Punchbowl Blog

This post was written by Ariel Faulkner, Content Manager

In the fall of 2011, Punchbowl launched a new Digital Greeting Cards service to provide busy families with a more convenient way to send thoughtful well-wishes to friends and loved ones. We focused on creating beautiful digital cards that have the look and feel of traditional paper cards and detailed accents like envelope liners, custom postage, and rubber stamps. Over the past few months we’ve tracked the top digital card designs and have seen a number of trends emerge, especially in the birthday category.

Take a look at the most popular birthday card designs of January 2012 to see if you can spot the theme:

All five of our top digital birthday card designs have two important things in common: one focal element (a flower, a cake, a gift, etc.) and a bright, warm color palette. But will these remain the favorites?

Greeting card design trends are often inspired by sources beyond the world of stationery. (The cupcake, for example, emerged as a major food trend in 2008.) Here are a few of the 2012 fashion and interior design trends that we expect will influence birthday card design in the coming year:

• Bold Prints: Designers have declared that Spring 2012 will be the season of loud and proud. Incredibly vibrant prints and patterns (floral, peacock, and geometric) will dominate. Look for striking wallpaper, exotic textiles, and birthday greetings that jump off the screen.

• Vintage Appeal: It’s time to relive the era of The Great Gatsby! Some of the biggest movies of the year (Midnight in Paris, Hugo, and The Artist) are set in the 1920s, and everyone is getting swept up in the fantasy. Look for flapper dresses and Art Deco accents on the runway, pressed glass on the dining room table, and vintage-inspired illustrations on your birthday cards.

• The Unexpected: Contrasting textures, unusual proportions, and an eclectic blend of styles will also define the look of 2012. Expect to see pairings like iron and crystal, accessories made with burlap and velvet, or a shock of color on a neutral background.

Do you have a favorite 2012 card design from Punchbowl? Schedule a free birthday eCard for a loved one who has a birthday coming up!

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO, @mattdouglas

It’s an exciting time for Punchbowl. This week we made several announcements that I’d like to share with you:

1. MyPunchbowl is now Punchbowl.com
We recently acquired the domain Punchbowl.com — this means that MyPunchbowl is now known as Punchbowl.com. Is this a big deal? We think so. Did you know that a small social network once changed its name from TheFacebook to Facebook? Our vision is that Punchbowl will be synonymous with online party planning. We’ve got a whole new look, including new colors and a new logo. We hope you love our logo as much as we do. What do you think of our new domain and brand? Let us know by posting a message to our Facebook page.

You’re probably wondering what this change means for you. We’ve automatically transitioned your existing account so that it works on Punchbowl.com. You can sign in to your Punchbowl account to view your existing events, invites, and eCards.

Punchbowl will continue to offer one-stop party planning features, including customizable digital invitations, potluck organization, gift registries, local vendor search and much more. And we have the new Digital Invitation Studio coming just in time for Halloween and the upcoming holiday season.

2) Punchbowl surpasses one million members

We’re also excited to announce that more than one million members have joined the site. Thank you to each and every person who has chosen to become a member of Punchbowl.

3) Punchbowl strengthens Board with former GM of American Greetings
I’m excited to announce that Michael Waxman-Lenz, former GM of AmericanGreetings.com, has joined the Punchbowl Board of Directors. The appointment of Michael Waxman-Lenz to the Punchbowl Board comes on the heels of the addition of Harry Lin, former GM of Evite.com, to the Punchbowl Board of Advisors. The pair is an expert in consumer-internet sites and the social expressions industry.

Want to learn more about these announcements? Read the official 1 Million users announcement and the official Punchbowl Board announcement.

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO, @mattdouglas

I’m very excited to announce MyPunchbowl Digital Invitation Studio, a beautiful collection of customizable digital invitations, envelopes, postage, and decorative embellishments for events and celebrations. TechCrunch broke the story. We’ve already gotten some great feedback — here are a few user comments on Twitter: “MyPunchbowl Makes Online Invitations Look Like Fine Stationary. Is paper history?” and “MyPunchbowl brings online invitations and all-in-one party planning to the a whole other level.” We’re glad you think so.

We’ll be launching Digital Invitation Studio this summer, but want to give you a sneak peek. Take a peek now at our new Digital Invitation Studio!

