SpaBoom New Features

Dashboard shows it all at a glance

You can now get a quick pulse check of your online marketing efforts just by clicking on the Reports tab. The Dashboard quickly shows this year's Instant Gift Certificate sales compared to last year, email campaign effectiveness, comparisons to your peers, and sources of website visitors.

You also see an average of your recent reviews, how many Instant Gift Certificate purchasers are out-of-state, and GC analysis, including the percentage of service-based GCs, emailed GCs, delayed email GCs and existing client purchasers.

It's easy to change your dashboard: just scroll down and click on the Setup button. You can add and remove report widgets and change the data they display.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, General • 4 Comments »

…tomorrow morning when you login to your SpaBoom account, you might notice a few missing items from your Setup tab menu — Events and Email Marketing.

Far be it from us to actually remove features from your toolbox; I think you know us better than that.  Some of our most powerful and favorite features deserve to be highlighted, so we're separating out and moving both Events and Email Marketing to their very own tab, called "Marketing".

So far, that is all that has changed, but in the future we have plans to add even more ways for you to connect with your customers and be an effective and successful business.  Let us know what you think, and how you'd like to see us expand our marketing offerings.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing • Comment »

As David mentioned in an earlier comment, you now have an additional report to display upcoming birthdays for clients with that information available.

Just go to the Reports tab, and scroll all the way down to the bottom for the "Marketing" reports — you'll see one called "Upcoming Birthdays."

The default view is any birthday in the next 30 days, but you can also choose the current calendar month, the next calendar month, or any particular month of the year.

What can you do with this report, other than gaze at its' loveliness?  Stay tuned, as we hook this report up with your other Marketing capabilities and allow you to easily collect the data and use it to give your clients new opportunities for gift-giving and enjoyment of your services.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 2 Comments »

You've asked for it, we've delivered — have your SpaBoom billing notifications and your Instant Gift Certificate emails go to two separate email accounts.

It's easy to set up — just go to the Setup tab and click on Billing on the left:

Notice how the default is to use your "business email" — that's the email listed with your business information in the Basics page.  Your Instant Gift Certificate notifications will always go to that address.  If you leave the default setting in the Billing screen above, your SpaBoom monthly bills will also go to the main business email from Basics.

However, uncheck the checkbox and you'll get a new field:

Fill in your alternate email address, whether you'd like it to go to you personally and have the main business email go to your manager, whatever configuration works best for you.

Let us know if you have questions, and enjoy the new functionality — we love making your life easier!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • Comment »

Here at SpaBoom we are constantly thinking about ways to help you and your business. Today we're turning our attention to your clients and how we can help you offer even more wonderful promotions!

We've long had the ability to capture your client's birthday, but we're expanding that to include the client's anniversary as well. And now that we're focusing on that, we want to know how to best serve you. We'll have the ability for new email newsletter subscribers to optionally and voluntarily provide this information, but would you like to offer them an incentive to do so? And if you do, what kind of incentive would offer them? Would you like to send a targeted email to those clients who have not yet provided this information to you with an easy way for them to do so? And, again, if so, what kind of incentive would you offer them, if any?

If you are already doing birthday and/or anniversary promotions, what are they are how are they working for you?

Are there other promotions you would like to see around birthdays and anniversaries? And for that matter, are there other important dates we need to capture?

Yes, these are a lot of questions, but we really want to make sure we provide you all the tools you need. We'll take your feedback and accommodate it as best as possible.

Thank you!

Posted in Creating Customers, SpaBoom New Features • 9 Comments »

We rolled out the ability for your clients to review both their experience with the Instant Gift Certificate process as well as your business as a whole. You can add those reviews to your website, show them off for all the world to see and even choose to not display the ones that might be inappropriate.

There is a long way between "showing" and "doing," however. What can the reviews give you to make your business better? Negative feedback!

When you log in to your SpaBoom account, we have been showing you a notice on your Today tab when you've recently received reviews. Now, we have added an extra head's-up if any of those reviews are either 1 or 2-star, ending the notification with, "and one of them needs your attention!"

