Poll: What should Joplin tagline be?

Lounge
1

Thanks everyone for your tagline ideas, much appreciated! There was many good ones so I thought I'd create a poll to find out which one is best, so if you could select your 1 or 2 favourite ones (up to 3) that would be great.

Also feel free to comment on the post if you have other suggestions. I was thinking perhaps a combination of some of these would work too?

  • Free your notes
  • Secure, free, and anywhere you want it to be
  • Save your thoughts, own your thoughts
  • Everything you need to note, wherever you are
  • The perfect accompaniment to your notes
  • Your notes: on every device, private, secure, forever

0 voters

5 Likes
3

Joplin, Listening and playing back your notes ! :musical_score:

4

I don't know how many people will stumble on the website without the intention to find a note taking/storage app, but I feel like

Secure, free, and anywhere you want it to be

doesn't give any idea about what Joplin is. It seems like it could be the tag line for a bra or credit card just as easily as a note taking app. :smile: Other than not mentioning notes or information, it's a fine tag line.

Personally, I value stability in an app more than I do security. But I guess "It's not going to crash" doesn't sound that flashy. :smile:

5

This one didn't mention about free

1 Like
6

I had the same reaction: Your notes: on every device, private, secure, free forever

1 Like
7

I dunno about those. How about something like "The best note app with an elephant-inspired logo"?

1 Like
8

The nice thing with this tagline is that it says clearly the strong points about the app. The drawback is that it's only descriptive - it doesn't say what the user can do with it, or why they should care that it is on every device, private, etc.

I see taglines of major products always include a verb - i.e. the template is "Do X, get Y", or "Thanks to X, you can do Y". There's an action in there, which is missing from the "Your notes:..." tagline.

1 Like
9

I was "forced" to pick a tagline when submitting the snap, since submission the title on the web listing and the short descriptive text in the app store has been A free, private note taking and to-do app!, with the logic being just say what you are in as little words as possible, if you only skim over that one line, you'll know Joplin is a note taking app even if you ignored everything that comes afterwards. It seems to me that the taglines above aren't so clear about what Joplin actually is which should be the ultimate focus.

1 Like
10

Write/Organize/Store/Share : Your notes on every device, private, secure, forever

11

Thank you for saying outright what you're looking in the tagline.
Let me in response outline what my thought process was in the moment writing it. Please take it as a humble personal opinion, nothing more.

Your notes: on every device, private, secure, forever

I wrote this generic tagline because it kinda suited your stated needs yet there are few things I would like to add to the discussion.

Before submitting this tagline I asked a few non tech friends what they think. The response I get was that they need some kind of attention grab and descriptive "value" to hook them in.

So here's the thought process I went through:

  1. I believe technical users will find this app anyway. They have the tools, patience to study the program because it is essential thing they going to invest a lot of their time.
    1.1 I believe there's no way, we could convince technical users with descriptions of the product in every paragraph. They need to study it anyway and they can use all the docs for that. So to cater to them it is great idea to improve docs (for example by clipping good responses on this forum into bite sized pages on github)

  2. I indeed didn't want word "free" in the "description" because if you ever intent to provide a paying service (like Joplin Cloud with note collab feature), you'd be accused of lying by mostly non-technical customers. It's hard to explain paying features to them if you're sold them on the premise of being free.
    2.1 Non tech people don't understand and don't care about technical jargon.
    For example: what FOSS means, they don't get what is source code, they never seen it anywhere.
    They don't know what markdown is, they just want to make font bigger or smaller. How we do it — is of little concern to them.

  3. I believe this app need more non tech users. On this forum we've got already biased look of the population — people who had the patience to keep up with the app's forum. Tech users are already sold on the program without much marketing. I believe tagline, photos, descriptions are needed for those who cannot be expected to study the docs and forums. Although I wouldn't want to left out the tech users but I just wanted to point out that there are channels of communication and they are a lil different for different audiences.

I actually chose not my own tagline in the poll but this one because it has playful, easy-going attitude, like brain candy for a user idly browsing an app store.

Secure, free, and anywhere you want it to be

In summary, if it is required to show in tagline at least some functionality, I'd choose the ones non tech people actually care about. And in process I'd try not to shoot myself in the foot.

By the way, @laurent I think you're doing a great job in uniting these two audiences, yet I thought I could shift your attention from features of the app and cater a lil more to non tech folk. I think you're on the great track with this "Do X, get Y" guidance.
I don't know personally what action we could reliably sell to regular folk who makes groceries lists and writing poem drafts in the app — we don't send anyone your data (privacy/loyalty)? you could pass on your data to future generations (future proof)?

if I get the time, I may attempt to write some more taglines, yet I imagine it is already quite exhausting to constantly be choosing the best ones among the waterfall of new ideas.

1 Like
12

I don't really like any of them. but the two highest voted are also the 2 I voted for. I think you should decide do you want something catchy or something describing what joplin is about? catchy is especially good for established brands (think different, just do it) but none of the catchy ones mentioned in this poll I connect with joplin per se, they could be for every of the dozens of note taking app out there. do you wanna get attention with the tagline or do you already wanna tell what it is all about? I also vouch for @Edwardlin / @guy-rouillier s modification. even though I am not sure if private and secure are not a bit redundant? maybe: Your notes: on every device, private/or/secure, owned by you, free forever

13

Thanks for the feedback. I came to a similar conclusion - that it makes sense to focus on the casual user, since more technical users will usually figure things out on their own.

But also the way I see it, it's a note-taking app, not an air traffic system, so at its core it doesn't have to be complex. The basics is that it's a way to take a note, and that should work for anyone without having to read a complex documentation. Beyond that we can always add more features accessible via menu and config screen - at this point the plugin system also allows creating all kind of complex tools. But the core functionality should be simple.

I believe this app need more non tech users. On this forum we've got already biased look of the population

Truth is, we don't really know who are Joplin's users. For example the desktop version 1.7.11, which was around for about 3 months, got downloaded 220,000 times, and on the forum there's maybe 100-200 regular users, many of them indeed quite technical. But that's maybe 0.1% of users. Who are the other 99.9%? For all we know, they are indeed non-technical users - they see a free app, it works good enough for them so they keep using it.

1 Like
14

I think we're maybe trying to put in too much info in the tagline, so maybe something catchy would indeed be better. That's why I'm starting to think for example "Free your notes" might be better. Sure it doesn't mention sync, encryption, etc. but just below the tagline there will be two lines of text anyway, so there we can put more detailed info.

So an inspiring or positive tagline, just a few words, might be what we need.

2 Likes
15

Joplin - Keep your life

16

Joplin, the note app you can trust.

2 Likes
17

Jopplin, Mark down, beautify, share

18

Would like to urge people to reconsider their votes in favor of "Free your notes". It is short and clear, and it kills 2 birds at the same time: software is free and free from proprietary storage.

Long taglines get more votes because they appeal to more people but in the end, we may end up with a mediocre result.

4 Likes
19

I like this tagline too, it has a positive vibe. The drawback is that it doesn't mean much I think. If someone comes here to learn what they'll get from the app, they'll get "free notes". Ok, for most people it means they don't need to pay for it, but is that it? Most note taking apps are free anyway, so that doesn't differentiate us.

Of course, what matters too for us is that it's "free" as in "open source", but many people won't know that. And even if you're into open source, you can't really be sure that it's what we mean. So yes, not completely sure about this tagline.

At some level I think the tagline needs to memorable but also a little boring, like with no subtlety. "Do X, get Y" basically.

20

I'm still not sure but after putting the tagline in the website, I have a good feeling for it:

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What do you guys think?

7 Likes