Sunday, 20 September 2009

Change to "Potential Buddy" emails

After receiving a few complaints from users who'd received a large number of match alerts via email, it became clear that we'd not done enough to clarify the preferences section of the goal registration. We're working on a better way of helping users understand this function, but meantime, we've acted on a suggestion we received via email from someone who wanted to help. They suggested we send a daily digest email and list the matches all together. I know, I know it's so simple! I can't believe we missed it, but we did. A few days ago, this was put live and we sincerely hope it helps users feel more comfortable with the site.

Thanks to everyone who continues to email great feedback. 

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Posted by comotivate at 2:31 PM in Announcing site updates
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Sunday, 6 September 2009

Feedback drives more enhancements

Thanks to a surge in traffic generated by a review at Springwise here: http://bit.ly/17SjDi there were also a lot more people getting in touch with feedback.

Several people complained about a lack of clarity and orientation on the site. I think this is justified and we're looking at ways of improving this intuitive level of understanding.

I also received 6 requests from people who felt overwhelmed with buddy match emails. Clearly, we've not made it obvious enough how you manage your alerts to ensure you only get told about the best matches. These 6 people were asking to have their accounts closed and were very polite. I thought it was important to honour that request immediately especially since they'd highlighted a bug in the system which was preventing them from doing it themselves! (this is now fixed.) I tried to reply to them as soon as possible and with empathy and I was thrilled that many of them wrote back with encouraging words and some additional suggestions on how to improve the user experience. As a result we will be implementing daily digest format emails to manage the match alerts within the next week or so.

In the meantime, if you are receiving too many email alerts informing you of matching buddies, log-in to your homepage; go the the right hand sidebar and click on 'amend goal'. Scroll down to the 'preferences' section and make an adjutment to the value that triggers an email.

 

 

Posted by comotivate at 12:54 PM in Announcing site updates
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Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Re-development

Apologies for the lack of updates and for how quiet things are at the moment. We're still working hard behind the scenes to bring added functionality to the site in preparation for a re-launch before the end of the year. We've had awesome feedback from people who love the concept and we want to bring some better tools to help users keep to their commitments.

You can follow our progress on twitter @comotivate if you wish.

Posted by comotivate at 8:09 AM in Announcing site updates
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Friday, 3 April 2009

New features on their way

A whole range of enhancements are being worked on at the moment including:

- Clearer progress tool adjustment settings

- Geo-tagging to provide the opportunity for meet-ups

- Easier video uploads

- Quicker goal registration

- More High5s awarded based on user activity

- Messenger chat and video chat

- Easier to view profiles of team buddies

- Better user journey on sign-up

We'll let you know when they'll be live and at that point give you a better idea of the next wave of enhancements and new features. If there are things we need to know that would make the sitebetter for you, please get in touch. Send an email to listener at comotivate.com - we reply personally to every email and take every criticism squarely on the chin!

Posted by comotivate at 6:09 AM in Announcing site updates
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Sunday, 25 January 2009

Video tutorials

I'm considering filming a series of vide tutorials to help users feel more confident navigating the site. Please add to the list below:

1) What makes comotivate special - a sort of 'why bother' overview

2) How to buddy-up and what to look for

3) Team owners - how they come to be and what they do

4) How to send messages and blog your progress

5) How to leave a team

6) How to select progress tools

Posted by comotivate at 9:44 PM in Announcing site updates
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Sunday, 4 January 2009

New site features

With the new release comes several new features to enhance user engagement:

- High5's: awarded by your team buddies to become your badge of honour. The more you collect, the more you'll be reveared as an achiever. You get 5 a week to give away and can only give 2 to the same buddy each week.

- TAB: a measure of how active a team is, the higher the score, the more active they are.

- video clips to help inspire and motivate

- a demonstration / tour video to help new users understand the site

More to follow... 

 

Posted by comotivate at 10:36 AM in Announcing site updates
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Monday, 10 November 2008

TAB launches

A new release of the site went live last week and I'm really excited about it because it allows us to show the most motivated teams. We've created a currency for the site that is based on engagement. One other metric will go live before the end of the year as well. But for now TABs show us a quantifiable measure of how well the team is interacting. The TAB score is made up of several measures taken from the Team Area and the formula isn't exactly rocket science...but it should be a nice motivator for teams.

Also we're now featuring new joiners on the home page...I wish more would upload a photo.

More site upgrades coming soon.

Posted by comotivate at 2:27 PM in Announcing site updates
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Sunday, 5 October 2008

Feedback driving site enhancements

I am going to make the registration process simpler to allow people to create a homepage prior to selecting their goal. The homepage will change a bit again as well. I'd hoped that people would like the simplicity, but I've had to accept that a lot of people want it and expect it to look 'smarter'....I guess it's not obvious just how many smarts there are in the site from the current homepage.
Posted by comotivate at 3:07 AM in Announcing site updates
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Thursday, 18 September 2008

New site goes live...at last!

Well it took me longer than I wanted to get this sorted, but the development team have done a great job in getting the new site ship shape and live. We can now start promoting it properly with confidence in the user experience.

Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on the site.

New features include:

Greater browsing functionality so you can see teams and buddies for each goal

More images

More explanatory feeds to help people understand their potential

Smoother team creation process

Clearer feed differentiation so users now have their team feeds seperated from their personal feed on their homepage

We look forward to getting more feedback - listener at comotivate dot com

 

Posted by comotivate at 10:19 PM in Announcing site updates
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Sunday, 10 August 2008

congratulations Pav

The world's best reason to stop work and cry with happiness just resulted in our Pav becoming a dad for the first time. A little boy that still needs a name. Congratulations Pav and Sara.

Posted by comotivate at 12:36 AM in Announcing site updates
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Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Functionality changes

Well that was a fun 5 days I've just spent with my head buried up my own backside figuring out the best way to tackle some of the Buddy Up functions on the site! It's resulted in a whole new spec document of 37 pages just to cover the New Buddies interactions, a seperate document detailing the 20 odd different feed notifications and another one to cover off the 52 different emails!

The expectation is that the more complex the spec, the more intuitive it should make the user experience...time will tell. But please bear with us while these chnages are made. It might be another 4 weeks because the lead developer will become a dad any day now!

Posted by comotivate at 7:31 AM in Announcing site updates
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Thursday, 10 July 2008

Updates delayed

Unfortunately, we've had a delay in getting the latest updates approved and put live. They will now go live in two stages: the first is now scheduled for 11th July, the second will be a couple of days after that. Apologies - you know what it's like though - right?
Posted by comotivate at 2:16 AM in Announcing site updates
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Thursday, 3 July 2008

Site updates expected 8th July

We've been working on some enhancements to fix the last remaining bugs and make for a better user experience. There will be a bit more browsing enabled on the site and the addition of thumbnails should make it better too.

All suggestions gratefully received...

Posted by comotivate at 6:30 AM in Announcing site updates
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Friday, 20 June 2008

updates to site scheduled 22 June

Thanks to plenty of early users in the first two weeks, we've been able to refine a lot of the functionality and de-bug the site.

Pretty soon, we'll implement the following enhancements:

Explanatory link for new users to understand how to register

More meaningful Get Fit registration fields

Progress tools display numerical values

Delete matching buddies automatically once invites are sent

Better views of match criteria in matching buddies

better explanation of Preferences on edit details page

Posted by comotivate at 6:25 AM in Announcing site updates
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Tuesday, 10 June 2008

Site improvements announced here

I'll try and make sure I announce new site enhancements here so people know what's going on and how things are developing.

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Posted by comotivate at 5:30 AM in Announcing site updates
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