It looks like this:

When you receive a less than stellar comment, it might be instinctive to flinch and just brush it aside. However, little can help your reputation and the happiness of your clients more than a quick and effective response to complaints that could indicate real problems with your business.

For example, when we check on the link to the reviews report from the example above, we see the following:

Uh-oh. It looks like Maggie is going to need a phone call to ensure she feels taken care of — otherwise it could be hard to convince her (or her friends, since the word will probably circulate at her next social gathering) that visiting your spa again would be an enjoyable experience. Luckily, because she signed in with her client account, you know how to get a hold of her, via email or phone.

What might happen if you got a negative review that was left anonymously? That depends on the review. Let's say it just says, "Your lobby is horribly smelly." Even if you don't know who left the review, you can still do a spot-check of the lobby and see if anything is a problem. If not, get a second opinion and then move on. Any negative review, anonymous or not, should at least garner a quick investigation to see if something can be improved.

In the business world, focus groups are created for the purpose of getting consumers to tell companies what they really think. Focus groups cost money, time, and are not easy to do for a small business — and with reviews, you have the opportunity to get the same kind of valuable information, while at the same time building your relationships with your customers and the local community.

Now, go forth and create some happy customers!

Posted in Tutorials, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management • 1 Comment »

If you are a SpaBoom client who also uses Harms Millennium, you might be missing a key tool that will make your business run more efficiently:

Harms Millennium Integration with SpaBoom!

We've had an integration tool for a little over a year now, and when Millennium 2008 was released, a new and much simpler installation process was also launched.  If you're already integrating, you know that you can avoid having to enter your SpaBoom gift certificates into your Millennium system — they are sent over automatically, into a special drawer that you designate.

If this tool is completely news to your ears — start by downloading the integration guide that Harms developed with us to walk you through the initial steps.

Then, give us a call and we'll help get the final steps taken care of for you.  Soon you'll be in Millennium bliss, only needing to log in to your SpaBoom account when you need to change administrative details or do things like set up email marketing campaigns.

Harms Millennium SpaBoom Integration Guide [PDF]

Posted in Tutorials, SpaBoom New Features • 3 Comments »

That may seem like a strange thing to say, but hear me out.

When YOU are looking at online reviews of a business you'd like to visit or a book you want to buy, doesn't it give you just a smidgen of doubt if every single entry is a 5-star glowing testimonial that sounds like their best friend… or their spouse… or their mother wrote it?  You find a dose of comforting reality in the business that has a 4 star average — from lots of 5s but a few 4s and 3s now and then.  Now you know exactly what I mean.

You might get reviews that are mixed, or less than perfect.  Embrace them.

As a business any amount of feedback you get from clients is pure gold, even if it does not appear shiny at first glance.

If you know the client who left the review, give them a call and thank them for their feedback.  Don't even mention the content.  If you don't know the client, consider the review — are there any nuggets of truth that could be addressed?  Perhaps they found the services wonderful but the wait time a little long.  If you were busy that day, of course that could have happened if bookings were going over their time frames.  Use the feedback to make your business better for the next client, and the next…

If the review is truly awful, the same followup procedures apply.  However, if you have ample reason to believe that the review was mean spirited without substance, you can choose to suppress it in your showcase reviews in SpaBoom –  just go to your Reviews Report, click on the date of the review in question, and use the checkbox "Hide this review."  You are only allowed to hide a few reviews, which gives you control over the quality of what appears on your site, while also allowing for your clients to express their opinions.

Enjoy this feature, but act as if each review is a gift from your clients and you'll continue to improve.

Posted in Tutorials, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management • 4 Comments »

Reviews, already up and running on SpaBoom, will be going live on Spa Emergency early next week. Now consumers looking for spa gifts on Spa Emergency will be able to view real feedback about your spas in the form of Reviews–a most helpful way for them to choose just the right spa!

