Halloween's a Coming

I love fall, the leaves are festive, the air reminds me of a summer day at the beach (that's the beach on the Oregon north coast, where 80 degrees is a heat wave), and the kids are back in school. We're busy churning out new designs, both custom ones and others that go well with the Simply Words category. We've also got a new Boo! promotion that is sure to add a little fun and whimsy tucked in with each order (now until Oct 25th).

Our designs have been spotted on a new site, where site users can create a mashup of several images and create their own digital expressions. Check out one of the family designs and then give it a go. It's a quick and fun way to start designing at http://www.polyvore.com/.

Rethinking Our Website

Where there’s a website, there’s a way to improve it. We’ve been thinking about our website a lot lately, and we’re slowly realizing that we need some significant overhaul. The designs are difficult to find, the shopping cart options aren’t standardized, and shipping options and discounts are cumbersome. On the other hand, it has a great look and feel to the design that really resonates with our customers.

We’re looking at updating the the custom quote options, which will let customers really get a chance to play with their design, font choices, and colors up front. We want that to be a seamless transition to either purchase directly without intervention. We also want to keep the ability to transfer the work in progress to the next step where one of our designers can make it truly special with a mix of fonts, colors, embellishments, layout options, and everything else they do to make the custom quotes a work of art.

Here’s hoping this redesign is a positive experience. Generally when you get creative types and technology types together they can’t seem to communicate. You end up with visually stimulating designs that don’t have the features or functionality that is actually something someone can use. Maybe that business degree in computer information systems will come in handy–not that I’m ever planning on admitting that it was worth it to suffer through statistics!