After months of planning and development for the new Kallyas big update, we got at the crossroads where some decisions needed to be taken about features and usability. We realized that the current users should be an important decision factor in our product, so 2 weeks ago we started a survey about Kallyas user experience.
We received answers not only from professionals, but also from people who use the theme for their personal website. Even if we already have a clear vision of the future product, this feedback shapes a broader picture of what are the users expectations of our product.
As we went through all the answers, there was a roller coaster of emotions: some of them made us laugh, some of them pressed the right buttons, and some of them kept our ego low, depending on how negative or positive the feedback was. But the most important part is that the feedback came. People wanted to share with us what they mostly like or mostly hate and that was very important for us.
This article is dedicated to our users who provided feedback. We believe they deserve to have answers to their problems or expectations towards Kallyas theme.
So, if you want to find out more about the insights of our survey, grab a snack and let’s dig together into understanding the strengths, the weaknesses, and the future expectations from our user’s point of view.
Current Strengths
While most of the users, choose Kallyas for the good design, the large majority are keen on the visual page builder also. This is a tremendous information as it makes us keep up the work to make a new improved version of it.
Your designs are special and your works are legend
satisfied user
The frequent updates (we still try to solve all the current bugs), the smart areas, the search and the flexibility of the elements, the code quality are also strong arguments for people to enjoy and continue to buy Kallyas theme. We don’t want to disappoint those people.
While 88% of the users are overall fully satisfied with how Kallyas look and functions in the present moment, there are also 12% of users who believe some improvements are needed.
So if there are so many features people like and still choose to buy and use our theme, then why bother with a big improvement? Well, even if we currently have one of the best selling WordPress themes on Themeforest with considerable monthly sales, we all know that technology is evolving and we can’t stay comfortable in the old shoes.
This is the reason why we chose to bring a new shape of Kallyas with a page builder plugin of its own, but keeping in mind the current strengths. There will be a major change, so let’s see the glass half full rather than half empty: Kallyas is the base of our salad, and now we are adding the last best condiments.
Where Kallyas needs improvements
The bugs
“Some bugs, here and there…”
“the builder is not good enough”
“Had issues with…”
“some odd behavior on mobile devices”
“I’m a pro, and kallyas lacking of options for blog”
“an accidental page refresh (back button, mouse gesture, misclick, etc) will make you lose LOTS of work”
Until now, we fixed a bug, added a new feature, fixed another bug, add another option, created another bug etc., and all this turned our product into a sauce with too many ingredients.
The 3 “chefs” from Kallyas development department have taken the best ingredients from the sauce and started creating the new recipe – the new page builder –
It was not an easy task: the reality is they have already been working to the new page builder for about 6 months and the tremendous work and dedication it involves, gave them some hard moments. But the challenge was accepted, so there is no way of turning back.
Did we mention they are also humans? So imagine the panic they feel when there is not enough time to deliver the product and keep everybody happy. So they just take one step at a time, try to see every issue as an opportunity to create a better version of what it is in the present moment. Or at least this is what a therapist would recommend…
The refinement
This is the point where users had the opportunity to share with us what they think could improve, what they dislike on our theme, or what bugs they encountered. 38% of the people provided their own answers with the troubles they encountered. We are sorry for the frustrating times the theme may have given to you.
Some of the theme features and page builder functionalities that need refinement are listed below and we also offer the solution or explanation for them, so hopefully, we will make you a satisfied customer with the new release.
Updated documentation
We know, some of you fell asleep during the video tutorials. But the documentation will definitely change as Kallyas path will be separate from the page builder. There will be 2 different renewed documentation which will contain also new short videos without the horrible repetitive music, we promise.
Mobile design
“Kallyas is almost perfect, but it lacks a proper preview mode.”
developer
The solution we came for this is to have an iframe view for different screens and devices from where you have full control to change the desired elements instantly.
Header design
“I’m guilty of not going through ALL the videos in learning Kallyas, but I DID experience some of the header customization to be a little difficult. ”
Kallyas user
Staying in our comfort zone, the header builder was never a priority for us. To be sincere, we procrastinated. Having so much feedback from our users regarding the need of the header builder, activated us to speed up a little bit the work behind it. But the header builder will be victorious announced after the first release of the new page builder.
Speed and performance
“Just please focus more on speed and performance, no need to include tons of plugins and/or features which can really affect the overall performance. At least you can make those features disabled by default and users can enable them when needed.”
A wise Kallyas user
We can assure you that speed and performance is a priority to us, the developers of Kallyas. We code with this in our minds, we rewrite the code, again and again, then if any component we created does not correspond to the standards of speed and performance, then we recreate it. That is the release of the new product takes a little bit longer. It’s not only an 8 hour daily job, but it takes also extra research on the best technologies and methods to use to have everything working instantly.
Accessing nested elements
“The limited fonts and related elements for nested elements are very frustrating. Indeed, I think the visual builder has only gotten more and more frustrating to use.”
Kallyas user
And this was not the only feedback we got of this kind…
The UI is ready for the new page builder and our team started testing the new page builder. We had to face a huge gap between the user interface and the user experience reality. The product will not be released till accessing the nested elements won’t highly intuitive.
Importing and exporting elements and pages
There comes the most wanted feature of all: the library
This is the answer to all of our user’s prayers: the ability to import and export elements and templates from different demos and to easily adapt them to your own website. This will also ease the process of migrating the website, as it keeps the package to a small size.
More control over the blog
“We want better blog functionality as well as the page builder pages.”
Kallyas user
It’s true, we focused too much on the shop and we probably let you, bloggers, down. But we are coming from behind with the powerful functionality in the new page builder where you will have full control over the archive pages.
Better RTL support
“Rtl not fully accommodate”
Kallyas user
Did we mention that we come from an Eastern European country? I don’t know if this is an excuse, but we will try our best to improve the RTL support also in the page builder and for the theme design. We will highly appreciate your feedback towards it.
Conclusions
We hope that with the new release, the percentage of overall satisfaction to increase by at least 5%. We will repeat the survey after the big update to get the new status of our user’s satisfaction. Stay tuned for the next article regarding the user’s expectations from this survey.
Also, if you have any questions, please leave a comment in the form below.
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So how long until we see the new pagebuilder etc? My old kallyas joomla site is getting really tired and really looking for the new wordpress versions we have on hold to take over with better blog functionality. Cheers