What does this mean to you? If you're already listed on Spa Emergency and wish for reviews to show, do nothing. You're automatically opted-in.

If you'd rather not have your Reviews to show on Spa Emergency, then simply log in to your SpaBoom account, go into Setup, then Basics, scroll down to the Online Directories section and uncheck the checkbox next to Show reviews in listing.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, General • 2 Comments »

Last time, I showed you how to easily add your Reviews to your SpaBoom Dynamic website — its incredibly fast and most of the work is done for you, thanks to the design of our templates.

However, if you already have SpaBoom Instant Gift Certificates linked to your existing website, you can still join the party — we love for everyone to collect and show off their customers' comments, so here's part 2: how to add reviews to your existing website.

Wonder if you already have reviews out there?  Get a glimpse by logging into your SpaBoom account, and go to the Reports tab, then take a peek at the Reviews report.  You'll see any reviews you've collected so far, for a glimpse into what your customers think and how much they appreciate your services to them.

Ready?  You're all set to add the link to your website.  We have a great tutorial on the details in our Help section, titled "Reviews for Linked Websites".

Essentially you or your web designer will be adding a link to your website, just like you did when you added your Instant Gift Certificate link when you first signed up with us.   Easy, huh?  Promote this new and neat way to connect with your customers, and your business will surely keep booming!

Posted in Tutorials, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management • Comment »

Reviews, reviews.  We've talked a lot about them, first when we introduced them in October, and then again last month when announcing that we had collected over 30 thousand of them on your behalf!

Currently, the number stands at almost 42,000 - a fantastic opportunity for you to showcase your favorite clients and their feedback.

I will cover how to add Reviews to your Linked in website in Part 2, but first up:

If you have a hosted dynamic website with us, adding reviews to your Events sidebar and your navigation menu (see my handy illustration to the right) is easy, and we go over it in our new help document, called "Reviews for Dynamic Websites".  Yeah, we try not to be too tricky when naming help files - all the better for you to find them, of course.  If you've considered a dynamic website from us, this is yet one more reason to hop on the wagon - up-front showcasing of those great testimonials!

You can continue to see all of your reviews from the Reports tab, whether or not you display them on your site.  Use that report to keep track of any great comments, or even identify places where you can improve in the future.  After all, your clients will tell you exactly what they want, if you just let them, and that's what we are making available to both of you.

Let us know if you have great success stories or comments on the whole Reviews feature - we'd love to hear it!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Website Design • 7 Comments »

It is super-easy to backup your Dynamic Spa Website:

• Go to Website, Setup and click on "Settings".
• Under Tasks in the left sidebar, click "Create Website Backup".
• You can have up to 5 backups; once you get that many, the oldest one drops off.

If you need to for any reason, you can go back to Settings and Restore From Backup to put your website right back to where it was before.

So, how do you use this?

Any time you're going to make big changes to your site, just do a quick backup first. If you don't like the end result, you can be right back where you started in a couple of clicks, and avoid that "Oh, No!" feeling.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 2 Comments »

Starting in the late 40s and going into the 60s, the "Hollywood blacklist" consisted of directors, screenwriters, actors and musicians who couldn't get work because of their real or suspected political affiliations. Being placed on the blacklist was a death knell for a career.

These days, we're fighting a different kind of blacklist — those managed by companies like AOL, Yahoo!, Comcast, EarthLink and others. Once your company gets on the blacklist, it is almost as hard as a 1950s actor to get off. And, the results are similar: if you're blacklisted as a spammer, your email will not flow. With so much of our lives conducted online now, being blacklisted on the Internet is a serious blow to your business.

It's hard to blame these large Internet companies for being aggressive with spam. With spam accounting for 70.1% of all email in the U.S. in April 2008, consumers get very angry with their Internet company when they receive too much spam. Desperation is one word to describe the actions of these Internet companies — they are responsible for handling billions of emails every day, and every day it becomes harder to combat the spam.