Here’s the official announcement: 

MyPunchbowl.com, the leader in start to finish party planning, today unveiled MyPunchbowl Digital Invitation Studio — a beautiful collection of customizable digital invitations, envelopes, postage, and decorative embellishments for events and celebrations.

MyPunchbowl Digital Invitation Studio offers hundreds of stylish and modern invitations and save the dates, each with companion envelopes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. The exceptional array of designs can be customized with embellishments that include envelope liners, postage, and personal photos. The result is a beautiful custom invitation with a matching custom envelope delivered right to a guest’s inbox that replicates the act of opening a traditional paper invitation.

“MyPunchbowl Digital Invitation Studio allows hosts to send elegant invitations that rival real paper,” said Matt Douglas, CEO, Punchbowl. “With the guest experience of receiving an invitation in an envelope, we expect to see more hosts making the shift from paper invitations to digital invitations.”

“As a believer in online party planning, I’m thrilled about the next generation of digital invitations from MyPunchbowl,” said Harry Lin, former GM of Evite and Board Advisor to Punchbowl. “Digital Invitation Studio will exceed consumers expectations for what’s possible online.”

MyPunchbowl Digital Invitation Studio can help you create a beautiful invitation for any occasion. Whether you want to send an elegant save the date for a bridal shower, build excitement for your child’s themed birthday with a matching invitation, or celebrate your graduate with a polished design, Digital Invitation Studio makes sending stylish, modern invitations effortless.

Take a sneak peak at Digital Invitation Studio: http://www.punchbowl.com/digital-invitations

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

Our approach to building the website has always been to solve real problems surrounding planning an event. We have developed a full suite of awesome features using this strategy. I’d like to take you through one of the purest examples of this on the site - a feature we call “Relationships”.

Here’s the scenario:

- You’re planning a birthday party.

- On your guest list you have a mix of friends, including the following families and couples:

• Smith family of 4:
  • Parents Carl & Jenna
  • Kids Molly and Finn
• Married couple Jimmy and Kendra Barksdale
• Your friend Colin and his date Liz

- You want to keep an accurate guest count while making it clear to each guest which of their significant others or family members are invited.

***Enter the Relationships feature!***

It all starts on your Add Guests page.

1 - First, add all the guests who you have email addresses for using one of our many import or entry methods. The guests are queued up in your Guests to Invite list on the right side of the Add Guests page:

2 - Click the Relationships tab above the Guests to Invite list:

Here you can “connect” anyone in your guest list with another guest.

3 - I’ll connect Jimmy and Kendra since they are married. To do this, I just click “Add a relationship” under Jimmy and choose Kendra:

Jimmy and Kendra are now connected in my guest list:

4 - Next I want to connect the Smith family. I have emails for the parents Carl & Jenna but I don’t have emails for their kids. First, I connect Carl to Jenna:

Now I add another relationship to Jenna, but this time I choose “New person” since the kids are not in my guest list:

I add Finn the same way and the Smith family is complete:

I can do the same for Colin and Liz and now I’m ready to send invitations.

___________________________________________________________________

Now, how does this all play out for your guests?

1 - When Jimmy receives his invitation he is informed that his wife Kendra is also invited:

2 - Jimmy responds Yes and then has the option to respond for Kendra:

When Kendra opens her invitation she will have the same ability to respond for Jimmy (or view his response if he has already RSVP’d)

I hope you’re starting to see the beauty of this feature. Without it, Jimmy would not have known if Kendra was invited. He might have responded Yes and then added a “+1″ for Kendra. Kendra might have done the same thing. Then the host would have 4 Yes RSVPs when it should really be 2.

3 - Carl Smith receives an invitation and sees that his family is also invited:

4 - Carl can RSVP for everyone in his family, even though the kids never received an invitation:

5 - As the host, all of this is laid out clearly on your manage Guests page:

I hope it’s clear the level of thought and design that went into our Relationships feature. Use it for your next event and let us know what you think!

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

It’s a request we heard many times: “My event spans multiple days, how can I show that on my invitation?”

Well we finally have an answer. Simply click “Add end date” when you’re choosing a date for your event and we’ll display the start and end date on your invitation.

Enjoy!

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

As i mentioned in a previous post, we’ve made some great enhancements to the Dashboard page in your account. I’d like to highlight another change we made to the way your events are presented and sorted.

In the old Dashboard we had 4 separate areas where we listed events: My Current events, My Past events, Events I’m Invited to, and Past Events I’m invited to.

