One of the things I am going to be writing about in the coming weeks and months is pending economic downturn, and what it means to the kinds of professionals we serve at FreshBooks, including things you can do to brace yourself and your business for stormy weather.
Looks like the LA Times beat me to the punch though in this article titled, “For small businesses, when the going gets tough, get tough on costs“.
Here is the excerpt that mentions FB:
Use technology efficiently
Consider online accounting software, videoconferencing and online processes for more efficient operations.
Entertainment lawyer Lindsay Spiller, who splits his time between his San Francisco office and Los Angeles, uses an online invoicing and time-tracking service to cut costs at his 4-year-old firm while maintaining a professional image.
The Web-based service from FreshBooks in Toronto gives small-business owners and freelancers a relatively inexpensive and easy way to bill clients from anywhere, he said.
“With the click of a button I can send an invoice to my client, and they receive a very nice-looking, professional-looking invoice that makes it also easy for them to pay,” Lindsay said.
Thanks for being our spokesperson Lindsay!
We often get asked for local references from the media. If you’d like to tell the press why you love FreshBooks, drop Saul a line and let him know where you are located why you’d be a good person to tell folks what’s great about FB.
This morning we deployed a new release: Version 4.4 which we’re calling “Footloose”. Why footloose? In honor of Daniel who broke his ankle a month ago and just got his cast removed.
What’s in this Release?
Better tracking of billed hours. Prior to this release, we relied on date ranges to figure out which of your timesheet hours were billed or unbilled. This caused problems if you logged hours the same day you created an invoice. Now we track exactly which hours appear on what invoices, making the process much more intelligent and user-friendly.
Sexy login pages. Your login pages now feature your system colors, and your company’s logo!
Complete list of currency codes. FreshBooks now includes all currency codes and symbols, and when you choose a currency, we’ll pre-populate the symbol.
Time Tracking Widgets. We recently launched our own Mac OS X widget for tracking time, and pointed out that Goran – a FreshBooks community member – has built a Windows desktop time tracker.
There are more details about the release inside the application. Be sure to click the “4.4” link at the bottom of your account for more information – especially as they pertain to how we are handling logged hours – past and on a go forward basis.
Happy Monday.
Hey everyone, just a last minute note that FreshBooks will be briefly unavailable tomorrow (Monday) morning while we perform an upgrade.
The skinny: The upgrade will take place Monday, March 31st, between 7 AM - 8 AM EDT. During this time, your FreshBooks account may be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.
More details to follow.
Everyone knows usability is important, but not everyone knows exactly how to go about determining if their software/web/hardware product is indeed usable. As a professional usability consultant, I would (ahem) advise that you seek the aid of an experienced usability consultant to help.
This isn’t always a practical option for lots of reasons though, so what I’d like to offer are some pointers and practical things to keep in mind when you’re developing a website or any other interactive product.
Know thy user
Above all else, always try to keep this mantra in mind when designing or developing — you are not your user. What’s obvious and simple to you may not be for the people who will be actually using your product.
By the way, you do know who you’re designing for, right? Do you know something about their skill level, geographical location, wants and needs as they relate to your product? If the answer is no, I’d suggest doing some research and asking some questions to find out.
Use established interaction standards to your benefit
If you have a choice between inventing a new, cooler way to sort tables and using the more well-known method of clicking on the column header, use the latter. Chances are that people will be familiar with this paradigm and less likely to become confused.
Now for a caveat — don’t let adherence to standards stifle your creativity and innovation. It might be the safer road, but it’s not always the best choice, so think of it like any other rule of law — sometimes it’s best to break the rules, just do so wisely!
Subscribe to usability-related RSS feeds
This is a great way to keep on top of what’s being discussed in the usability, interaction design and user experience realms. It’s also an easy way to learn and internalize what’s working and not working for others.
Some of my favorites:
Sanity-checking your design is not usability testing
Don’t get me wrong, grabbing someone next to you and asking “does this make sense to you?” is often a good idea. But just don’t let this turn into “yeah, I showed it to some people and they thought it worked okay.”
There are many reasons why this type of information-gathering could lead to bunk conclusions, but primarily it comes down to the first axiom I discussed — the person in the next cube, down the hall, etc. is most likely not your target user. If they’re a software developer like you are, and they think it’s easy to use, your user may beg to differ.
More usability guidelines
These pointers are just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re interested in learning more, there’s a lot out there but I’d suggest starting with (and referring to often) this site. It contains a ton of good info for those just starting to think about usability and seasoned professionals alike.
Again, these are just some quick pointers and guidelines. There’s a lot more to the multi-faceted study and practice of usability and user experience, but hopefully this can get you started in the right direction!
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