Looking To The Future – What’s In Store For 2012?
When you are the market leader like Agriya is for clone scripts, daily deal software, vacation rentals software and more, we always have to be a little bit candid and cautious when talking about our future plans because we know that many companies look to us to decide what to do next. Agriya prides itself on foreseeing future trends before they happen and is just one of the reasons why we have been first to market with our Groupon clone, Airbnb clone, Fiverr clone and Yipit clone to name but a few.
On the other hand, there will always be competitors following in our wake and we want to keep our customers informed and excited as we are about our future plans, but if it comes across as being a little bit too reticent with information we hope you can understand!
Service Based Websites
Agriya has identified several key verticals that are ripe for entering and revolutionizing for a global market. We will be creating a new business unit of the company that will build, operate and run these web based services. The ground work is almost done and development and customization has begun (it’s a cryptic clue, we know!) and we’re looking forward to launching the first of our web based services that will serve a specific (non-tech) vertical in the coming months. More service based websites will be launching over the coming year as we look to expand and become more than a products based company.
New Technologies
If you ever saw our profile on some of the popular freelance websites you may have wondered why we called ourselves “LAMPC” (we pronounce it “lamp-see” in the office). The reason is that back in the olden days (about 8 years ago!) PHP and CGI were the open source programming languages of choice for the vast majority of websites. Fast forward to 2012 and there is a myriad of open source languages with their own advantages and disadvantages. Agriya is already branching out from PHP and developing client projects in cutting edge languages built specifically for the needs of todays web applications and we have hired new programmers to specifically learn these new languages so if you want to get a website developed in an open source language other than PHP, CGI or Ruby let us know because we’ve now got the expertise to help you.
Product Development Driven By Agriya Ideas
One of the most innovative developments that came out of 2011 was the launch of our FundProjectsWith.me concept where we took a crowdsourcing approach to developing new products based on specific consumer demand and taking the guess work out of predicting what will be popular in 6 months from now (although our list of successful products that were the first to market really speaks for itself).
Late last year we rolled the FundProjectsWith.me functionality in to our ever evolving Agriya Customers website and it got a new name: Agriya Ideas. The concept is still the same, you suggest which products you would like to see, we take a democratic approach with people voting on projects to take forward to funding and then anyone can contribute money to the project to ensure it gets developed. As a reward for helping to fund a project the investor gets up to double their money back (depending on sales) along with helping to shape the direction the project takes.
All future Agriya products will be driven by this crowdsourced method so that you can get the products you want and Agriya can focus its resources on projects people will buy. If you have an idea for a project, just head over to Agriya Ideas and let us know.
Relaunching Agriya Forums
In the middle of last year we had to shut down the Agriya forums due to far too much automated spam and vBulletin’s inability to effectively stop it. This was a shame because it was a good place for the community to hang out so we have made plans to resurrect the forum using our brilliant Discuzz software – with some modifications of course! We hope to have this new dicussion forum tightly integrated in to our Agriya Customers area and you’ll be able to meet, hangout and chat to other customers, share ideas and get help on specific questions about the software.
Gamifcation…
HUSH! We may have said too much already but gamification for Agriya is here and it’s going to rock your world!
New Project Management Tool For Clients
Based on the remarkable success of our Products Bug Tracker which is based on the famous Mantis software, it incorporates a super friendly user interface for the frontend and a developer friendly backend so that everyone gets the best of both worlds. We’re now working to roll this solution out to our customization and service based projects.
Other Plans
Of course, there are a whole host of additional plans that are in the pipeline but for the sake of confidentiality we can’t announce them just yet!
All in all, 2012 is looking to be an even more successful year than 2011 as we look to consolidate our number one position in the clone scripts market, improving our current range and providing the best software with the best support and updates.
Agriya’s New Bug Tracker Goes Live
Ah bugs. There’s an old programmer saying (cira 1944 when people first started programming machines) that goes “If you build it, it will have bugs”. No one likes bugs in the system, least of all you guys, our customers. Our own developers don’t like bugs either because they get shouted at by the support staff who have to fix any bugs and by the sales team who have to handle the customers bug complaints.
We do have a testing team who’s job it is to find bugs and script problems before the software goes live and sometimes the atmosphere between the programmers and testers can get a little bit icey, like the graphic below demonstrates!
Agriya are constantly reviewing our support processes and product iterations and a few months back we decided to take some inspiration from the open source community and open up our bug tracking to the community and give our customers a centralized point where they can report any bugs or defects with our products.
By crowdsourcing our bug hunting in this way we hope to have a more efficient system where we can locate, reproduce and ultimately fix any bug our products may contain. Crowdsourcing provides the best way to hunt for bugs because although our testing team can identify the major problems and we can release software without any known bugs it’s only when it gets in to the hands of the people that we find all those tiny little bugs. Agriya can never reproduce every scenario which is why it makes sense to have our users or people reviewing our product help us out to produce rock solid and secure products.
