The development team at BaseKit are integral to our mission. Every day they are developing and evolving our software to continually help our partners to champion the best digital business user experience for their customers around the world.

The features arrive thick and fast, yet what was the process of getting there, the challenges, the learnings, the highlights and the rewards? Here, we shine a spotlight on our latest product update – BaseKit Store Onboarding – through the lens of the Front End Developer that helped to deliver it – Rob Bowen.

How did the store onboarding project come about?

“The original idea was planted by our colleagues in the product team. As part of their role they continually review, and seek to improve the BaseKit platform, whilst championing the user experience.”

“Working closely with end users through the process of usability testing they were able to identify key areas of the onboarding process that could be simplified in order to make the setup of a new store even more seamless.”

What were the main goals of the project?

“For a partner focused business such as BaseKit, the success of our partners means everything to us. Anything we can do to improve the BaseKit product can have a huge benefit for all parties, as happy customers make for happy partners.”

“As most of our end users are small business owners whose time is precious, we aim to make the store onboarding process as frictionless as possible. We want to help them to build their online presence with zero stress, and boost their confidence in our entire platform.”

What was your biggest challenge?

“For a large update such as this the biggest challenge was keeping the end result as simple and bloat free as possible. It’s far too easy to over complicate the process with the intent of adding ‘useful’ features/capturing additional data that in reality won’t benefit the majority of users.”

“Our best weapon in preventing this from creeping was the talented team of designers, developers, testers etc, and the discussions we held during refinement sessions.”

What was your biggest lesson?

“It’s not so much as a learning point, but a reinforcement of just how important it is to be customer focussed, and to put yourselves in the users position.”

“Take the time to really think through the decisions that are being made, and how they can positively (or negatively) affect their experience using our software. Sometimes the smallest of tweaks to an interface can make a huge difference!”

What were the final results?

“Overall we have reduced and simplified the number of steps that the user must go through to get their store live to make it as effortless as possible to complete.”

“We have taken great care to improve the labelling, completion guidance, and validation used throughout our onboarding forms. We have crafted improved layouts for some key steps of the experience, such as where the user chooses the payment methods they will accept, and the final launch screen.”

How did you find working with your team?

“We are fortunate to have a team with a diverse range of opinions, and experiences, and to work in an environment where everyone’s opinion is equally valued, no matter their role, or level. This freedom allows anyone to be able to push back against features/ changes that may be counterintuitive, and to suggest improvements that are fed into the larger piece of work.”

“I think it’s very important to point out that as with all of our software development this has been a real team effort spanning multiple departments. Our sole combined aim is to produce software that our partners, and their customers love and that we are rightfully proud of.”

What is the best thing about developing software at BaseKit?

“As a front end developer I love the visual aspect of the role. I get a real buzz when I get to turn the original designs into well structured, and usable web pages, such as implementing the new markup and styling for the payment methods, and launch screens.”

“Other than the individual satisfaction, I love the feeling of working as part of the wider team, working together to make real improvements to our product.”

We’re on a mission for tech democracy for small businesses

If you’re interested in reselling BaseKit to your small business customers – request a demo of our software and we’ll show you how it can help you grow your audience and keep your customers sticky.