Last Christmas, this service was already running fine, but after that, we have made over 1000 improvements to the service. Don't worry, I am not going to list them all here, (but I would like to tell you how much effort we have made to improve your experience in this service). In this post, I will highlight just six big things that will delight most of our users.
1. Faster service
We have improved the responsiveness and the speed of the service to all our users by taking into use a global proxy service. In practice, that means that our public data (html, stylesheet an javascripts) are located in tens of big computer rooms in internet connection hubs around the globe. So part of the data that your web browser will ask from us is closer to you, and will thus come to your browser more quickly. We have also minimized all the files and cleaned up our pages. All of this has led to this service being faster than 94% of websites (Pingdom test result, tested from Stockholm on 9.11.2015). We are quite proud of that! We hope that you will enjoy it too!
2. Add wishes more easily from anywhere
Another big thing that we have been tuning a lot is our bookmarklet that makes it a snap to add items to your wishlist from any web page. Bookmarklets are not very common so let me explain a bit more how it works and why it is so great that we have used lot of time to hone it. Basically, the bookmarklet is just an additional button in your web browser. When you click that button, you call WishSimply to scan the web page you are on. WishSimply will then show a pop-up window that presents the main topic of that page, so that you can easily add it to your wishlist. It will try to find the name, price and image from the page so that you don't need to type them; instead, you just click the save button if and when everything looks good. Installing the bookmarklet is a breeze - it is as simple a bookmarking a web page. Go to our bookmarket page and drag it your browser to be able to add anything to your wishlists easily.
3. Surprise the list owner
We have added two new options to wishlists so that people making their own lists have even more control over them. First of all, we have added a 'Surprise me' functionality. If the list owner turns that option on, the wishsimply service won't show to or notify the list owner when something from her/his list is acquired so that what people have actually picked from the list will remain a surprise. That information is only visible to the other people who are invited to see the list.
4. Public lists
The other new option is to make the list public. In that case, you just share the link in social media or in your blog. Public lists only show the items you have listed, not any event details. With public lists, it is not possible to track what other people are acquiring, but anybody can see your wishes in the nice card format that WishSimply offers. We also offer the possibility to embed the list in your own web page with very modest reference to the source.
5. Co-Admin
We have also introduced a co-admin feature for lists. This means that the list owner can share list management work with somebody else. For example, mom and dad can now administrate jointly the children's Christmas or birthday lists, or the best man and/or bride's maid can help to manage the wedding gift registry, or anything else you can invent. Both the administrator and co-admin can add wishes, invite guests and update basic information such as the event place & date.
6. Mobile pages
The last thing I will highlight in this post is our new mobile pages. The world is moving with a scary speed to using mobile devices… Just a few years ago, this service was planned as a desktop site, then we made mobile apps (and told users that use them since the web service didn’t look good in mobile browsers), and after a while we made the public side of the web site responsive and work well with mobile devices. The pages behind the login we didn’t make responsive (as it was not good enough solution), but we made completely separate mobile pages that are optimized for small screens. So now I think that our mobile offering is quite top notch. If you have an iPhone or Android device, we would still recommend downloading our mobile app. It is faster and enables push messages (if you like). However, if you don’t have an iPhone or Android device, or you just don’t want to install one more app, then you can just login to the service and it will give you the same experience as the mobile app. Still, even in this mobile era I want to highlight our desktop site also. There you have the most of the screen space available and managing even a big list is easy as you can see everything at once. Simple, easy and fun!
Over 1000 improvements in a year
1. Faster service
We have improved the responsiveness and the speed of the service to all our users by taking into use a global proxy service. In practice, that means that our public data (html, stylesheet an javascripts) are located in tens of big computer rooms in internet connection hubs around the globe. So part of the data that your web browser will ask from us is closer to you, and will thus come to your browser more quickly. We have also minimized all the files and cleaned up our pages. All of this has led to this service being faster than 94% of websites (Pingdom test result, tested from Stockholm on 9.11.2015). We are quite proud of that! We hope that you will enjoy it too!
2. Add wishes more easily from anywhere
Another big thing that we have been tuning a lot is our bookmarklet that makes it a snap to add items to your wishlist from any web page. Bookmarklets are not very common so let me explain a bit more how it works and why it is so great that we have used lot of time to hone it. Basically, the bookmarklet is just an additional button in your web browser. When you click that button, you call WishSimply to scan the web page you are on. WishSimply will then show a pop-up window that presents the main topic of that page, so that you can easily add it to your wishlist. It will try to find the name, price and image from the page so that you don't need to type them; instead, you just click the save button if and when everything looks good. Installing the bookmarklet is a breeze - it is as simple a bookmarking a web page. Go to our bookmarket page and drag it your browser to be able to add anything to your wishlists easily.
3. Surprise the list owner
We have added two new options to wishlists so that people making their own lists have even more control over them. First of all, we have added a 'Surprise me' functionality. If the list owner turns that option on, the wishsimply service won't show to or notify the list owner when something from her/his list is acquired so that what people have actually picked from the list will remain a surprise. That information is only visible to the other people who are invited to see the list.
4. Public lists
The other new option is to make the list public. In that case, you just share the link in social media or in your blog. Public lists only show the items you have listed, not any event details. With public lists, it is not possible to track what other people are acquiring, but anybody can see your wishes in the nice card format that WishSimply offers. We also offer the possibility to embed the list in your own web page with very modest reference to the source.
5. Co-Admin
We have also introduced a co-admin feature for lists. This means that the list owner can share list management work with somebody else. For example, mom and dad can now administrate jointly the children's Christmas or birthday lists, or the best man and/or bride's maid can help to manage the wedding gift registry, or anything else you can invent. Both the administrator and co-admin can add wishes, invite guests and update basic information such as the event place & date.
6. Mobile pages
The last thing I will highlight in this post is our new mobile pages. The world is moving with a scary speed to using mobile devices… Just a few years ago, this service was planned as a desktop site, then we made mobile apps (and told users that use them since the web service didn’t look good in mobile browsers), and after a while we made the public side of the web site responsive and work well with mobile devices. The pages behind the login we didn’t make responsive (as it was not good enough solution), but we made completely separate mobile pages that are optimized for small screens. So now I think that our mobile offering is quite top notch. If you have an iPhone or Android device, we would still recommend downloading our mobile app. It is faster and enables push messages (if you like). However, if you don’t have an iPhone or Android device, or you just don’t want to install one more app, then you can just login to the service and it will give you the same experience as the mobile app. Still, even in this mobile era I want to highlight our desktop site also. There you have the most of the screen space available and managing even a big list is easy as you can see everything at once. Simple, easy and fun!
Cheers,
WishSimply