Quantifying Success

Posted by Brett Folkert on Friday, November 09, 2007

The site has launched and we're in the post launch scramble to fix bugs, improve performance and handle issues that come up. From a technical perspective, the launch went off even smoother than we had hoped. There were a few fairly significant issues in the early hours of launch, but nothing that delayed the launch or that we couldn't fix shortly afterwards. At last count, we have something like 100 open issues that we're working through, only a handful of which are truly "critical" status and those are getting handled quickly.

By comparison, the last major redesign launch of Quixtar.com happened three years ago and was by all accounts extremely challenging technically. I was not here at that time, but I've heard the horror stories and still have to pore over the remaining legacy code at times. In the previous launch we needed to do 42 production builds in the first month of launch just to get bug fixes out and keep the site stable. This week we've only done 1-2 builds thus far and things are continually getting better.

So from a technical standpoint, the launch was a huge success. Now comes the hard part though. How do you quantify the success of the launch from the standpoint that counts: yours? Will the new site help you to better build your business? Will it make retailing easier for your customers and prospects? Is it making your job as an IBO easier? This is where you come in. Your feedback, now and in the future, is crucial to ensure the site meets your business needs and truly succeeds where it matters most.

So did we succeed? You tell us.

Comments

# Bridgett said on November 9, 2007 at 12:09 PM:

Brett, I still do not think this site is customer (retail) focus AT ALL. Before even logging in, the VISITOR is hit with the Business Opportunity, hard. You promote the Business Opportunity so boldly on the front page--the right 1/3 of the page is dedicated to the Biz Opp. At least that area goes away when a CUSTOMER logs in, but they see it before they log in. And, you still have "Start A Business" up in the top menu, rather than at the bottom. Of course there's a business opportunity. Someone doesn't need to be told that, if I'm selling them a product. And, quite frankly, I don't want to offer the business opportunity to all my customers. Oh, shocking!! ;-) If there are any thoughts to get rid of the Personal Websites, because of the new quixtar.com design, I'd like to put in my two cents and say, keep them AND expand on them--hook up the Partner Stores as an OPTION.

# Bridgett said on November 9, 2007 at 12:11 PM:

But, aside from the non-retail focused aspect, the new site is beautiful and very navigatable. =)

# Brett Folkert said on November 9, 2007 at 2:35 PM:

Bridgett, thanks for the honest feedback. It's appreciated and it will get passed on.

# Jeffrey said on November 9, 2007 at 3:06 PM:

I agree with Bridgett, especially about the personal websites, and would like to add a couple thoughts.

The personal retail websites need to be just that--our complete store. Everything needs to be on there, or at least available. The Quixtar site should be for IBOs and the retail sites should be for customers. There should be no reason for a customer to ever log into the Quixtar site. I wish you guys would realize how dumb it looks when we talk to someone about owning an e-commerce site, then telling them that the retail websites are only for specialty marketing. If this business wants to transform, the changes are going to have to start coming faster then they're coming.

It really riles me that one of my customers can go into Quixtar and shop, and if they don't log in properly, get assigned to the nearest Platinum. I think it is a bunch of baloney and it needs to be fixed now. The nearest Platinum to me is a Diamond and I don't really appreciate him stealing my customers, aided and abetted by the company.

# Tracy said on November 9, 2007 at 7:43 PM:

Brett: Looks good and everyone I have spoken with are excited!

Those of us that have been around a little while see a challenge, both in Quixtar and SN. Someone that we are acquainted with goes to either site, is interested, decides to purchase and do not know/understand the IBO relationship, simply signs on and purchases something. Where does this volume go? Who has them added to their customer list? You all think you have a brand challenge, think the challenge the IBO has. How about a focus group or a survey that checks how many folks per 1000 knows what an IBO is!

# Elijah said on November 10, 2007 at 1:18 AM:

the new site looks great and the launch seemed pretty smooth from this end to. A couple of suggestions though, I dont think people should be able to order without having an IBO's number and do you think we could make an link to enlarge the pictures of products, most sites have this option so you can get a closer look. If i find any other suggestions ill let you know.

# Elijah Hilliker said on November 10, 2007 at 1:26 AM:

I was just thinking to that on some pages (for example the partner store landing page) there is a lot of unused space where more partner banners could be placed or whatever. Just seems like why not use that space to promote more stores right up front, its only going to help them and us. There are other pages to like the IBO home page that has lots of open space under the rotating ad. How about email, is there some reason why IBO's couldn't have a quixtar email address to use on their business cards like johndoe@quixtar.com or whatever? I could probably talk all night about ideas but it seems these would help every IBO greatly and they wouldnt have to use seperate email for their business.

