain the buttons upon first use. Maybe a grayed screen with the explanations would suffice. They can click on the screen and then start using the chat page.
So to explain what I mean, the person starting the chat would enter their email address, click invite, easy. Then the grayed screen that would explain the buttons, the code and what the areas (short sentences) are for. There would be a ‘Got it’ clickable area to the lower right, click there and the screen would go away.
The person with the code, enters it in the join part, clicks join, ease again. Then the grayed screen would explain the buttons, the different areas (just a short sentence). There would be a ‘Got it’ clickable area to the lower right, click there and the screen would go away.
I did have a glitch in trying to connect a second time, even waiting for some time. I don’t know if it was on my end or if something on the server.
I will say, this is something that I think that I would use definitely, as I had explained in the previous question. I do think that this is something that others would use because it is so easy and so quick. That’s what is needed, not this long process of registering or installing some program. Plus at business level, some companies don’t allow installing of programs anyway.
I think this will succeed.
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
The first impression is excellent. I like the color scheme. You state clearly the purpose of the site and that there is no app to install.
Is that you main differentiator? That you can do a video chat and share documents without installing anything? Are there any other sites that do the same?
There are a couple of things that could be improved on the home page: (1) there is a great deal of space in between the different steps. (Actually Step One doesn’t say Step One, which can also be confusing.) And it takes a too long for the graphics to load.
And this home page brings up a question: Can you only share one document at a time? Will people have accounts or is this always a temporary room?
Can you invite more than one person? How many?
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
I was able to open a temporary room, but it is not intuitive to click on “invite” in order to enter the site. I think you might be able to make this easier by having the graphic show clearly that it is the “invite” button that must be clicked.
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
Not having anyone to do this with, I did this with myself. I really think it would help if you had a video or some instructions. The I was able to upload a file for viewing. Then I attempted to drag and drop it for sending but could not. I then went to Windows Explorer and dragged a photo to the space and was able to send it to my computer.
However, I should think I should be able to send a photo that I’m already sharing. I’m not certain how that would be done, though.
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
It might be and for now, I can share files on Google Drive without the other person having to install an app. There is no video or audio, but we can edit simultaneously, which is what I need for my business.
It probably can be useful for people who are just chatting. It’s good to have a free way to chat online with people anywhere in the world without them having to have an account and install an app.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
I don’t see anything about pricing? Is this site free? If so, what is your business model? For instance, are you going to have advertising?
1) Look around the home page – what is your initial impression of what you see?
I liked the layout of the website, the directions and the step by step actions which are clearly indicated. However some of the links don’t seem to work.
2) Try to open your temporary online room. Is it easy for you? Do you know how to do it?
The directions as to how to open the online room are located further down the page so a lot of scrolling is required. After having read the steps I now know how to do it and it was very simple. Even the code was highlighted for me.
3) Try to connect with someone and share a file. Do you both know how to use it? Is there something you find confusing?
Connection was established easily and very fast. We managed to chat, see and hear each other. However the file stopped uploading at 96%.
4) Do you find the service useful? Why?
Very useful. It works online and the connection is established easily and fast.
5) Please share any additional feedback/comments you may have.
It is user-friendly however if I were to add anything, I would clearly state the name of the file that is being uploaded as I could only see the percentage, which could also be a bit more visible.
The upload should have been completed, I wasn’t able to share my file.
The links from the main page didn’t work, only the ones on top work.