Spreadshirt: New online-configurator offers better user feeling and more design options

A guest posting by Stefan Thallmaier and Simon Strassburger

Leipzig-based company Spreadshirt AG is Europe’s largest producer of customized apparel. As one of the first large-scale MC companies in Europe, the company has risen steadily from its modest beginnings in 2004 to currently around 300 employees and production sites in Germany, Poland and the US. Core of the company is the configuration toolkit. Within the next weeks, Spreadshirt is launching a new edition of this configurator. Two research collaborators of my Aachen group, Stefan Thallmaier and Simon Strassburger (staff researchers at the HHL Center for Leading Innovation and Cooperation  in Leipzig) got the opportunity for a preview. Here is their report:

On August 10, Spreadshirt gave us the opportunity to a first look the beta version of its new configurator, the ‘Confomat’.  The main reasons for designing a new T-shirt configurator are the increasing user expectations and opportunities for performance optimizations.

In their presentation, Developer Frank Alic and Product Manager Robert Schulz stressed that the core element of the online user interaction system has been changed in several instances. “Usability has significantly increased, as we analyzed more than 350 suggestions from community feedback and customer reclamations over the last years and worked closely with selected operators of our partner shops.”

As a result of an improved visibility, the shirt is now centered on screen with required toolkits arranged around it. To reduce complexity of the ‘Confomat’ and to prevent the risk of size or design misinterpretations, users are now able to obtain instant feedback in case of misconfigurations.

Additionally the newly developed configurator offers a wider range of customization options. To name one example: users are now able to change colors from one letter to the other within one word. These customization opportunities are not available in older versions of the online interface. Hence the solution space is increased to a large extent.

From a research perspective it will be interesting, how users are able to handle the new customization variety. According to spreadshirt the new configurator also affects the systematization of diverse landing pages in the online shop, which support customers to get a first inspiring thought on how to design the shirt.

The new options for customizing the shirt also directly affect the average production time per shirt or accessories. This proofs once more the complexity of the development project for the new configurator, which has been undertaken by spreadshirt. All departments and production steps are directly affected by a comparable small change in the user interface – like the possibility of changing colors in the same word  (from the perspective of the customer).

The new configurator is currently in open beta status, going live within the next weeks. In order to see, feel and test the ‘Confomat’ just follow this link: http://www.spreadshirt.de/-C6221