THANKS FOR HEARING THE CRIES OF YOUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS!!! I absolutely love Shootq and it has truly changed the way I can manage and handle our photography business. Personally I would be willing to pay the $40 for the app... IF... it would do what the site does. I just downloaded the app a few days ago. I can't even see the comments that my new leads fill out using the Shootq contact form. This is a huge oversight. That is one of the most important things in lead generation... knowing what your lead wants, so that you can give it to them. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, add this to the next update. Just add a little button down at the bottom that says "comments". I need to know what my leads are telling me. Since thee app doesn't let me in on it I have to go to the Shootq website which redirects me to the broken down mobile version of the Shootq website (Which has too many issues to discuss here, plus you guys told me recently that it is no longer even being updated). So, I eventually get to the bottom of the page where I can go to the full site and a sigh of relief exits my lungs. Finally I can see the comments from my lead. Please just scrap the mobile site altogether so I can go straight to the full site. Then I would be a happy camper. It seems like a $100,000 for a beta app that was being sold for $40 was a bad follow through on a good idea... Thanks for admitting it. Not sure if you guys need some good beta testers but I would love to to test out your updated app before you release it to the world. Heck you should probably make everyone that made comments in THIS post your beta testers... Use the people who are passionate about telling you what's wrong, and let there energy help you creating something that is not only right, but awesome! My 2 cents.
Thanks for listening.
August 04, 2010 17:26
Lacy Lange
Lacy Lange Photography Account - 4437
I also love ShootQ and one of the biggest oversights of the App that affects me and my business is the inability to access the Calendar from the app!! I would also love to be a beta tester for any new app updates coming out (please tell me you have plans to update the app?!?!).
October 12, 2011 20:15
Andrew Niesen
LaCour - 799
Hey guys,
Great questions about the iPhone app. Here's the deal. We've formally decided to discontinue the iPhone app and pursue a new mobile strategy. This means that we will not be publishing further updates to the native iPhone app. Instead, we will be focused on mobile-optimized web apps for mobile devices.
We're a web development company. We know web application development and are good at it. Development for native iOS apps (in a language called Objective C) is a different animal.
The current iOS app relies on offline syncing. This is a very complicated problem, especially given the amount of data you manage in ShootQ. The new strategy will allow us to sync some of the data to the mobile device, but most of it will be pulled over a live internet connection. This will actually speed things up because there isn't a 30-second sync at the beginning of every session.
HTML5 is pretty amazing. There are a lot of apps out there built in HTML5 (this wasn't the case a few years ago). Instagram is an example of an app built in HTML5. This will allow us to develop a "web app" to feel more like a native iOS app than we could have even 18 months ago, when we embarked on the iOS app.
This new strategy will be "platform agnostic" meaning that iOS devices and Android devices will have similar mobile experiences, all managed in one application (instead of an iOS app and an Android app).
Updating and testing will be much easier. With iOS apps, we can't push fixes as soon as we detect problems like we do with web apps. A revision to the iPhone app has to be submitted to Apple for approval, and we have to wait 5 days for the new app to go live in the App Store, and then we have to rely on all photographers updating the app. With the web-based version, we simply update the web application as we make improvements and the updates just show up in your mobile browsing experience.
This new strategy is going to take some time to implement, but once it's done we should be able to make even faster progress.
Matt, to address your question directly - it's difficult to create a user interface on a tiny screen that will do everything that the full web app will do. Instead, we need to focus on what photographers are trying to do from their phones (which is different than what they are doing on their iPads which is different than what they are doing at their desks.)
In the new strategy, we will allow you to switch to the full web app in Safari on your iPhone so you can have access to that from a mobile device in case there is something that you want to do from your phone that our mobile app doesn't do...
October 13, 2011 10:07
Lacy Lange
Lacy Lange Photography Account - 4437
Glad to hear that there are plans to move the mobile section forward :)! Any type of a timeline as to when it might be available? I understand it sounds like it's in it's infancy.
October 13, 2011 10:15
Andrew Niesen
LaCour - 799
We're in the planning phase. However, the good news with this new strategy is that we're not reinventing the wheel. We're just going to redesign the web user interface so it feels like an iOS app, but is really a web app. So we're not talking months and months of development time. At this point, it's just a matter of prioritization. Mobile is very important to your success (and ours) so it's right behind a few other mission critical projects.
Comments
THANKS FOR HEARING THE CRIES OF YOUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS!!! I absolutely love Shootq and it has truly changed the way I can manage and handle our photography business. Personally I would be willing to pay the $40 for the app... IF... it would do what the site does. I just downloaded the app a few days ago. I can't even see the comments that my new leads fill out using the Shootq contact form. This is a huge oversight. That is one of the most important things in lead generation... knowing what your lead wants, so that you can give it to them. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, add this to the next update. Just add a little button down at the bottom that says "comments". I need to know what my leads are telling me. Since thee app doesn't let me in on it I have to go to the Shootq website which redirects me to the broken down mobile version of the Shootq website (Which has too many issues to discuss here, plus you guys told me recently that it is no longer even being updated). So, I eventually get to the bottom of the page where I can go to the full site and a sigh of relief exits my lungs. Finally I can see the comments from my lead. Please just scrap the mobile site altogether so I can go straight to the full site. Then I would be a happy camper. It seems like a $100,000 for a beta app that was being sold for $40 was a bad follow through on a good idea... Thanks for admitting it. Not sure if you guys need some good beta testers but I would love to to test out your updated app before you release it to the world. Heck you should probably make everyone that made comments in THIS post your beta testers... Use the people who are passionate about telling you what's wrong, and let there energy help you creating something that is not only right, but awesome! My 2 cents.
Thanks for listening.
I also love ShootQ and one of the biggest oversights of the App that affects me and my business is the inability to access the Calendar from the app!! I would also love to be a beta tester for any new app updates coming out (please tell me you have plans to update the app?!?!).
Hey guys,
Great questions about the iPhone app. Here's the deal. We've formally decided to discontinue the iPhone app and pursue a new mobile strategy. This means that we will not be publishing further updates to the native iPhone app. Instead, we will be focused on mobile-optimized web apps for mobile devices.
This new strategy is going to take some time to implement, but once it's done we should be able to make even faster progress.
Matt, to address your question directly - it's difficult to create a user interface on a tiny screen that will do everything that the full web app will do. Instead, we need to focus on what photographers are trying to do from their phones (which is different than what they are doing on their iPads which is different than what they are doing at their desks.)
In the new strategy, we will allow you to switch to the full web app in Safari on your iPhone so you can have access to that from a mobile device in case there is something that you want to do from your phone that our mobile app doesn't do...
Glad to hear that there are plans to move the mobile section forward :)! Any type of a timeline as to when it might be available? I understand it sounds like it's in it's infancy.
We're in the planning phase. However, the good news with this new strategy is that we're not reinventing the wheel. We're just going to redesign the web user interface so it feels like an iOS app, but is really a web app. So we're not talking months and months of development time. At this point, it's just a matter of prioritization. Mobile is very important to your success (and ours) so it's right behind a few other mission critical projects.