For any of the geeks out there reading this, Agriya has adapted the open source Mantis bug tracking software (we’ve been using Mantis internally since Day 1 and absolutely love it!) and given it a very polished interface to make it super simple for anyone to report a bug or suggest a feature upgrade.
If you are a customer of Agriya then you will be able to see all the bugs that have been tracked along with the features that have been requested. You will be able to see the kind of bug, a description of the bug and the status of the bug report. This should give you much more transparency in to the development processes we use here in Agriya and we are very hopeful that it will lead to even better products in the future.
We also should point out that the bug tracker is not a support desk, it doesn’t facilitate two way conversation between the customer and developer so if you need regular customer support please continue to post your issues in the support desk.
Before you submit any bugs we would like you to take a moment to read our “How to submit a bug” article which hopefully gives a bit more insight in to what you should submit and how you should submit it. When you are ready to submit a report (you don’t have to be a customer!) simply navigate to the correct product in customers.agriya.com and in the sub-menu area you’ll see the option to submit a bug.
As you can probably see, Agriya are consolidating a lot of departments under our customers.agriya.com website, we successfully migrated the customer support desk to be more integrated, we’ve introduced the Ideas concept from FundProjectsWith.me and now we’ve added a bug tracker. We’ve still got plenty more exciting features to add such as a new customer support forum based on our Discuzz software and one or two secret updates that we’re sure you’ll absolutely love!
If you’ve got any thoughts on how we can make the customers area serve you better give us a buzz or submit a comment using the form below.
New Customer Ordering System Preview 1
Today we are pleased to give you a sneak peak, behind the scenes look at the new customer ordering system that we are developing. Since we first released Rayzz back in 2006 we have used a 3rd party script called Iono which is owned by SolidPHP.
It did everything we wanted at first (and we’d recommend their latest software for anyone who needs to license their software) but over time our demands and requirements changed and it’s got to the point where there is so much virtual gaffer tape hacked on to the script that the decision was taken in late 2010 to develop a new customer ordering system tailored to our specific needs.
If you have noticed a slow down in releases for products like Rayzz, Volume and Channel in the last 6 months then the reason is that we had to put these developers on to this new customer ordering system.
The new system is very nearly ready, it’s going through round after round of testing with lots of back and forth feedback between all the stakeholders in the new system. We wanted to give you a quick heads up that the new system will be live soon, probably in June sometime.
In the meantime here’s the first of two blog posts that explains some of the new features in detail and to give you a taste of what’s coming up…
The All New Agriya Customer Area
Buy All Agriya’s Products In One Place
The new customer ordering system brings together all of Agriya’s products in to one convenient place where you can find out more information, order the product and purchase additional modules, services and templates.
Agriya Products Are All Conveniently Listed
(note that the product box images shouldn’t have black backgrounds but the script is still going through the final testing stages so it will be corrected before the software goes live!)
Quickly Order Modules and Templates
Now the modules and templates for all the products are available in a convenient location so you can browse them without having to go through the ordering process. You can simply select which template or module you want and checkout straight away.
Easily Buy Templates and Modules
Improved Checkout System
We’ve worked hard to revamp the checkout system to take in to account all the modules, services, templates and extras that you can now buy for all our products. The new checkout system leads you through a step by step process and you can go back and forth as you wish throughout the process.
Large Screenshots Are Now Given For Each Template
The templates now come with much larger screenshots so you can see exactly what you are buying and the modules come with full descriptions so you can get more information without heading back to the sales site.
See Descriptions of Modules Before You Buy
Easily Manage Your Licenses
You will be able to easily manage all your licenses and manage your support and upgrade options. All products from Agriya will come with 12 months of support and updates from the time of your purchase and you can extend this at any time by purchasing a support and upgrade option.
View and Manage Your Agriya Licenses
Order Verification
We know that a big inconvenience to all our customers has been the verification of their orders. Unfortunately this process is necessary due to the extremely high levels of fraud and we need to be careful that we are not giving our products to people who are using fraudulent payment details.
Agriya Can Now Automatically Verify Your PayPal Account
However, we are pleased to announce that in our new customer area you now have the opportunity to automatically verify your PayPal account. Using a PayPal App we have created a system which queries the PayPal server and it tells us if the email you entered is verified by PayPal. If it is then whenever you place an order with that PayPal account we’ll approve your invoice automatically. Awesome!
Re-Assigning Licenses and Development Licenses
Another long term issue that we have addressed in this new customers area is the inconvenience of the license being locked and bound to a specific domain and IP. If you wanted to move to a new domain you currently have to contact us and we have to manually delete the license details. It’s not ideal for us and definitely not ideal for you!
A new feature we have introduced allows you to delete the license details at a click of a button. Simply click the Re-Assign button and install the script on the new site.
You Can Now Re-Assign Agriya Licenses With One Click
On top of that, a number of customers have begged and pleaded us for additional licenses so they can create a developer installation where they can carry out modifications before putting them on the live site. We’re delighted to announce that you can now apply for a development license from the convenience of your members area.
Watch Out For Part 2!
