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Before another day passes, we would like to respond to a post that appeared on Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 blog late last week. We were thrilled to see that Joe had come across Blog2Print earlier this year, and had hoped he would be interested in seeing the Random House news. Thank you to Joe for taking a look, and sharing the information with your readers.
It is quite stormy in Israel – the weather is cold and windy. Even Jerusalem is white from snow which is a rare sight. If we weren’t in the process of a major structure change in the application, I would have packed my family and went to enjoy the snow! Here at Herzlia we can take a short recess by the stormy sea with a good warm espresso.
Technology wise we have made a change in the system that took lots of effort from my part. We are using a new service approach for processing images. Changing a core part of the system is a little tricky. In order to migrate as smoothly as possible and to reduce the risk, we sliced the change into chunks that could be added one by one and tested each time by our great QA department. Only the last change is irreversible and it will be added only when we see everything is in order. In the next few days we will see if the extra effort for reducing the risk yields the intended fruits. Let's keep the storm outside!
Working for an Internet start-up like SharedBook is always exciting. At any one time there are so many projects underway and new products about to launch. Even more so as a Product Manager - it's like a candy store! So much to choose from.
But I have to remind myself to have patience. Though change is good and may be exciting, too much change too quickly doesn't always create a good user experience.
Take, for example, our Checkout process. Last week we released our new PayPal compatibility (Mor already wrote about this - The First Tester). This represents the third round of changes to our checkout process since I started a brief 6 months ago. And there are more changes in store for our checkout process coming soon.
So why not do ALL of these changes at once? Wouldn't it be more exciting and dramatic to reveal everything as one major upgrade? My enthusiasm says YES! But my experience says different.
First off, making major changes in an established application has associated risks. There are so many things to consider and changing lots means testing even more. So it is better to take smaller steps and ensure each one is on solid ground.
Secondly (and more importantly), users don't necessarily want to see everything suddenly change. Has it ever happened to you that you were on a Web site one day and you worked your way to the very end only to realize you forgot something? Imagine you come back the next day to finish and nothing is as you've left it. I've had this happen before and it breaks my stride. Suddenly my confidence is reduced - regardless of whether the change was an improvement. As a user my first reaction is, "This isn't working right." I usually stop and regroup. Sometimes I'll even decide to come back later.
Thus we have the several smaller steps we've taken. And soon we'll have the new ones too. Each step brings us forward and makes our user's experience better and better. It just takes a little patience.
Here’s a slice of life for you: if you want to know which way the market is headed, ask someone who works at SharedBook.
On Tuesday morning, just when it looked like the Dow was going to do a cannonball off the high board, a few of us earlybirds were heading into our office. And we saw TV truck after TV truck with satellite dishes extended and at the ready, and reporters with camera crews doing stand-ups in many languages.
You see, our offices, at 14 Wall Street, are across the street from the New York Stock Exchange! And if there’s something going on in the market, a key indicator is always the crush of media, armed with technology, ready to report, breathlessly, and interview anyone who seems remotely connected with the trading floor. We’ll see Jim Cramer, from CNBC, and Maria Bartiromo from time to time, and it’s fun, in a way, being so close to what is now so important to the global economy and our collective sense of well-being. And the side benefit is that we always know when something big is up with the Dow. (Of course, you could always go to wsj.com – but where’s the fun in that?)
We have a feeling, given the media’s penchant for reporting only the bad news, that our new “Satellite Truck Concentration Indicator” is mostly a tell on a severe downtick, but we’ll keep an eye out. It may be some time, though, before we’ll see if the crush returns for a new Dow record high …!
We are in the process of announcing a partnership with Random House to offer a series of personalized book products, beginning with The Poky Little Puppy. In this case, it's possible to write a custom dedication and upload a child's photograph to the front of the book. The book is then printed on demand and sent directly to the address of your choice.
Michael Cairns of PersonaNonData had the chance to see one of the first samples, and as he noted here, the quality of the book is the same as you would expect from any found on the shelves of your local bookstore. We think the personalized version of The Poky Little Puppy is going to be a great gift - it's thoughtful and unique, and perhaps most of all - convenient! For more information, please go to GoldenBooks.com.