How does your company become blacklisted? It's easier than you might think, if you send email:

• To someone you don't have a relationship with;
• When you haven't obtained permission from the recipient;
• When the person you're sending email to forgets they gave you permission, and reports your email as spam; or
• When the person you're sending email to shares their email account with someone else (i.e. a spouse), and that other person reports your email as spam.

This problem has gotten so bad that the anti-spam measures large Internet companies are starting gobble up legitimate email. For example, AT&T implemented new spam filters that deleted legitimate email, with no warning or notice to their customers.

So, email is losing its effectiveness as a marketing tool because it's easy to get blacklisted. Even if you're not blacklisted, most Internet companies are using aggressive spam filtering techniques which may be filtering much of your email — without telling you or otherwise giving you any clue what's happening on the Internet between you and your clients.

SpaBoom is trying to do its part by helping you stay off the blacklists. When a consumer purchases an IGC from you, they can "opt-in" to your email marketing. This "opt-in" is unchecked, and requires the consumer to check this box to actually opt-in. If you are using SpaBoom's newsletter feature and you import email addresses into the database (or you add new clients manually), SpaBoom will send a confirmation email to all imported email addresses, asking the recipient to verify they wanted to be added to your mailing list.

Yes, these new measures are aggressive and may reduce the overall size of your email lists contained within SpaBoom. They will, however, help ensure your business stays off the blacklists and that your email is more effective overall.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, General • 3 Comments »

SpaBoomers have been collecting reviews via Instant Gift Certificates since last October, now counting over 30,000 consumer reviews!

Today, they're a great way to get feedback on your spa. Every time you get a new review, it shows up on the Today page when you log in, and you can see your reviews in Reports, Reviews at any time. But, there's more to come!

Let's start by looking at why online reviews on sites like CitySearch and Yelp are so important. Just look at how Internet users use reviews (survey data from comScore):

• More than 75% cite online reviews as influential in their purchase decisions.
• 24% used online reviews before making a purchase decision for a service in the last three months.
• Purchasers are willing to spend at least 20% more for services that are top rated.
• 30% to 40% of review-informed purchasers will not purchase from a business with a 1 star rating.

But why make potential clients that have found you go searching for reviews? With such a big impact on your spa, we're working to help you harness reviews:

• We've recently changed Instant Gift Certificate reviews so that purchasers familiar with your spa can also review their overall experience with your business.
• In the near future, you'll be able to share your reviews on your website, if you desire.
• You'll also be able to garner reviews directly on your website (not just people purchasing Instant Gift Certificates).
• Unlike the reviews that appear in CitySearch, Yelp, etc., you'll have a greater degree of control and more fair approach to reviews of your spa.

How would you like to use reviews to help your spa?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 7 Comments »

In this age of nearly out of control spam (you have noticed how large your junk mail folder is in Yahoo or Hotmail, right?), taking steps to make sure that your own marketing practices are friendly and sustainable is a necessary part of online life.

The best way to stay in touch with your customers and prospects is to send them targeted messages letting them know what you're up to and what new benefits you can offer to them. However, sending those messages to recipients who really want to get them is the key to your success.

How do you make sure that your email list is full of great customers and leads? Simple — you ask them.

Here at SpaBoom we've made it easy for you to import your client list into your account so that email marketing is a snap. To keep your life simple, we did not — until recently — send confirmation emails to those imported contacts, but in reality they might not have known they would receive marketing emails from you. Spending your time on the smaller group of contacts who are truly interested will grow your spa's business wisely, creating your best customers both now and in the future.

Being great 'Net citizens means doing occasional spring cleaning on mailing lists, and that's what we are doing on Wednesday. We will send an opt-in email on your behalf to your imported clients, giving them a chance to voluntarily be included on all the best you have to offer.

Just to be clear, SpaBoom's free email newsletter feature is:

• A service to help you send announcement of promotions, events and special occasions to your client list.
• Not used for SpaBoom to market to your clients. SpaBoom never markets to your clients.
• Available to each client that SpaBoom can verify has "opted-in" to receive your mailings.
• Secure, in that SpaBoom always protects your customer data, even when a particular customer hasn't opted-in to receive your email newsletters.