# Elijah Hilliker said on November 10, 2007 at 1:28 AM:

why is the fuel system cleaner in the B2B section instead of the automotive section with the engine oil and other car care products

# Mario Gil said on November 10, 2007 at 2:54 AM:

Hello

I'm a IBO, but I'm also a web programmer with more than 8 years of experience in high traffic eCommerce sites, and let me congratulate you for this astronomical challenge you faced with this smooth transition. We programmers know it doesn't exist such thing as a transparent migration, but yours really amazed me.

As a coder, I tend to test my own code by "throwing stones" to it just to see if it breaks, usually by changing my programmer's mask to an user's mask and doing those incredible things only users do that programmers never think somebody would ever think to do. ;-)

Anyway, and because I couldn't resist that bad habit on me, I threw some stones to your new and flamboyant website and found some minor bugs, glitches and issues. These are some of them:

* Overall Low Speed: Although it looks lighter in design, the new site is definitively slower. It takes quite long to load some pages, from 4 to 8 seconds for the Products pages (products/thumbnail.aspx) to up to 20 seconds for the Cart (Order/Cart/default.aspx), at least on Firefox 2.0.0.9.

By the way, I think that embedded coremetrics.com thingy is really taking a toll on the performance, you may need to consider getting rid of it.

* Shopping List Details: it says "TEST Shopping List" in the page's title (Order/List/list.aspx)... TEST?

Also, it says "Order Details" in the header of the table. Wasn't this page for showing the details of a shopping list?

In this same page, after clicking "Add Multiple Items" the popping up window reads "Add to Cart"... cart?, order?, shopping list?... OMG, average Joes just started jumping off from the business' cliff (like lemmings), technology is so mean with them..... (sarcasm here ;-) )

Finally, while all columns are being shown in IE, only three appear in Firefox (Price, Qty, Total Price). Why do you discriminate geeks?. Also, it'd be nice to add totals to every one of the columns at the end of the table.

* Non-IE Browsers: You may need to check other browsers' compatibility. I use Firefox (don't blame me, I'm just as geek as you guys are), and what looks as pretty as Scarlett Johanson in IE, ends looking as tacky as Britney Spears in Firefox, and even worst, as nauseous as Courtney Love in Opera. I hate Macs so I don't care how it looks in Safari.

* Español: Si no puedes leer esto, entonces entenderás la necesidad que es tener las partes importantes del sitio web, incluyendo la navegación y los menús, completamente traducidos al Español, no solamente la parte de arriba donde te dice Hola ... | Salir |, porque

hay más de 20 millones de latinos en este país que son candidatos potenciales a construir este negocio y que no lo harán simplemente porque no entienden lo que se les dice en el sitio web. Por favor no los dejen fuera de esta oportunidad. Gracias.

* Password changing bug?: I logged in as IBO myself, created an account for a customer friend of mine, printed temporary password, logged out, my friend logged in to his new account, new password asked, when submitting changes a pop up windows appeared warning him he was about to change the password of my IBO account, clicked Cancel, his password changed successfully, mine was never touched, something buggy occurred here.... all happened in the same PC, within just seconds and using Firefox.

* My IBO's PV/BV information. Why can't I hide it anymore?. Now I refrain from logging in when my downlines are around, in order to prevent them from seeing my personal level. Is any hiding/unhiding option coming back soon?

Ok guys, I finished my first report of beta testing. I hope somebody hear me, I'll keep posting.

Kind regards,

Mario Gil

IBO

"...success is a decision taken with faith"

# Ben said on November 11, 2007 at 4:15 PM:

I think in the old site when we were looking up a customer's order in pv/bv inquiry, we were able to see info like the retail profit for the order and also the extra 20% pv uplift. Now in the new site, we have to go to sales activity and reporting. Can this information be included in the pv/bv inquiry so we won't have to go to sales activity?

Thank you!

# Brett Folkert said on November 12, 2007 at 10:22 AM:

Mario, that was incredible - you def. have a QA streak in you! Some random comments in no particular order:

Spanish support - I want it, you want it, in my opinion it's definitely a slam dunk decision but unfortunately I have not heard a timeline for its implementation. I know it's being talked about but that's the extent of my knowledge. I'll see if I can find out anything else.

Performance - the new site is definitely heavier in terms of graphics. I think the home page alone represented 4x the previous download size over the old. While the coremetrics code does not affect server performance, it will add overhead on your browser. If it's becoming noticeable and others are complaining we'll def. have to re-evaluate its implementation.

