Where is the SPAM checker????????????

Justin,

I’ve always just used the text email box. But I’ve thought of using html more. Should I now put the same message in both boxes? What determines who gets text or html?

Thanks!

P.S. Love the changes!

Oh my gosh, it’s so SLOW. I think something is wrong. Hopefully, it’s just a temporary glitch in the system.

Interesting. At first I didn’t like it when I saw it up today, but I suspect that’s mostly due to the shock of seeing a different page come up after years of seeing the same reliable "old version" of the template.

Reading your post, the reasons for the change make sense. For me, it’s interesting to see that you switched the HTML and text windows "to encourage more people to include plain text versions of their HTML emails."

I have used plain text (only) for a long time - yes, I know that’s old-school - and when I saw the new version, I assumed you made the switch to encourage text senders to start using HTML more.

Hi

It says: send immediately, but when you save the message the send time is the time saved. And since I didn’t want to test out if it was really send out after Queuing I edit the send time.

for future broadcasts: will it be send immediately after you click queue?

I am yet to test. But I am sure this will be a change for better. Thanks

Justin,

I really like the new layout and especially the helpful tips.. the site certainly works better than it did the past couple months. It’s great you are constantly making changes to better your service.

My thoughts,

One of the worst design changes ever. Used to be simple, but now is a mess.

I guess it goes to prove, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it".

I like the idea of the link checker at the bottom of the page but is there any way to extend the time used to check the links beyond 20 seconds?

I have links to Amazon and other larger sites that simply take longer than 20 seconds to load but are active and valid links. However because of the time frame they keep showing up as invalid.

–

On a separate note, I use MS Word to create my documents. If I copy the html code either from Word or FrontPage and then use Aweber’s option for "Classic HTML" and paste the HTML code in there it gets the best results and retains pretty much all formatting.

I don’t like having the time sent set to right now by default. Plus the date box doesn’t come up until you select send later. I find myself constantly worrying about the date and reminding myself to make sure of the date sent now because I always preload my broadcast messages. This wasn’t a worry before because I could set it easily right away and get on with my message.

Also, can we set up a way to only have the tips boxes if you need or want them. I find them very annoying on the screen.

I find this format pretty awkward to work with especially the major change of the html first instead of the text box.

I’m with John on this one.

There was nothing wrong with the old version and I think the worst thing that can ever be done is to "improve upon" something that works perfectly.

Over time, one develops a systematic approach to the way they conduct business and then one day, out of the blue, there is a wrench thrown into the works.

Now there is more thought process involved where there once was little.

There is also a fear that one may be overlooking something which may potentially harm their business or relationship with their list if overlooked.

In fact, the vibrant blue color change a month or so ago made me a bit nervous because I was concerned that there may have been some other changes thrown into the mix. It’s a good blue though.

I cant speak for everyone, but I will anyway because I’m the one typing.

I think the only change everyone would really like to see is having the entire operation centered on the page.

For those of us with wide monitors, it’s a stretch of the neck, movement of the chair and change of angle on the keyboard.

I feel like I’m hanging my head out the driver’s side window looking for a safe moment to pass on the highway.

Aweber is still the best and there’s no denying that, but now it’s just a little different, or… better?

That’s my 2 cents and back to work I go. I’m currently leaping over a newly located HTML editor to experience the warm embrace of my trusted and less rejected text editor.

I switched to using the HTML templates after I received some from others and liked them.

I was wondering if there is a way to select a template, set it up with your information and save it as your own template? That way you do not have to put your information in each time you want to use it. Save a lot of time.

I like the new set up. I, too, missed the spam checker. It took me a little while to find it. That is a very helpful tool.

Awesome! Thanks for continually making changes around here to make things better for us.

Hopefully we all know that it’s virtually impossible to make EVERYONE happy all the time If you figure out a way to make how many users happy with every move you make - I wanna know your secret!

I personally love the new design. It’s so much easier to use, everything has a much cleaner look and it flows very nicely. I also love the fact that the link tracker isn’t so hidden and I don’t have to worry about whether or not I checked the box.

It’s also great that it’s set up for those "not-so-list-savvy" users know the proper way to send out a message - good thinking!

I wanted to comment on something you said:

"After you copy/paste, you do need to use the link tool to create links from whatever text you want people to be able to click on."

Thanks so much for mentioning this! I don’t believe I’m one of those "not-so-list-savvy" users I mentioned but I never even gave it a thought that I was not doing this. It of course shows up in the message box as a live link and my email program apparently automatically makes it a live link so when I send myself a test message, it’s live. Apparently I’m risking it not being a live link for some of my subscribers.

I guess I just wanted to repeat what you said here because I think it is a very important comment and I have a feeling I’m probably not the only person doing this.

I’d also like to echo Jules’s comment as well. I’m surprised you said this sounded odd. I don’t even bother using the preview option anymore because it looks nothing like the actual email that is sent out.

I do always test regardless and still would even if the preview option didn’t do this. However, I like Jules also spend a lot of time sending numerous test emails to myself to make it look "just right".