Have a great rest of the week, and here's to finding — and keeping — valued clients!

Posted in Creating Customers, SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, Spa Business Management • 26 Comments »

Tip #4

Pick the luscious, low hanging fruit: Your clients already know and (hopefully) love you. However, they are not always thinking gift when they come to you for treatments. Tastefully remind them that you have a nice website with good information and instant gifts when they do visit, and they are likely to think of you the following week when they realize that their sister's birthday is today. You can do this for free by putting your website address and key features on every piece of your advertising, sales collateral and marketing material your clients see or hear.

One of the simplest and most popular features we offer to help is our "Instant POP" function. It is under the Setup tab when you log into SpaBoom. Instant POP (short for "point of purchase") are templates for 8.5 x 11 signs you can print for your business. We generally have several pre-built for holidays, birthdays and anniversaries but you can easily modify what we write or create your own from scratch. They automatically show your logo and web address. Our top sellers have at least seven pieces of POP in their stores.

Oh, and don't forget your voice mail message. The callers after closing on February 14^th are often looking for one thing. Tell them about your online gift program (in the first sentence, before they hang up). You will be that last minute buyer's Valentine too.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Marketing, Spa Business Management • Comment »

A lot of our Dynamic Spa Website themes have some sort of boundary — we thought it was time to break free with the new Floating theme. Open and airy, Floating is unrestricted by the lines and boxes that define many website designs.

See an example of the Floating theme. Like all SpaBoom Dynamic Websites, it's easy to choose your own color palette and photos, add new pages and customize to your heart's content.

If you're thinking about switching themes for your Dynamic, check out the great new feature we have in Website, Settings to "Create Website Backup". It's a great idea to make a backup any time you're going to make big changes to your site.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Website Design • 2 Comments »

Thank you to all those who had contributed comments — online or offline — regarding my previous blog post entitled A picture is worth 1,000 words. In that post, I asked for feedback on what sort of statistics would be useful to you and your business.

David has taken this feedback, and we have a prototype that's pictured at right. What do you think? (You can click on the image to see a closeup!)

In the Information Technology world, we call this a "dashboard." And the dashboard is comprised of many "widgets," a widget basically being a graphic chart that you can configure individually. The dashboard is meant to give you a quick, bird's eye view of the performance of your business and in particular, your Instant Gift Certificate sales.

Our intent is to deliver a default dashboard, you can modify as you think most appropriate, either by changing what each widget displays or by changing what widgets show up and where. For example, the line-graph in the upper-left of the prototype dashboard (above) is meant to represent monthly sales volume for the past 12 months, with last-year's sales data superimposed so you can see how you're doing this year versus last year. You may decide you only want to see the past 6 months, or you may not be interested in this year's sales in comparison to last year's sales.

Our intent is to also give you some baseline information that helps you assess how you're doing, relative to your peers. We're hoping this can provide some feedback to you and your business, so you know where you stand. We're learning here, so your comments and feedback are going to be very helpful. Take a look at the graph below (it's a blow-up of the upper-right widget in the dashboard above):

"Others Like You" means organizations that are in your state, of the same org type (i.e. other "salons" if you've told us you're a salon), and are within 5 employees (plus or minus) of you. Is that fair? Would this be valuable to you, to see how your sales and average GC price compares to others like you?

If you have a dynamic website with us, we also know where your traffic comes from. In answering a question from our previous post, we can create a pie-chart widget on traffic locations. Take a look:

What other widgets do you think would be helpful or interesting to your business? Are we on the right track?

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General • 2 Comments »

Did you know the money from your Instant Gift Certificate sales can go direct to your bank account — without additional cost from SpaBoom??!? This is a free service from us. (Note: If you use PayPal, there is an extra step involved before your money gets to your bank account).