That’s it for the first part, we’ll be back with part 2 shortly which will give you more information about the new support desk system that we have built which will make it much more efficient for you to get support. We bet you are fed up to the back teeth having to give us your invoice ID and FTP details every time you submit a ticket? Yeah, we’ve solved that problem in the new support desk so watch this space!
Rayzz Reviews
With Rayzz 3 soon to be released, we are getting a number of enquiries about the demo, more details, feature requests, customization and more. A lot of people are also asking for some example Rayzz sites and Rayzz reviews to see what it is capable of.
Although we don’t have any reviews of Rayzz 3, or any Rayzz 3 example sites (since the script isn’t released yet), we do have plenty of reviews for earlier versions of Rayzz – and although we don’t want to blow our own trumpet, we are thrilled to bits that so many people enjoy using our software.
Here are just a few independent reviews of Rayzz that have been submitted by our customers:
“We bought Rayzz soon after it was developed and have the largest martial arts video web site on the web today using the software. We have worked with the Rayzz support team for a long time and they have been more than helpful. They respond quickly. They are courteous, and they always go beyond my expectations in helping to solve any issues we develop. Thank you Rayzz support team, we love you!” – Dana Stamos – FightCon
“The Rayzz Team is superb. They are very professional and have been nothing but helpful. The software is extremely stable and bug free. It was money well spent! Great jobs guys” – Twizz D. Ha – Exec Web Producer – MorphBOTS Design Studio
“The guys over at Agriya are fantastic! They were helpful and still keep in touch to make sure its all going well, Fantastic Prodct and Fantaastic Service! Thanks Guys! PS I will be back to buy some more things soon!” – Zak Johnson
“I run one of the Hottest Blog directories on the web. I needed a community script with all the features of rayzz. I tried all the rest then I bought the best, Rayzz. I bought my script a year ago and they are still ready to help me at anytime… Support after the sale? You bet! Agriya stands behind what they sell long after the point of sale. I had so many hits on my blog after I gave Agriya a good review I joined as an affiliate and have even made some money too. Thanks Agriya for all the help, forget five stars you get ten in my book!” – Wolfbernz – BlogDumps
If you want to read even more great reviews from our customers, please head over to the Rayzz reviews page.
The new version of Rayzz will be coming out soon and judging by the enquiries we’ve already had it’s sure to be a smash hit. Built from the ground up to take advantage of everything we’ve learned about product development in the last 5 years, not to mention customer feedback, Rayzz 3 is set to raise the bar and become the natural choice for anyone looking to run a community based website.
Marketing through social networking site
Nowadays promoting online marketing in social networking site is one of the hottest trends. It offers numerous benefits that would help you and your business. It is a cheap, reliable, quick, and highly effective online marketing medium. Where, you can focus on advertising of business entirely on people who are actively engaged in looking for products or services offered by you. Remember the more time and effort you put into each social networking site, the more you’ll get out of it.
Webmasters can create a business profile on social media site to share only information that they want the entire world to see. They can also create a personal profile as well and make contact with other members. It helps to get potential customers, clients, and vendors. They can make changes on their profile, products and company online, and they are reflected almost immediately.
Webmasters can form a network with prospective international buyers and decision makers and showcase new products and services with clear photos, audios and videos, highlight company news, and build brand loyalty. This allows webmasters to make business connections without hard sale. They can learn about latest trends, form business alliances, learn tips and so on within the network.
Webmasters can keep their customers up to date on events, special occasions and other useful information to maintain healthy relationship with customers on social media site. They can form a group with similar interest and gain number of clients and valuable customers within their group of contacts. Also they can make video presentation about their company details, products and services among them.
Social networking site is an extremely valuable resource and if you utilize the resource properly, you can promote products or services effectively. There are countless of social networking scripts out there. So it is difficult to pick a right script to focus your efforts on. Agriya infoway has designed Kootali – open social script available at an affordable cost. It helps you build a social networking site and makes you to sit on your chair and just a mouse click away to make a purchase hastily.
Now Your Favorite Products Come With Monthly Payment Plans!
We love our customers and we’re always trying to do things that will benefit them in any way.
Here’s another something – we know our products get a lot of attention and there are loads of people that want to use our software but can’t afford the price, and so they end up using inferior, bug ridden scripts (euw!).
Determined to do something about this inequality, we have introduced a new payment plan for several of our products. We’ll let you pay us through easy monthly installments (EMI). We understand that not everybody is able to pay us in one go, but you just have to buy our product because you realize how useful it is for you!
To make things easier, we will accept payment for three of our very popular products Anova, Rayzz and the newly launched Rayzz Lite, in equal monthly installments, paid over 3 months. There is a tiny additional fee for this service – but we all know that’s common for all payment plans
We’re implementing this on a trial basis, and if this works out well for you and for us, we just might extend this wonderfully helpful offer to all our products! So all those of you who thought you wouldn’t buy our products only because you can’t pay us at one go, we’ve just made things a whole lot easier for you! Go ahead and order your product right away!
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