Browser compatibility - We fully support IE 6+ and FF 2.0 on the PC. Are you talking mostly aesthetics or actual functionality? I'm not a designer so I can only comment so much. I also heard late last week that support for Safari and Firefox on the Mac is coming but I don't have a date on when it will be fully supported yet. I will keep people posted as I learn more.

# john bedard said on November 14, 2007 at 10:46 PM:

I like the new site. However, whenever something gets improved, sometimes the improvments don't fit my personal style. I print orders for my file. Adding the pictures of the product to the order is taking up a lot more paper. Can you make the pictures optional?

# E. Rod. said on November 20, 2007 at 12:01 AM:

Hi Brett,

Found another bug/glitch. It seems that not all the products are not yet visible online. For example, if you do a search on "toothbrush" you only get the glister toothbrush and nothing else. If you do a search for "gum" the whitening gum doesn't even show up. However, if you were to put in the sku # let's say for the kids' toothbrushes on p.60 of the options catalog - it comes up. The crumbs tell you it should be found in the Beauty & Personal Care > Oral Health > Toothbrushes and Floss section. The last category "Toothbrushes and Floss" is nowhere to be found. You can click all the way to the Oral Care section only to find that all the products on p.60 of the Options catalog are not there. Any way that this can be fixed? worried that other products that should be easily found may be missing from the site as well.

# Sriram said on November 20, 2007 at 1:53 PM:

I was very happy to discover this blog where I can communicate directly with the techies behind the site. I really enjoy reading this blog, being a Business Systems Analyst myself.

Anyways, there seems to be a mismatch in the PV/BV information displayed on the IBO Home Page and the PV/BV Inquiry. (Or atleast I cannot comprehend the info being displayed)

MY PERSONAL PV/BV MY AWARDED PV

PV: X APV: Y

BV: Z BONUS: W%

I had assumed that the APV was the total Group PV. But since that doesn't seem to be the case (APV is the group PV sans personal PV), shouldn't the Group PV be then the sum of X & Y above. That doesn't seem to be the case as well. (X + Y) seem to be greater than the group PV.

This seems very confusing. Can this be looked at? If there is more to it, some sort of explanation might be helpful as well.

Also, the ability to hide the PV/BV display or no PV/BV displayed by default on the Home Page would be a good option. Since the new policy recommends that IBOs login to their account while registering new IBOs or clients, this is not very desirable.

Thanks.

Sriram

What

# Sriram said on November 20, 2007 at 2:02 PM:

As a contiuation of my previous comment, I realized what the bug is with respect to the PV/BV display on the home page. The Personal BV and the APV values are swapped.

For e.g What is displayes currently

MY PERSONAL PV/BV MY AWARDED PV

PV: X APV: Y

BV: Z BONUS: W%

should actually be

MY PERSONAL PV/BV MY AWARDED PV

PV: X APV:Z

BV: Y BONUS: W%

Probably this was already noticed and work is being done on this. As we approach the end of the month, frequent quick peeks @ the PV/BV info on the home page is very important.

# TWS said on November 20, 2007 at 5:36 PM:

The option to hide pv/bv on IBO home page is a must. Hidden should be the default with the IBO simply clicking to do a quick check on volume. (Like it was prior to the new launch.)

thanks

# Sriram said on November 20, 2007 at 7:03 PM:

Thanks for the fast response, Steve. Good to know that the fix is underway. This really helps during the last few days of the month!!

# Sriram said on November 21, 2007 at 2:06 PM:

Thanks for the fix (PV/BV display on the home page), Quixtar techies! Good Job!!

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About Brett Folkert

Occuption
I am a Software Architect at Quixtar. The nature of my job and our environment means I have to be fluent in many disparate technologies on a daily basis. I like to think of it as "controlled chaos". I constantly strive to improve our architecture and ensure that wherever possible the underlying technology is transparent to our users. You probably won't notice my handiwork unless you look at the system design, but behind the scenes a lot of thought and hard work goes into making the site perform to our standards.

Background
My IT experience prior to Quixtar was primarily in consulting. I have worked with the U.S. Navy, dotcom startups and Fortune 500 companies. I consulted for Amway in years past (technical lead on GBISLink) before joining the team here at Quixtar. I hold both Master's and Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science. My thesis on neural networking/satellite imagery was published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing.

Interests
I have passions for wine, mountain biking and ancient history. If you want to discuss Cicero over a fine Bordeaux, look no further. I'm also married with two precocious daughters whom I adore. As if work and family weren't enough to keep me busy, I'm also attending law school in the evening.

Code Review

A lot of this job is mental.

Quantifying Success

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