If you consistently sell more than $1,000 a month in Instant Gift Certificate sales, you might want to consider integrating your SpaBoom account with an online merchant account. This is especially helpful during the holidays, when your online sales of Instant Gift Certificates goes through the roof!

There are a number of advantages to doing this, such as:

• Save time. You don't have to manually process each credit card with every sale.
• More secure. Since each credit card is immediately submitted to your merchant account upon each sale, the provisioning of an Instant Gift Certificate doesn't occur unless there is a successful credit card transaction. This means no one can print or email an Instant Gift Certificate, unless their credit card has been successfully processed. Also, the credit card companies will allow us to ask for the card code, when the credit card transaction is immediately forwarded to the merchant account. See the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for more information.
• Save money. The rate merchant account providers often talk about - and compete with - is the "qualified rate" (learn more about rates). The problem is, most merchant account providers won't give you a qualified rate when you cannot swipe the credit card, and some will default to a non-qualified rate (the worst available). You need to check with your merchant account provider for the specific details, but some will give you mid-qualified rates for Internet-based transactions when the card code is included.

The only downside to an online merchant account, is that no one will let you use your existing retail-based merchant account. You must obtain a new merchant account that is strictly for online sales. I recommend talking to your existing merchant account provider, and checking into the costs of an online merchant account. Then, compare what you're told with the options I present further below. Before I do, consider that you need to look at several factors when considering different merchant account providers:

• Your bank and your merchant account are two separate pieces. Most banks offer merchant account services, but you're by no means restricted to doing merchant account business with your bank.
• Compare ALL THE RATES: qualified, mid-qualified and non-qualified, for each merchant account provider. Get all the costs, including monthly, misc recurring costs and other fees - you may be surprised at how all of this adds up. Check out my merchant account analysis spreadsheet, discussed below.
• Look at the determining factors that decide which rate you're charged. If you're looking for just an online merchant account, make exactly sure what rate you'll be charged (i.e. some merchant account providers automatically assume all online credit card transactions are non-qualified).
• When considering an online merchant account, know that you need a payment gateway. It's the equivalent of your terminal in your store. SpaBoom is compatible with Authorize.net, and merchant account providers usually will provide you the gateway for an additional cost. Note that you can obtain the payment gateway yourself (more on this below).
• Use this opportunity to keep your existing retail merchant account provider honest. You may not be getting as great as a deal as you think you are, because the bulk of your transactions are being treated as mid-qualified. Or, your "introductory rates" have long since expired. I have personal experience in getting a lower rate, simply by threatening to leave. Don't sign long-term commitments, and seriously train yourself to switch merchant account providers as necessary to keep your rates as low as possible. You can save yourself thousands.
• Finally, if you're serious about this, I've prepared a spreadsheet to help you with your analysis. It gives you a view of several scenarios, based on your level of transaction volume. Assuming you know that, you can see an estimated monthly costs for each merchant account provider you're considering.

Assuming you are ready to take the plunge and obtain an online merchant account to interface with SpaBoom, you have only two major steps. First, obtain an online merchant account (with or/and a payment gateway) and second, let SpaBoom know about it. There are two merchant account options with SpaBoom: Authorize.net compatible or PayPal Web Payments Pro. Both of those links take you to detailed help information, with instructions on how to sign up (if you're interested) and connect them to SpaBoom. The Authorize.net option allows you to plug SpaBoom into just about anyone.

If you are considering a merchant account provider (other than the PayPal Web Payments Pro option), please make sure they are Authorize.net compatible. Most banks and merchant account providers should be, but not all are. I've heard of one unscrupulous merchant account provider actually telling one of our customers, "Yes, we're Authorize.net compatible" just to get them to sign the contract. But, when it came down to it, the sales person meant "we're just like Authorize.net" and wouldn't actually provide an Authorize.net account. Make sure you double-check this with bargain-basement merchant account providers.