The system made sense but it seemed like too many ‘buckets’. When we designed the new dashboard we took a more simple approach. Now there are just two areas where your events are listed: My Events and Archived events.

My Events lists all events that you are planning or invited to in chronological order. You can delete or archive an event using the Event Options dropdown. To view your archived events, click Archived Events (you can even un-archive them if you want).

We think it’s an improvement. What do you think?

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

Last week I wrote about the new and improved Dashboard that was introduced with our last release. This week I’m happy to highlight another totally revamped feature on MyPunchbowl: the Potluck list.

Again we incorporated user feedback as well as some exciting new design ideas of our own to make a flexible, powerful and useful Potluck system. We spent many hours going over use-case scenarios, debating architecture, and pounding out all the details. In the end we think that work payed off.

The Potluck feature is too big to fit on this page, but I’ll give you a teaser image below. To get the full effect, sign in to your account, click into an event and go to the Potluck page.

Here are some highlights:

• “Open” items: Instead of requiring the host to specify items and quantities, they can simply indicate that they need 4 side dishes and allow the guests to fill in the specifics of what they’re bringing. (see above)
• Host control: One thing we heard form our hosts is that they wanted more control to manage who’s bringing what, make changes if needed, or choose an item on behalf of a guest. You spoke, we listened. The host has full control over their Potluck list
• Flexibility: Hosts can enter their own categories, enter items with unlimited quantity, allow guests to add their own items, add a note to each item, and more. Even with this flexibility, the interface is quite easy to use.
• Prettiness: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the new Potluck page just looks great! Props to Devin on fun icons and cool colors.

Sign in to your account and check it out!

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

In the latest update to the site we’ve given the Dashboard page a significant upgrade. The new design incorporates a lot of user feedback as well as some new ideas that we had. One of the areas that we’re particularly excited about is how we display events in your dashboard. Here’s an example of what an active event that you’re hosting might look like:

Here are some highlights:

• Quick Links: A dynamic list of links to the most common things you might want to do in the planning process. Just click a quick link and go right to the page you want
• Event Status: At-a-glance status of where you are in the planning process, including a link to the next thing you want to do
• RSVP Status: A quick summary of your RSVPs. This was a top user request!
• Event Options: Click this dropdown to perform tasks like adding a co-host or copying your event.
• Archiving (in event options): Take control of the events that are displayed in your dashboard by archiving events you hosted or were invited to that you no longer want to see. Don’t worry, they’ll always be accessible in the “Archived events” section.

Sign in to your account and check it out!

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

A little while ago, a fellow skier turned me on to a website called “Steep and Cheap”(www.steepandcheap.com). Steep and Cheap is an example of a new breed of eCommerce sites with a unique format: At any given moment there is only one nicely priced item for sale on their site. When that item sells out, they put up another one.

If you’ve never heard of sites like this let me tell you, it’s a fantastic idea. Not only do they usually have great deals, but they bring the term “sticky” to a new level. If you have a “sticky” site, it means people come back to your site often. Everyone wants a sticky site but it can be a challenge depending on your business or service. Steep and Cheap and other “one-at-a-time” websites have really nailed it in my opinion

Steep and Cheap is great for skiers like me, but you can find “one-at-a-time” sites for many other markets. Another example is Woot (www.woot.com). They have a general focus in electronics and also have sibling sites for wine and T-shirts. Woot is slightly different, they only have one item a day, but it’s an equally sticky site.

Here’s a few more to check out. A word of warning though - you may become addicted. Oh and be prepared to buy stuff…

shirt.woot.com

wine.woot.com

www.tramdock.com

www.dillyeo.com

Know of any more? Add them in the comments below.

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

We released an update to the site last week and one of the new features that has the team excited is the introduction of a site-wide global navigation bar at the top of the page:

You may have noticed that over the past few months we’ve greatly expanded the services that MyPunchbowl offers. We now have eCards, Birthday Reminders, Engagement Announcements, plus others.

The new global navigation bar may not be the kind of thing that slaps you across the face and says “I’m an awesome new feature!!” but we think it is a really nice way to both navigate through the site and convey all that we have to offer.

I’d also like to announce a contest  to name the little “dot” that indicates where you are in the site (see above … it’s on Birthday Reminders). Current suggestions include “the notch”, “the dot”, and “the nubbit”.

Post your entries in the comments below. The winner will receive a free hug from Devin, our graphic designer.