Our CEO, James Gray, chats to us live from Taopix HQ, in the UK, about the hotly anticipated latest software release from Taopix Version 5 and Taopix Mobile.
James, congratulations on the launch of your very latest software release, what can we expect from Taopix Version 5?
I’m delighted to announce the launch of Taopix Version 5 with Taopix available on mobile for the first time. Taopix Version 5 represents a completely new generation of photo personalisation software and includes the brand new Taopix Mobile, our mobile-optimised web app and an updated version of Taopix Online, our HTML5 based designer. We’ve concentrated on designing new interfaces and seamless user journeys.
Our aim, to evolve Taopix into a device-agnostic platform, has meant that we have opened the platform up to a much wider audience; giving our customers the ability to offer a wider range of products and services to a broader spectrum of users, locations and situations. Right from the very beginning with Taopix, we’ve always focussed on giving businesses operating within photo gift retail the flexibility to ensure that they can sell what they want, how they want, when they want. And with the end consumer, our aim is to ensure they can go through the design and order process in as few clicks as possible.
We’ve invested a lot of time and resource on user feedback, testing and enhancing the user journey to ensure we provide both our customers and the end consumer the very best possible experience. Our customers consist of businesses who want to brand and customise the Taopix platform and use it to sell personalised photo gifts and books. We’ve concentrated on adding and refining features to the user journey that encourage consumers to spend more online and therefore make a real difference to our customer’s bottom line. These include optimised workflows for single prints, wall art, calendars, cards, themed books, quick books and ready books which allow consumers to order from their mobile or their tablet device in just a few clicks.
We've looked to make a number of new features and enhancements across both our Online and Desktop applications to ensure that we're adding real value which can have a positive impact our customers' bottom line. For both Taopix Online and the launch of new Taopix Mobile, we have looked at how consumers want to create and buy single prints, quick books, ready books and simple photo gifts on their tablet and mobile devices and ensured that they are able to do this in as few clicks as possible. For any business using the Taopix platform this means they can offer their customers a choice of products across a range of devices. With our flexible wizard tools our customers can create a product once and set it up for Taopix Online, Mobile and even Desktop in a few quick clicks. In addition to this we’ve ensured we include powerful upsell tools across the whole platform.
How important is it for your business customers to capture the mobile and tablet market?
It’s highly important that those who want to capture the ecommerce market provide an offering which appeals to mobile and tablet users too. Online shoppers are increasingly using tablet and mobile devices to make purchases and engage with eCommerce. Given the relatively high buying penetration within these channels – particularly as adoption of devices continues to increase – it has never been so important for retailers to ensure they are at the forefront of m-commerce strategies. And industry statistics show us that this figure is only set to increase further.
Why was it important to have seamless user journeys for mobile and tablet?
In our market, the key to making high volumes of sales on mobile devices is to offer the right types of products and to create a buying experience that is fast and easy. Sounds obvious, but when the product traditionally involves spending time on creative and personalisation tasks, that can become a challenge if the user is provided with multiple personalisation options and so we concentrated on creating a series of product specific user journeys.
The right type of personalised photo gift is one where minimal creative input is required from the consumer – we find that the more opportunity you give a user to get creative with a product the more this increases the time they spend on it (even if they didn’t intend to or aren’t creative), and the more time a mobile user spends on creating a product increases the likelihood that they will abandon it before completing the purchase. Taopix Mobile is therefore designed for products such as canvases, posters, calendars, pre-designed books and Single Prints. To ensure those users don’t get sucked into lots of decisions about the appearance of their product, the Taopix mobile and tablet user interfaces are designed to give the user only what they need at a particular point in the process, and only the features that we think are critical for them to create a product they are happy with.'
Why is the addition of a seamless user journey for single prints important?
Single prints is an important focus for some of the many Taopix businesses operating within the photo retail space and we know from research that the way in which consumers want to order single prints, particular on their mobile and tablet, is different from how they might want to create and customise a personalised photo gift. With the new Taopix Online Single Prints workflow we’ve designed and created a workflow that allows consumers to order multiple sets of prints at different sizes in just a few clicks, whilst on their mobile or tablet device.
Thanks James – nice talking to you!
If you'd like to talk to us about our new V5 platform, please get in touch, we'd be happy to chat about how Taopix could work for your business.