The Merchant Account Analysis Spreadsheet

If you have a bit of MS Excel skill, you might be interested in my merchant account analysis spreadsheet. Download it here. This is not supported by myself or SpaBoom, and is only meant to give you a little help in figuring out the best merchant account deal. I've done my best to remove any errors and make it simple to understand.

It requires you to do a bit of homework, then fill in the blanks regarding costs and your best guess as to the performance of your business (i.e. number of and average transaction amount each month). The cells you need to fill in are light red in color. You can create some scenarios. Then, based on those scenarios, you'll have a potential cost each month of your merchant account. The results may surprise you. Often, the lowest "advertised discount rate" is not going to be your cheapest option, depending on what percentage of your transactions actually are qualified, versus mid-qualified or non-qualified. Also, PayPal tends to provide a very competitive option, if you're processing less than $10,000 in transactions each month.

I do apologize for the complexity of the spreadsheet. It's just a model, and not meant to accurately predict your merchant account expenses each month.

I'm definitely not an expert in this area, so welcome comments and suggestions that help fellow SpaBoomers select, choose and utilize merchant accounts!

Posted in SpaBoom New Features, Spa Business Management, General • 11 Comments »

One of our developers (David… the one who is really into music and has his own Internet radio station), on his own volition and initiative, decided to add some great new functionality to the SpaBoom platform. Normally, we severely and cruelly punish such behavior. We cannot permit our employees to go around and start doing great things for the company — without first filing the appropriate paperwork — namely a TPS report (with cover sheet)!

Anyway, David's unauthorized contribution to the SpaBoom platform is pretty cool, and it has us scratching our heads thinking, "Golly gee, what would be the best way to use this??!? If only David filled out his TPS report…"

In David's own words, "I decided to focus on a dashboard and giving our spas tools they need to begin to analyze their GC sales, clients, patterns, and so on." David implemented a series of graphical widgets, that can be driven by our database. The image to the right is a sample of what these widgets can look like (we'll change the color schemes to match the SpaBoom user interface).

Today, when SpaBoom clients log into their SpaBoom accounts and go to the reports tab, they are presented with pretty much a blank page (you need to click on the tasks on the left-side of the screen to get specific reports). We think it would be really cool to use David's new widgets on the Reports Page, summarizing some cool and useful stats, metrics and whatnots.

The question is, what sort of whatnots would be really helpful and beneficial to our clients? To that, we're really interested in your ideas and suggestions!

We have a strong desire to provide whatnots that really help our clients become more effective at selling Instant Gift Certificates. We also would like to make the SpaBoom platform more valuable to our clients, by offering up useful and interesting information that isn't available elsewhere. What would you suggests or recommend we work on??!? Here are some ideas of the possibilities:

• We have the historical data of your sales. We also have redemptions, if you're putting that information into SpaBoom.
• We can slice-and-dice GC sales information, such as by service category or dollar versus service.
• If you entered in your offline (i.e. retail) sales into SpaBoom, we could give you comparisons of your online versus offline GC activity.
• If you have a dynamic website with us, we know your conversion (i.e. the percentage of visitors to your website who actually make a purchase).
• If you have your own website, would you be interested in conversion numbers (it would require you to place some javascript code on your homepage, so we could track your incoming visitors)?
• We can aggregate all our client's sales data, and let you know how you're doing versus the market. We need to do this, in a way that maintains the privacy and security of our clients. And, it would be more meaningful to let you know how you're doing against organizations similarly situated, by geographic range or by demographic. We do keep some demographic data (look at the Setup Tab, Basics within SpaBoom).
• We have some information on the clients who purchase your GC's, such as their locations. We can give you in-state versus out-of-state, in-city versus out-of-town, etc.
• Or just about anything we keep existing reports of, under the Reports Tab.

So, please, give us your input and feedback! What sort of widgets and whatnots would you like us to build and place in SpaBoom? We can't promise every suggestion will be fulfilled, but we'll do our very best to take in the feedback, figure out what's possible and most useful to the largest number of clients.

Posted in SpaBoom New Features • 2 Comments »