Here’s a quick peek at the new InviteRight setup pages that we’re working on.  The new design will make the creation and review of your invitations and templates so much easier and efficient — you’ll be able to see more of your creation on screen and the interface is more intuitive, allowing you to access options that you may not have noticed before.  You’ll know exactly where you are in the setup process at all times, and the new pages will help guide you through in a more streamlined way, so you can create your invitations faster and with less work.

Keep your eyes out for the new pages which will be coming soon…!

We wanted to share these “2 for 1″ coupons with you — just click the graphic below to enlarge it, then just print it or save it to your computer.  Have fun!

I have been spending the last few days working on minor tweaks and updates to our blog and other areas of the InviteRight software. But more importantly I have been working on getting our new form design ready to be rolled out. Well luckily the day of being able to see our marvelous new forms on your very own events has come one step closer.

As you may have noticed on your events, the response categories look a little different than usual. Think of this as a sneak preview of the coming changes to the rest of the form. The code monkeys are hard at work behind the scenes to ensure the rest of the forms are bug free. So I hope you’re looking forward to the stylish new registration form design as much as we are.

You may have noticed that ElectionBuddy.com has gotten a facelift.  The changes are subtle but we think they make a huge difference in readability and useability of the site.  I won’t go down the full list of design changes we made but you should go check it out for yourself and see how easy it is to navigate through.  Leave us some feedback and let us know what you think.

There are a lot of fun things to see and do around Edmonton during the summer — this past weekend my girlfriend and I went to two corn mazes, which I’ve never done before.  The first corn maze we did was just west of Bowden and was a combination corn maze and sunflower maze.  It’s quite a sight as long as you are comfortable with having bees all around you.

The second corn maze we did was about half an hour north of Edmonton and is one of the largest ones I have ever seen.  The object of the maze is to find sign posts within it that contain letters, and then if you find all of the letters you can try and unscramble them to get a phrase.  If you are successful in finding the letters and unscrambling the phrase, you can enter their contest to win a trip.   We spent about 2 hours in the maze and were able to find all the letters and unscramble them too.  This corn maze was part of a farm that had a number of other attractions including a u-pick and a greenhouse.

If you are looking for a good way to spend an afternoon I suggest checking out a corn maze as there  are plenty to choose from here in Alberta.

“User Experience Design” is the concept of designing how the user interacts with their environment.  It can include hearing, smelling and touching but we will focus just on the interaction between the user and digital media (forms and websites).

The benefit of user experience design is that the site or form will  improve and reach more customers. This increases profits and obtains customer loyalty.

UX design is not something you can pick up easily. I hear time and time again customers telling me “We should do this because this is what the guest will do!” Everyone has their opinion of what someone else will do but without enough case studying and testing, your statement is only your own opinion. Questions to keep in mind when a customer or guest goes to your site/form include:

• Did they find the information they were looking for?
• What items did they miss?
• How long does it take them to navigate through it?
• Is too much information presented?
• Is the customer frustrated?

You can see how the list of questions can go on. So when building a form, website or any kind of media, our main goal is to present the user with all the information they need in the easiest way possible. This will help you succeed in doing business and the customer will be much happier.

I was at a breast cancer fundraiser at which Lance Armstrong was the keynote speaker. I found him to be engaging and personable.

He talked about the story of the “LiveStrong” rubber wrist band. An interesting sidenote was his sharing of a visit to the Dalai Lama:

I visited the Dalai Lama and noted that he was wearing a rubber wristband with the word compassion on it. I also noted that the wristband was made in China.

I think it made it easier for him to take the questioning he received about why his wristbands were made in China…

We’re pleased to announce a new ElectionBuddy pricing category!  We still offer free elections for up to 20 voters, but now you can hold small elections that can support as many as 100 voters for just $9.  In addition, you also get email support, SSL encryption for voters and you can reuse email lists from past elections.  Not bad for just $9!  And that still includes all the powerful functionality of the new ElectionBuddy 3.0 – if you haven’t heard about all the new features, check out the blog post.

As you may or may not already be aware, we have a foosball table in our office that sees almost daily use.  Lately we have begun forming teams from a core group of 5 players and keeping score.  Chris built a website for the purpose of displaying the scores and also added a handy feature to help us decide who plays who.  For the most part, the teams are fairly even, as everyone can play at least one position well.  Myself, I am a hybrid player and I can switch between defense or offense.  My foosball ability comes from playing a lot while I was growing up as my parents had a table which saw a lot of use. 

Now that we are keeping score, the competition has picked up a bit but it’s all in good fun, and with the constant switching of teams no one really loses that much.  So if you are around the LeMarchand Mansion one lunch hour and you hear a bunch of screaming and hollering, why don’t you come up and enjoy a game or two with us?

One of the things we’ve improved in InviteRight is the Reminders functionality.  We know that your guests are busy too and can sometimes forget to submit payments, fill in names of their companions, or any other number of details that may require a friendly little reminder from you as the organizer.

InviteRight makes it easy for you to see at a glance who still needs to submit some details, and with just a few clicks you can send all those guests a friendly reminder.  We’ve improved the system so that now you can track all the reminders you’ve sent, and to whom — you can click on individual guests to see a summary of all the reminders they’ve been sent.

Hey we know it’s hard to keep track of things sometimes!  But this little feature should make your life that much easier, and help your event stay on track.