RedTie, a premier Web to Print software provider for online sales, today announces that it has a host of new features to demonstrate on its flagship RedTie Template (RTT) system at this year’s Drupa trade show.

In 2011 RedTie began selling its products in Germany as part of an overall global expansion plan that already included customers in the USA, Australia, Canada, Romania, Mexico and South Africa. Offering round the clock support, RedTie is using Drupa to continue this expansion into new territories through direct sales or partnerships / resellers.

Jamie Thomson, Managing Director of RedTie, says “Drupa offers something unique, we get to see a lot of our customers from around the world in one place, we get to show off our software to new potentials and we get to form new alliances and partnerships. I think that is the real value of such a large international show.”

Last year RedTie demonstrated the RedTie App Space at its open house in the UK to the press and customers and made the bold claim that it was now the 100% Web to Print software solutions provider. By effectively developing a feature that allows both customers and RedTie itself to quickly implement custom features, the RTT can now be and do almost anything on the web. Since then RedTie has developed a number of its own apps, available in the App Marketplace, which will all be on demonstration on the RedTie stand at Drupa.

That is not all that the folks at RedTie have been up to though, as Phill Rodgers, Technical Manager of RedTie points out, “The App Space is a market-leading feature inspired by the need to satisfy the missing 20% of bespoke features customers expect from generic software, it really gives us technical freedom to do almost anything.

Even before we started to develop the App Space we prepared and scheduled the creation of another Web to Print first, this has led to a complete change to our development philosophy.

Once recognised, we expect our competitors will follow us down this route as they have with so many other aspects where we have led the way.”

12 months ago RedTie realised that most Web to Print software developers were concentrating on the just the technical features of the software, something they themselves admit to doing. However what is often forgotten is the User Experience (often referred to as UX) and this has changed the way RedTie approaches its developments.

On the subject Phill says “The basic theory of UX is that if people enjoy using a piece of software or a website they will return and use it more and more, therefore concentrating on UX to aid conversion in a competitive marketplace has to be a good thing. In the past we may have neglected the user interaction with features until after the features were built, now UX is the first thing we discuss before we start a project and that focus remains throughout the development cycle.”

At Drupa, RedTie will be demonstrating the first two projects born of this new development philosophy. The RedTie Gateway is brand new, it brings together all of RedTie’s products into one place for the first time and gives customers more control over their own instances of the software than ever before. It also brings all RedTie customers to one landing page, which means that RedTie is able to communicate more effectively with customers.

The biggest change in the Gateway is the complete rewrite of the back end tools. Apart from bringing all the code up to date with the latest standards, most of the time has been spent on improving the UX of this part of the site and trying out new ideas that will be used on what RedTie are referring to as phase II of the UX overhaul, where the emphasis changes from improving the client's user experience to improving the end customer's user experience so that it is market leading, not just for Web to Print, but for webstores in general. Of course RedTie have also been adding new features along the way.

RedTie has over 10 year’s experience in developing Web to Print software, has offices in the UK, USA and Australia and is ISO 27001 certified. You can visit the RedTie stand in Hall 7a Booth D23 or get in touch by email form more information: [email protected]