The Fatsoma team has been working hard on our biggest release to date. With a key focus on usability, we are proud to present the following new features and enhancements.

Aesthetic changes

Perhaps the most noticeable modification is the new branding. The new style is consistent throughout the back-end platform and the front-end sales pages. This new colour scheme and style was designed to provide a more professional feel to the whole Fatsoma experience. The home page at www.fatsoma.com has been improved as a landing page for new users, improving the description of services with a slide show. These improvements have been extended to a series of sales and information pages within the site. The ‘Features’ and ‘Solutions’ pages provide in-depth information regarding each aspect of the Fatsoma platform.

New help system

With the emphasis of this release firmly on improving usability, an innovative new help panel has been devised. It is now possible to open the help panel by selecting the ‘?’ tab on any page to receive content-specific instructions on the page you are on. This panel can be moved to anywhere on the screen or docked at the right of the page. This is a much more focused help system than any currently on the market, and should enable users to progress through the platform with no unsolvable difficulties.

Facebook reps – status and profile integration

As the rep opportunities are one of the most popular and unique features of a Fatsoma account, it is necessary to constantly improve upon this. As a result, users can now update multiple reps’ Facebook statuses at once for an event from the easy-to-use dashboard. The profile page integration has also been improved on, allowing reps to integrate with clients’ Facebook apps and thus having a tickets tab on their Facebook profile page alongside their ‘Wall’, ‘Info’, and ‘Photos’. All of this means that promotional campaigns have become even easier and quicker to launch.

All self-created websites are now free

Activation is no longer necessary to create a full features site as all websites are now free. Subscription charges for existing and new websites have been eradicated from the day of the release, removing any restriction clients may previously have had from joining the Fatsoma platform.

Quick ticket site upon registration

All users will now receive a quick ticket site upon adding a new company. By navigating to their ‘Dashboard’ or ‘Websites’ tab, they can then customise the site with one step, uploading headers and background images, and selecting colours. This allows clients to get up and running immediately upon registering on the platform.

New ‘Websites’ interface

As a response to the sometimes-troubling tabular ‘Websites’ interface, this has been revamped for the new release. Consistent with the new modular structure, all website information options are available within one page. Creating a new full features site or quick ticket site is actioned by clicking on the relevant button on the right hand side, while editing or deleting existing sites can be done on the left, where all existing sites are now listed.

A heavily demanded feature was to be able to customise a ticket page at any time. This is now possible with the latest release. Not only that, but the quick ticket and full feature website creation processes have been improved in terms of usability and functionality.

New dashboard

Considerable improvements have been made to the Fatsoma dashboard. New users will be treated to a modular view that instructs and guides them through the process of setting up and customising a website, and adding events to get started. Once events have been added and a website has been customised, these prompts will disappear, being replaced by a new and improved company summary.

Also found on the new dashboard are two modules that explain the new help system and instruct on additional features, creating a rep network and integrating with Facebook. These modules will remain at the top of the dashboard until the ‘X’ has been clicked to close them permanently.

It is also now even easier to keep up-to-date with Fatsoma’s news with links to the most recent blog entries on the Fatsoma product blog and Soma Soapbox industry blog.

‘Add brand’ process streamlined and reworked

Essentially, the process of adding a brand has been simplified. Rather than a large form to complete, clients will need to check a few boxes. The quantity of content required has been significantly reduced to ensure simplicity, and all required content is visible above the fold using a new modular style. The section to select which websites to list the event brand on has also been moved to this page to provide a more reasoned process, ensuring adding an event brand can be easily completed in one stage.

‘Add events’ process streamlined and reworked

Another modification within the events tab is that of adding events. Again, the page takes a more user-friendly modular structure rather than the original form. Rather than having a number of mandatory fields, a custom fields interface has been added, whereby clients can add further detail to events should they wish by simply clicking ‘Add custom field’.

The other significant change is the introduction of the calendar tool to add events. With the focus on improving usability, not only does this allow simpler selection of dates by clicking on each date in the calendar, but it also increases the flexibility of event dates. This improvement has arisen from a demand to host repeat events less systematically than just weekly, fortnightly or monthly. Clients can therefore now select any dates for their events.

Another usability-orientated modification is the option to copy details from a previous event by checking the option at the top of the ‘Add events’ page and selecting the previous event from the drop down menu. This is a feature highly sought after by heavy users to increase the speed of using Fatsoma, eliminating duplicated efforts.

‘Manage tickets’ process streamlined and reworked

The original drag and drop interface was believed to cause problems with many users, and has thus been replaced by a simple check box system, whereby a check box is automatically added to each event, allowing the user to tick or untick each box accordingly. The options to tick all and untick all events for a certain ticket type is also available by selecting the drop down menu within the ticket type module.

Streamlined signup process

Fatsoma have now made it even easier for you to signup to the services which are on offer. Fatsoma feel that the process as a whole is now much more streamlined, and the introductory help has been improved upon, which is available if you need it.

Interface refinements

Further fine tuning has occurred for users with attention to detailing and improvements to the interface throughout the whole site. This aims to improve usability, providing the best platform possible to promote from.

PDF tickets

There has been a change made to the etickets which are distributed by Fatsoma: the tickets will now be sent as a PDF attachment for ease of use. In the future promoters will be able to personalise these PDFs, so they are individual for each company, for example headers and adverts may be added where necessary, allowing consistent branding. This later addition will be added to the Fatsoma technology with the next release.

More files served from Amazon S3

With this release, an increased number of files will be served from Amazon cloud. This means that by storing a number of resources such as flyers, photos and graphics on Amazon S3, the speed of Fatsoma websites will be greatly improved upon, providing your customers with the most professional site possible.

Order processing improvements

The order processing system has been improved upon so that it is now optimised for speed. As a result, this means Fatsoma can now process orders from customers quickly and effectively during a high load for popular and/or large events. The processing has been moved to a separate machine which has helped to improve the speed of orders received on any Fatsoma site.

This concludes the overview of the most important features of this intense round of development. There will be further improvements to come soon with our next release. Stay tuned!