Thank you to everyone that has helped us spread the word to date: Kimberly Maul of The Book Standard and The Book Seller; Ron Hogan of GalleyCat; Kristen Nicole of Mashable; Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch; and Lynn Andriani and Jim Milliot of Publishers Weekly. We were excited to see that Eoin Purcell and John Kremer also mentioned the news.
Random House is a perfect example of how a traditional publishing company can use SharedBook's platform to engage more closely with their readers online, and to develop new revenue streams for existing materials. We look forward to introducing additional titles and personalization capabilities as the partnership progresses.
Today we launched our PayPal integration support. Starting from today, everyone can choose to pay securely for their own customized and personalized book via credit card or PayPal account.
Why am I telling you this? First, because I am proud of the team here that pulled this integration off amazingly fast (Alex, Veronica, this is my opportunity to say thanks for a job well done!).
Also, since I was the only one here in Israel with a PayPal account, I had the privilege of doing the first live purchase, to test the full cycle of integration. It is exciting to be the first one to use a new feature. It is exciting to check behind the scenes and see that the transaction went smoothly. And since I made my private blog book with Blog2Print, I was very excited to see my own personal book, with my beautiful kids (yes, I know I am biased J) smiling at me from every page.
Sometimes, it is really nice to be a tester, and even better to be the first tester. Today was just one of those days â¦
It won't be long until it's time to celebrate the one year anniversary for this blog. We originally started this to provide an inside look into SharedBook: our people, how we work together, the projects we're launching, etc. Since then, you've been been hearing from our management team on a regular basis, as well as some of our developers, and a guest blogger or two from time to time.
With the anniversary date fast approaching, it seems like a good time to ask what you might be interested in learning more about. Please let us know if there is anything in particular that you would like us to cover regarding the concept of reverse publishing (Web to print), our business, the market opportunity, Web 2.0 technologies in general. You name it. Just let us know.
So I'm ever conscious of the lingo that people acquire as part of their work. I wrote about learning the lingo back in August.
One very important term (and even more important concept) is what we call "Global Navigation." Is this some kind of GPS? OK, I exaggerate.
I guess the term Navigation is well know by people. The term "Global Navigation" applies to any of the navigation for a site that appears globally on every single page of the site. "Home" is the most common global navigation element. Everyone has one on every page in their site.
What seems to be less known is the absolute rule for global navigation - keep it consistent. It seems that a common mistake for Information Architects is that they take each page in a site and design it as it stands alone. This means that quite commonly the global navigation of the site changes position, contents, look or even all three.
Perhaps this yields very smart looking individual pages. Maybe it allows different sections of their site to have a different look and feel to suit a different marketing segment.
But the bad side to it is that it confuses users. When designing an entire site, there is a very critical item that must be kept in mind. Users won't know exactly where things on your site are. As a matter of fact, they likely won't even know if your site has what they are looking for. Users will look around, try different things to find what they are looking for. Most of the time they won't find it and so they will want to try another option. Imagine what it's like if the options keep moving around the page, or magically appearing and disappearing from page-to-page.
I always think of it like this. Suppose someone came to your house and reorganized everything. It's always great to have a tidy home and you might be thrilled. But when you first go to your dresser to find the right clothes to wear you might not know which drawer to look in. Imagine that you start with the first drawer and open it. You don't find what you are looking for, but you notice that all of the other drawers have suddenly changed their places. You then try to open the second drawer and the first drawer moves somewhere else. How confusing would it be?
Chris Anderson started an interesting discussion re: the media business model recently (based around a core of free or almost-free content) that included some of Fred Wilson's thoughts. We were pleased to see that Michael Cader added alternate output to the mix and mentioned SharedBook.
I am filling in for Caroline who was invited to present at Gridley & Company's 7th Annual Information, Marketing, Financial Technology and Internet Services Conference today. Gridley is a boutique investment bank that provides financial advisory services to companies in the Information Services industry. More than 350 senior level executives are expected to attend the event, representing 240 different public and private companies and private equity firms. Caroline will be delivering an overview on SharedBook early this afternoon.