Anyway - thanks for trying to satisfy as many of us as possible! I appreciate it!

Anita,
THANKS! I thought I was losing my mind! LOL.

Much cleaner layout. Thank you!

One thing I would love to see is the ability to search all lists at once for a particular field. Right now you have to search one list a time.

I love it this way. You can create the email you want to send faster and deliver it the same minute without schedule. Thanks guys.

Hi Justin,

The changes are for the most part good. I like having the HTML box on top since that is what I use. The split testing is also good to see right up front.

However, I agree with what Valerie (and Karin) said on the date box. It takes an effort to get used to it. The previous version handled this better. Also, you don’t necessarily know if the date is wrong until after you save the message. In fact, I sent a broadcast out immediately instead of delayed because I did not notice that the date feature did not take the future date that I put in.

A suggestion is the have a calender pop-up so the date can be clicked on - instead of typed in. I’m sure the AWeber designers and programmer will work this out.

For Karin and Jules, might I suggest creating the message in HTML in Notepad. That way you can view it in Internet Explorer (or another browser) on your computer prior to copying the code into the HTML editor on AWeber.

Very interesting, cool and refreshing design. I see that button to exclude on all other lists is just ‘easier’ now that the box is just beside the message.

What I think would be REALLY good is if we can send a broadcast to all the sublists in my aweber account from just ONE single broadcast. AND have it ‘personalised’. Because I use different ‘from’ adress and ‘names’ field for different sublists, whenever I do a broadcast, I’ve to repeat the whole broadcasts steps over 15 times! It would save me a ton of time if we had something like that!

One word : Congratulations !

I’m happy with the changes (I was worried I wasn’t going to be, after reading the reactions above!). They really are an improvement, esp. what you did with the options.

One remark. I usually create my broadcast a few days before sending, so I would use the ’send later’ option. But having to fill in the date manually is a pain! Can’t you make a nice little pop-up date-picker like you have in the ’search leads’ section? It makes it not only easier to fill in, but also easier to decide which date & day I want to sent (I may know I want to send next Friday, but may not know the date).

I have another idea that they use on a similar service I use in Holland: you first do the html, and then click on ‘create text message’ and it cleanses your html and creates a perfect text message from it, with links working and all (and, of course, keeps the html part as well). Great system which saves a lot of time! Hope you can implement this at AWeber as well!

I really like the new layout. The changes seem simple but the order is much more intuitive to how I create my messages, which makes a big difference. No longer am I scrolling down to complete something then scrolling back up to the top to go to my second step. It also seems cleaner.

Being able to schedule my broadcast sends is also a bonus! I’m a convert from another service and this was the only feature I wanted from the other service… until now.

I agree with the several comments about the preview message not
always looking like the test message when i receive it in my mailbox.

The most common differences is when I indent a paragraph (like a P.S., and the preview messages shows the indented sentences aligned with each other (as I typed them) but the test message shows some sentences out of alignment.

What can I do to correct this?

All good changes. Thanks !

When I first signed up with Aweber a couple of years ago, I was using a slow connection in Thailand. I found it extremely annoying to use a web-based interface because of the constant waiting and the frequent timeouts that caused my work to disappear.

Now that I am in Canada and have a fast connection, those problems have disappeared for me (although not for others), but still, it seems to me that the basic process is dumb. Yes, these are definite improvements to what you had before, but why not give us a desktop application that runs at lightning speed and then uploads the final result to Aweber when we’re done? Google does this with Adwords. Americans tend to forget that the rest of the world does not necessarily have a high speed broadband connection.

It seems to me that your programmer or designer has a one-way vision and is not aware of what people actually want to do with Aweber. I mean, why write an editor, that is going to have peculiarities and bugs, when Open Office and Microsoft Word do it so much better? Harness them, don’t compete with them.

The other major complaint I have is that you do not follow up on people who did not respond to the confirmation e-mail. A second e-mail a day or two later would undoubtedly improve sign-ups by at least 25%, probably more.

Regarding the new interface, I think it’s a vast improvement over the previous version, especially as I no longer feel like a surgeon doing keyhole surgery in those tiny edit boxes. But still, the edit interface has some peculiarities and the preview doesn’t always match the actual e-mail.

You’re getting there, but you’re not there yet.

I like the changes. I think it was smart to put the HTML first - that’s where I start - then text, then the options. That’s exactly the order that I work. Good job.

There is too much white space between the elements - it requires ADDITIONAL scrolling when in fact a tighter vertical layout would be more compact and efficient for those of us who write a lot of messages.

That is an obvious improvement that can be made - just removing the blank lines.

For example the Submit Comment, notify me of comments and subscribe boxes below this one is tight, compact and easy to read.

I realise this is a first draft and that you will fine tune it - I will reserve further comments following getting used to the new layout and format.

Habits die hard and these might very well be better ones to adopt!

Onward and upward!

Thank you for the effort to IMPROVE your product - it was starting to look a little dated, but worked well…

Dear Justin,

Like Debra Wendler, I’m looking for changes that help me manage campaigns easier and better. Making usability changes can be good (if backed by data, like dr. Mani poins out). But what’s really missing from Aweber is an API.

