Put a date in your diary with Arena Calendar Reminders
I like gadgets and as such love our Arena ‘toys’. As the subject for this post is centered around our latest toy I have been charged with telling the story.
Something that I think I should clarify at this juncture is the definition of a ‘toy’. We are a florist not a toy shop so by toys I mean something that is a fun addition to our flowers and which in particular makes use of the cool possibilities that the Internet has to offer. Here at Flowers HQ we strive to be at the cutting edge in everything we do and to maintain that position we feel it is important to be as innovative as possible with the user experience.
To date this strategy has meant that we have built many fun (but useful) accessories that are used on and off our site every day. These “toys” allow our customers to format the way their message appears on the message card and to include a glossy photo or video message to send to the recipient. Customers are notified by text for free as soon as their order has been delivered. Visitors who don’t want to send real flowers can send virtual flowers using another fun toy we’ve built, our free Facebook “Flowers & Fun” application. And if you want someone to send flowers to you, you can “send a hint” from the product page (anonymously or not, the choice is yours!).
And so to our latest toy…
As a gifting company the majority of our flowers are being delivered to someone to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, new baby, or a wedding. These are all events that recur and if you are anything like me the dates in question will be up on you when it’s already too late. Enter Arena Calendar Reminders!
So how is a calendar reminder a toy and how is it new I hear you ask? True most people have access to a calendar and the idea of being forewarned of an impending date is hardly new; other flower and gift companies also offer reminder services. But, like with everything we do at Flowers HQ, we’ve tried to improve on what everyone else has to offer – if we’ve missed anything, please let us know in the comments!
Next time you place an order on our site you will be asked if you want to set up a reminder for this event. Setting reminders is not compulsory and if you don’t want to set a reminder, you can skip over it in a heart beat. But if you want it, it’s there. In the example below I have set up a reminder for my wedding anniversary (don’t want to forget that one!). I have set the frequency as annual (monthly or weekly being the other options available), added a date and the number of days notice I need and, of course, a description of the event (so I know what I’m reminding myself about!). Pretty simple.
Setting up the reminder in the checkout
This event is automatically added to My Reminders in My Arena and then (in this case) 10 days before my anniversary I will get my first reminder email (we also send a reminder email on the actual day). Also, because I’ve given Arena my UK mobile phone number, I’ll also get a free text message reminding me to get my act together. A load off my mind. The reminder text message will be sent at 10am (rather than at midnight) so that we don’t drive our customers into a rage by waking them up with a late night text message. Once set up I can, if I want to, go and edit the event in My Arena.
The reminders section looks like this:
- My reminders
Important to note that you don’t have to place an order to set up reminders, you can log in to My Arena now and set up as many reminders as you like. Flower buying is not compulsory either. Worth noting that we’ll never sell the data you put into your reminders to others either. This is a tool to help our loyal customers and that’s it.
The geeky bit: A year from now I will get an email looking like the one below. The big feature in the email is of course the date and like with all our toys the date is made in a special way. Rather than making hundreds of different images to cover all the possible date/month combinations, we make the graphic dynamically at the time of sending the email using a server side script that combines a blank calendar icon (the white and orange image) with the date of the event. Clever huh?!
Arena Calendar Reminders is the latest addition to what we call “My Arena“, the console that we’re gradually building to make life easier for our regular customers. Customers can use it to view all past orders, messages and purchased items, as well as to check on the status of current orders. Customers can also save addresses that they use regularly so that they appear automatically in checkout and don’t have to be re-entered. My Arena also captures all your previous messages so if you’re feeling lazy next time you want to send a birthday message, you can just grab a previous message, formatting and all.
The key with with My Arena is that we’re trying really to make life as easy as possible for regular flower and gift senders, without slowing down checkout for people who are just passing through on a one off sale. Hopefully we’re getting there.
Interested? Go check out Arena Calendar Reminders for your self now.
If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy other posts in our “Matters Webby” category, where we talk about all the toys and bells and whistles that we’ve built into our service.
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Filed under: General, Matters Webby, Mega Days on April 27th, 2009
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Excellent ‘toy’ just set up some dates for next year. No excuses anymore.
Glad you like our ‘toy’ :)
Trick is not to tell the better half that you are all organised. That way you can garner new respect and take all the credit!