The itasveer Blog

Say Hello to the brand new iTasveer.com

Hey guys, this new release has been in the works for a while and we have rebuilt it from scratch. While we have made significant improvement under the hood (which basically means you’ll won’t immediately notice them – it’s like getting your car a brand new car engine – and we don’t want to confuse you by tossing jargon like scalability etc.), we have also revamped our user interface. Here some great new features in the new iTasveer

Easier Navigation

We have a a new top navigation that gives you one-click access to your photos and products.

Simplified sharing using share pools

A fun new way to share photos with easy tor remember web addresses. Each address can have as many photos as you like.

COMING SOON – Multiple users can share photos of related events in the same pool (which is why they are called Pools!).

Shop by Design Themes

All our delicious templates, now at a glance. You can now shop by templates. Just visit our templates page and select a theme and product that fits the occasion.

The shopping cart – reinvented
A shopping cart completely rethought and designed for the complex needs of customizable products. It works well with extremely large orders as well as with small orders. So order a 1000 prints or a single coffee mug, you’ll be pleased with all the information at your fingertips. Minimal reloads, with complete pricing information is always shown. No need to press an update pricing button.

Improved workflow for photo print orders

Easier photo print ordering with size and finish selection before you add to cart. Select from our matte and glossy prints and mounts with pricing information right in the product selection pane.

COMING SOON – a larger range of paper finishes and more media like canvas, archival prints.

All Photos View

Besides the Albums view, you now have an all photos view where you can see your photos as a single stream.

A new dashboard

Our new dashboard keeps track of your last order, and the sidebar will be regularly updates with new offers and discounts tailored especially for you!

Improved order tracking
Your will now receive email updates even when part of an order is shipped. All order update emails will have tracking links embedded to directly track your order online.

Customer support, faster and better than ever
Not all changes are on the front end. We’ve also made our site administration much better and we’ll be able to handle more queries more efficiently. So we hope to answer you quickly, even on our busier days :)

Phew! We’re glad that we could make all these changes just in time for our 4th birthday! And you know what that means right? That means you are about to avail some fantastic offers on iTasveer. We’re not telling when, we’re not telling what! Just wait and watch.

7 comments April 15th, 2010

A disruptive local courier delivery service

Given the nature of our business, we have always had to deal with couriers because of lost/delayed packages. We try and maintain these error cases to a fairly low margin, but at the same time we’ve also been eyeing this as an opportunity for a new delivery service to emerge.

We have been internally testing a new form of delivery service, and are pleased to announce that the results have been outstanding. We’re rolling out the service on iTasveer in selected cities and plan to start with the NCR region. Without further ado.. presenting the iTasveer DDS. DDS stands for dog delivery service, and we are proud to announce that we have been able to train a pack of dogs to make deliveries locally within Gurgaon.

Woofy - our mascot

Danny the dog carrying a mug safely to it's destination

Now for the juice on this. In our experiments we found that much like homing pigeons, dogs can also be trained to deliver to a particular location and return. The problems with pigeons was, that our packages were often too heavy for pigeons to carry for even short distances. The answer emerged from where we least expected it. Danny, our in house Alsatian, has always been super efficient at fetching the news paper. And the idea struck “hey.. wait a minute. if he can fetch the newspaper, can he also deliver it elsewhere”, thought Ashish. The experiments started, we tied a mug on Danny’s back and sent him off to our neighborhood residence. It worked!

So after some testing and getting convinced that this could really be a disruptive service, we’ve decided to launch it in limited locations. Let me tell you why this is so disruptive

1. It is environmentally friendly. No machines, no petrol.

2. Dogs are faster than courier trucks in heavy traffic. Or even in light traffic. Our dogs don’t have to take the road you see, they’re as comfortable offroad.

3. Dog is a man’s best friend. Who better to deliver your packages to you than your best friend.

So the next time you order from us, and see a faithful ol’ dog at your doorstep, don’t be surprised!

[update: now that we're past april 1, I just thought I'd specify that this was posted on april 1 :p]

9 comments April 1st, 2010