David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Meeting the needs of moms
Globe and Mail
Thursday, Jul. 23, 2009
The design concept of ECHOage.com was simple: Think like a mother. But first, co-founders Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith had to teach their Web developers how to do that.
ECHOage, an online birthday party service that combines gift-giving with charity, is specially designed for busy mothers, co-founder Debbie Zinman says.
?Mothers today are very stretched and don't have a lot of time on their hands to do extra things. So we wanted to design our home page specifically to what a mother would want when she arrived there.?
ECHOage acts as a third party to ask parents for a donation on behalf of the birthday child. Fifteen per cent goes to ECHOage, and the remaining 85 per cent is split between a charity of the child?s choice and the parents of the birthday child to buy a gift of the child's choice.
According to Ms. Zinman, the biggest challenge for their Web developers, Cyberplex, was getting inside the mind of mothers. Initially, Cyberplex gave them advice on what a home-page design or a sign-up process should look like, based on how the Internet generally functions.
But Ms. Zinman and her ECHOage co-founder, Alison Smith, wouldn't settle for simply that. They took their developers' advice and then built on it to reflect the way mothers function and think.
?We're dealing with a very specific group here ? mothers,? Ms. Zinman says. ?That's non-traditional.?
Ms. Smith says the common small-business rules didn't necessarily apply to ECHOage, which launched early in 2008. Because they wanted to reach a specific targeted audience, they needed a different framework than a business selling a product or one that sells to a massive audience. But Cyberplex developers were open to what they had to say about how mothers interact with computers.
?We had to put ourselves in the driver's seat as users and mothers ? it's who we are,? Ms. Smith says. ?At every stage of the way, on every page, you're accessing it from a technology standpoint, a visual standpoint and as a mom ? possibly a mom with two small children tugging on her arm, a mom with a list to get through, a businesswoman or a stay-at-home mom. There are so many different permutations of mothers ? but we know what they're after.?
When building an online service that mothers are going to use and appreciate, Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith say that usability is key. Mothers appreciate having features that list the allergy alerts of party guests and their parents' cellphone numbers in case of emergency. The website is also free of ads, which keeps it uncluttered, another feature that moms like. Instead Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith have opted for a percentage service fee.
?We sat down with the developers and looked at every wireframe, every button and process that the mother and child would go through to sign up a party and execute it,? Ms. Zinman says. ?It's critical to evaluate every page, every click and transition.?
ECHOage uses existing technology, but because the service is new, it had to be built from the ground up. Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith worked closely with Cyberplex as a team, describing what they wanted to see as a user and what they wanted for their metrics to be able to analyze their business, plus making sure there was room for the company's growth. They have the confidential records of every child who has hosted a party so they can look inside the system and see where their clients are concentrated.
The tracker is the hub of the ECHOage system, according to Ms. Zinman. That's where the mother and child can see what's happening in real time as their guests RSVP and can watch the funds rising for the charity and for the birthday gift.
?We refined for months before it was in a state that we were all happy with,? Ms. Zinman says. ?It had to have a consumer user interface that was friendly, it had to be technologically perfect and since you're putting funds into it, it had to have the strictest safeguards and security.?
?The beauty is that we have to do very little because the whole system is automated,? Ms. Smith says. ?It looks simple but is very sophisticated and complex on the back end.?
Globe and Mail
Thursday, Jul. 23, 2009
The design concept of ECHOage.com was simple: Think like a mother. But first, co-founders Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith had to teach their Web developers how to do that.
ECHOage, an online birthday party service that combines gift-giving with charity, is specially designed for busy mothers, co-founder Debbie Zinman says.
?Mothers today are very stretched and don't have a lot of time on their hands to do extra things. So we wanted to design our home page specifically to what a mother would want when she arrived there.?
ECHOage acts as a third party to ask parents for a donation on behalf of the birthday child. Fifteen per cent goes to ECHOage, and the remaining 85 per cent is split between a charity of the child?s choice and the parents of the birthday child to buy a gift of the child's choice.
According to Ms. Zinman, the biggest challenge for their Web developers, Cyberplex, was getting inside the mind of mothers. Initially, Cyberplex gave them advice on what a home-page design or a sign-up process should look like, based on how the Internet generally functions.
But Ms. Zinman and her ECHOage co-founder, Alison Smith, wouldn't settle for simply that. They took their developers' advice and then built on it to reflect the way mothers function and think.
?We're dealing with a very specific group here ? mothers,? Ms. Zinman says. ?That's non-traditional.?
Ms. Smith says the common small-business rules didn't necessarily apply to ECHOage, which launched early in 2008. Because they wanted to reach a specific targeted audience, they needed a different framework than a business selling a product or one that sells to a massive audience. But Cyberplex developers were open to what they had to say about how mothers interact with computers.
?We had to put ourselves in the driver's seat as users and mothers ? it's who we are,? Ms. Smith says. ?At every stage of the way, on every page, you're accessing it from a technology standpoint, a visual standpoint and as a mom ? possibly a mom with two small children tugging on her arm, a mom with a list to get through, a businesswoman or a stay-at-home mom. There are so many different permutations of mothers ? but we know what they're after.?
When building an online service that mothers are going to use and appreciate, Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith say that usability is key. Mothers appreciate having features that list the allergy alerts of party guests and their parents' cellphone numbers in case of emergency. The website is also free of ads, which keeps it uncluttered, another feature that moms like. Instead Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith have opted for a percentage service fee.
?We sat down with the developers and looked at every wireframe, every button and process that the mother and child would go through to sign up a party and execute it,? Ms. Zinman says. ?It's critical to evaluate every page, every click and transition.?
ECHOage uses existing technology, but because the service is new, it had to be built from the ground up. Ms. Zinman and Ms. Smith worked closely with Cyberplex as a team, describing what they wanted to see as a user and what they wanted for their metrics to be able to analyze their business, plus making sure there was room for the company's growth. They have the confidential records of every child who has hosted a party so they can look inside the system and see where their clients are concentrated.
The tracker is the hub of the ECHOage system, according to Ms. Zinman. That's where the mother and child can see what's happening in real time as their guests RSVP and can watch the funds rising for the charity and for the birthday gift.
?We refined for months before it was in a state that we were all happy with,? Ms. Zinman says. ?It had to have a consumer user interface that was friendly, it had to be technologically perfect and since you're putting funds into it, it had to have the strictest safeguards and security.?
?The beauty is that we have to do very little because the whole system is automated,? Ms. Smith says. ?It looks simple but is very sophisticated and complex on the back end.?
