This week on the Thoughtstream, we did a development update showing what we wrapped up, and what we’re working on. We’ll be launching a ton of new features over the weekend. We also talked about what’s up next. We made some announcements about the launch date, talked about October Previews, and a deep dive into Storefront 2.0.
This week we wrapped up a ton of items, and there is more getting done every day, although our big two this week (single issue pre-orders) took longer than expected.
Thursdays/Fridays and Saturdays tend to be our big promotion days because we can focus on new development and not stomping any bugs that we’re seeing crop up on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (which get fewer and further between each week).
Here’s what we talked about:
- Development update – What we did
- Road Map – What we’re working on
- Update on the launch date
- October Previews
- Shopify Storefront 2.0
- The next Thoughtstream
Scroll down past the video for more details.
We released a ton of big features and did a ton of testing on those features:
- Next issues sequential ordering
- TPBs not showing up (subscription error)
- Searching for Customers (making it easier for large stores)
- Distribution changes (adding more details to PRH orders)
- Delete discount rates (in tiered discounting)
- See discount rates on customers (both tiered and special)
- Custom ID Numbers (box numbers)
- Sharing Manage Comics info to Shopify
- Optional ISBN + 5 on all SKUs
- Terms of Subscription notice when subscribing
- Separate Shortages / Damages reports
- Receive PRH Invoices
What we’re working on wrapping up:
- Subscribe to series / Pre-Order a single issue
- Huge enhancements to admin pre-orders
- Major enhancements to the “My Subscriptions” page
What’s coming up:
- Shopify Storefront 2.0
- Adding crowd sourced images to our database
- Improving data fetches for Geek Fetch
- Improving Ratio Cover data
- Grouping like products
When will we go live?
We keep saying “two weeks” but our real goal is to get through one week with zero issues, and then move on from there. We’re working with more stores, and getting more stores using the system discovers new bugs which we quickly squash. Bug squashing slows development of new features, but new features introduce new bugs.
We are going to add 5 more stores this week and see what happens, then add another 5 stores the following week.
October 2021 Previews are out
The October previews kind of surprised us this month, we thought we had an extra week still, however we still updated GeekFetch/Manage Comics quickly (which is our “source of truth” for all data, and then got the data into Manage Comics.
We updated GeekFetch/Manage Comics 2.0 on Tuesday, and added to Manage Comics 1.0 on Thursday.
- See the October solicitations on our beta partner Dreamers and Make-Believers
- Latest October Previews on Manage Comics Example Shop
Shopify Online Store 2.0
- A lot of speed enhancements
- Builder tools are better
- Some issues with filtering
- Manage Comics 2.0 doesn’t work with it currently (we will work on this).
- Shopify Documentation on Storefrong 2.0
What’s happening next week?
Next week we’ll talk about some of our Demo stores, what they’ve seen in practice, and how things are working. I’d like to have an interview with a couple of stores, but we’ll see to be sure.
