Designing Interactive » Products

OmniGraph Sketcher for iPad

Josh Walsh — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:13:24 +0000

I love the primitive nature of sketching graphs with precision with OmniGraphSketcher, and the new iPad version looks really slick.

Why we need another CMS

Josh Walsh — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:03:41 +0000

Every design agency needs a content management system. They are a solid business need. But, does every agency really need a custom solution? Especially when it comes to small business, the CMS is causing more problems than it’s solving.

They Just Do Too Much

Most of the CMS systems I’ve seen tend to do way too much. Much more than the client needs to do. Most brochureware websites have simple demands:

Edit the textual content
Upload Media (images, galleries, etc…)
Manage basic design elements (layouts and basic styling)

Most CMS software focuses on the need for more features and more functionality. It’s our animalistic nature to want more, faster. This animalistic nature is what drives good software into bloated software.

Local Cleveland web design firm TenthFloor markets their CMS, Base-10, with the slogan “Yes, it does that too…” – Perhaps, this is the reason that so many Base-10 users have told us how overwhelmed and confused they are with the product.

What we need is a CMS with a small footprint. Something light and adaptable.

The last week or so I’ve been beta testing Reflect. Nate Klaiber and our friends at ClearFunction have hit the nail on the head with their hosted CMS solution. It’s light, agile and flexible. You can build your own website in a few minutes or have a professional designer put the look and feel together for you. It’s competitively priced and offers a few well thought out features:

Hosted application eliminates the need for a 3rd-party hosting agreement
The management system isn’t tied to the design agency, so you aren’t locked in anywhere
The features are intuitive without compromising flexibility. (You’re creative abilities won’t suffer)

We are sold on the idea of Reflect. I’m looking forward to working with it post-beta and integrating it’s API into Simpli5.

10 Tips to Increased Ecommerce Profits

Josh Walsh — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:38:18 +0000

We spend many hours a week researching and observing customer shopping experiences and ecommerce websites. During our usability research for Simpli5, we discovered that most small ecommerce websites violate 3 or 4 of these fundamental principles.

Oscommerce and ZenCart users should hang on tight. They are likely to be repeat offenders, but also will see the greatest positive impact once these problems are fixed.

Ecommerce Problems and Solutions

Too Many Steps in the Checkout Process
The average ecommerce site has between 5 and 6 steps required to checkout. That is too many. In most cases 3 steps will suffice, 2 if you sell digital goods.

The checkout process we developed for Embroidery Academy has only 1 step and takes less than 30 seconds to complete.
Explain your checkout process
Show your customer what your checkout process is. How many steps are there? Where am I now? What information will you ask me for?

Amazon.com does a great job of this.
Remove checkout distractions
Once your customer has agreed to purchase the products listed in their cart, you should hold their hand through the checkout process. Web surfers are easily distracted and may find themselves navigating away from your site. By removing search capabilities and navigation your customers are less likely to abandon their shopping cart.

Just remember, do not remove information important to the sale. Make sure your contact information and policies stay in place.
Always use product pictures
Everywhere that you mention your product you should have a thumbnail of that product, not just on the product detail page. Our research shows that thumbnails are much more likely to be clicked on than the product title.

This especially important on the view cart page and during checkout. This reassures the customer that the item added to the cart was the one they selected.
Be proud of your shipping prices
Provide an estimated shipping cost while users are shopping. During our usability reviews customers have expressed anxiety about shipping costs and may avoid purchasing altogether if it is not clear from the beginning.
Show out of stock notices
Many sites wait until after the purchase is completed to tell the customer that the product is not immediately available. This may deter some sales but will save you support headaches. Plus your customers will be appreciative.
Carefully up-sell during checkout
Up-selling is a very profitable practice, but it must be handled with care. Make absolutely sure that the product you are up-selling is complimentary to the products the customer is buying. If someone is buying tires and you try to up-sell diapers, you will appear greedy. Really, this stuff happens.
Use promotions sparingly
Promotions can do wonders for your sales. They are great to attract attention from media or to move dated merchandise. However, do not run promotions just for the sake of running promotions, or you may not look confident in your prices.
Show your refund policy
Items may appear differently online than in person, even with great photography. Make sure your customers know that they can return the product, and how to do so.
Stay in contact with the customer
After the order has been placed, stay in touch with your customer. They should get at least two emails: a purchase receipt and a shipped notification. If there are order complications, such as backorders, let the customer know.

Paving the Way for Simpli5

Josh Walsh — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:57:27 +0000

Simpli5 is our new web application which debuted this month. It revolutionizes retail business through a new innovative approach to managing orders, products, inventory and customers.

We believe retail management is all about decisions and Simpli5 makes these decisions simpler.

Why do we need Simpli5?

As with all great inventions, Simpli5 stems from our own need. As a consulting firm we have designed numerous inventory systems for our clients. It became evident early on that a quality solution was not available for small to mid sized businesses. Many existing solutions cost tens of thousands of dollars and were technically daunting. They often required a technical person on staff to keep the system running smoothly and to perform upgrades. We discovered that this overhead, combined with the price of upgrading each year is just too much to handle.

As a subscription service, Simpli5 solves many of these problems. We do not bloat our software with features just to sell a new version of the software next year. We update our software routinely and all users reap the benefits immediately.

What’s in a name?

Simpli5 will “simplify” your current way of working through “5” simple principals, which give the application a firm foundation and apply equally to businesses of all sizes.

Simple – Features should be immediately intuitive.
Concise – Get rid of the extraneous information, it just gets in the way.
Share – Collaboration and Communication is key.
Accessible – Work from home, at the office, a hotel in Maui… it doesn’t matter.
Secure – Your data is yours and only yours. You can even take it with you if you leave.

Public Pre-Release

Our public pre-release last year, codenamed Barracuda Suite, was a tremendous success. Thank you to everyone who contributed feedback. We have learned a number of things from you, including:

There is a huge market for this product.
We had a few priorities wrong.
The order process was not as intuitive as it can be.
You want customization (colors, logos, etc…).

All of these are included in Simpli5.

Stay Tuned

In the coming weeks we will posting about the new design and workflow (Subscribe to our Feed). Enter your email at Simpli5.com for notification when it becomes available.