For example. I would like to send emails based on events on my website.

- when a customer browses a specific product page, I would like to send him/her an email about that product 24 hours later

- I’d like to be able to edit subscriber information from my website (so I can keep login email the same as the Aweber-email, for example, or let them change their password and have it reflected in later emails sent through Aweber)

- I’d like to be able to check programatically if they ‘ve bought both product A and product B, then I can send them a specific email through Aweber.

All in all, a good API would be very useful.

Akili, if you click in the date box a calendar already pops-up, so problem solved I think.

As for using notepad for the html message, bit difficult when using one of the templates.
I always test the completed message to myself to see how it looks like (in two different email programs).

I don’t find the new changes of particular significance to warrant any fanfare.

I have noticed a new addition over the past few weeks that I do find bothersome that I’ll reference here….

You’ve implemented a new "Invalid Links" capability that dynamically checks each web link reference in a message or broadcast. While clarly understand the good intention, this extra new process ‘hangs’ up my editing of my broadcasts for 30 to 45 seconds periodically while I am working on content. In my particular application, I publish a weekly update to private clients and subscribers and in my content I reference charts, etc that are in a secure (client-only) area of my website. I know that I can manually ‘Allow’ what your new feature thinks is an invalid link when I save my message/broadcase, but I’d rather not have to deal with it at all and would like the ability to set a default for this to in effect turn off this new ‘feature’.

Two suggestions on the "new broadcast message" page:
1) Do not default to "Send Immediately" - Default to "Send Later"
We need to be able to send a test message to ourselves as before. The send immediately default is going to embarrass us all as we accidentally send an incomplete, unchecked message.
2) Personally, I don’t like the click-tracking functions. I’d rather the default be unchecked. However, either way is ok. At least that doesn’t set a trap for us like the Send Immediately default does.

Just the ability to email all my lists at once and not get duplicates is worth the price of entry. Thanks.

Also, I have complained and moaned over getting kicked out due to FireFox 3.1 issues, I see you have fixed that as well.

Thanks, I am once again a satisfied AWeber customer.

"Creating an HTML message without a plain text alternative is a bad idea."

Yeah, so forcing me to see HTML creation when I don’t use it is a bad idea too

Not sure about the changes yet although I suppose I will get used to them. Everything seems more spaced out to me whereas before everything was much more compact and logically set out.

I only use plain text - HTML is unnecessary unless including graphics or text attributes - HTML trips spam filters much more easily - so I preferred the text only areas at the top.

Also the default trackable links option set to On which converts links to AWeber links has caught me out twice, and I actually had to send a followup message to apologise to all my readers because it looks unprofessional.

Can we have the trackable links option set to Off so we can optionally switch it on should we need this feature?

Also - and this is not related to this topic but I will mention it anyway - numerous - and I believe it could be as high as 50% - messages are being filtered by local spam filters in for example Microsoft Outlook. The Outlook filters are defined and updated by Microsoft, so how about liasing with Microsoft to get AWeber messages white-listed? The email losses due to this are extremely high, and are not reported.

Aside from those observations I think AWeber continues to provide an exceptional service and I am here in the long term.

Hi Justin,

Tried again with the pop-up calender. This is the thing: in the search-leads section, the date-formfield stays blank, when I click the pop up calendar appears.
In this messagecreation-section, the date-formfield does not stay blank, it says: mm/dd/yyyy. At first I thought there would be a pop up calendar, so I clicked my cursor here: mm|/dd/yyyy.

But the pop up calendar didn’t appear, I had to manually insert the date.

After your mail, I tried again, this time clicking the cursor in the blank spot behind yyyy. Yes, now the pop up calendar shows up.

However, clicking again my cursor behind the mm does not bring up the pop up calendar.

Now that I know, I will not have any problems with this myself, but maybe others will. For your information, I work on a Mac with browser Firefox 3.0.1.

I don’t really like it.

I really dislike that the default is set to "track clicks". This makes the text links look like crap, as I missed removing the checkbox on the first email i sent out.

Please remove that default. I’ll get used to the rest of it.

How about including a text editor that allows us to select the number of characters for the line length vs the existing "wrap long lines"?

Well, I am new to your autoresponder. I think offering the service free for a limited period of time to allow the user to master it will help a lot.

I love the new design. MUCH FASTER and CLEANER.

This was one of my requests on the survey, so I’m completely thrilled with this!!!

Thank you!

I do a lot of broadcasting in both of my AWeber accounts and have found the new changes are very awkward. The new broadcast format takes up way too much space. I do straight text broadcasts and find I have to do a lot of scrolling from subject to body copy.

AWeber is absolutly #1 in customer support in my book and I’m glad they’re willing to implement upgrades but from a User Interface standpoint, I have to agree with John - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Seems like the UI keeps getting easier for new AWeber users and more cumbersome for those of us that have been around for years. Can’t we have our dropdown menus back? lol

Done complaining - I’m happy it still works and that you still support your customers and ask for their feedback.