[ic] Admin Redesign?

[Christopher J. Andre']

Hello All,

It's been less than a month, and my first client is already asking for a
redesign of interchange's admin interface.  Their request makes a lot of
sense really...they want less 'clicks' when managing orders and customer
information.  

To add even more credibility to my client's suggestions, I saw a
competitor's ecommerce demo. Their admin interface solved all the usability
issues my client mentioned....and then some.

If you want to see the order management system demo, you can view it here.
"nexternaldotcom"

Here are some of my observations when comparing admins..

1. The links displayed immediately after logging into the interchange admin
are redundant. After logging in, you should be directed to the order page.
Without a doubt, that is the admin's most frequented page.....

2. 'pending orders' 
On nexternal's demo site, it is possible to change the order status without
leaving the 'pending order' page.  The rest of the information to be entered
is done via a series of extremely fast loading pop-up scripts.  A new page
never has to load.  This eliminates LOTS of pointing and clicking, and
admins can quickly facilitate a large amount of orders and the entering of
all the corresponding tracking numbers.

3. 'active customers' 
Sorting of the customer list by ID isn't very useful.  I think displaying
this information below would be more useful.

Last Name	
First Name	
Email Address
State
Last Transaction Date	
Customer Type (able to change customer type by selecting from pulldown menu)

4 UPS label printing.  Nexternal has integrated with UPS so tightly that
customers don't have to use the UPS software anymore.  Labels can be printed
directly from the nexternal order management interface.  NO REDUNDANT ENTRY!

5 Create Invoice, Create Packing Slip...

6. Nexternal has a great email interface that allows you to easily slice and
dice your customer list, as well as print out postal mailing labels.

7. Batch Processing

These are things that I am going to have to address in order to stay in
business.  Does anyone else out there have similar needs?  If so, maybe
these concepts would be a good addition to the community project list.

I'd also like to see some discussion about which of these requests are
plausible, and which are not...

Thanks in advance,

Chris