Browser and OS stats

Recently our friends over at Xero posted some stats on small businesses and the browsers / operating systems they use to access their accounting data. In the spirit of transparency – here’s a quick look at the statistics for PaymentEvolution Payroll (our online secure app for processing your payroll):

1 month Sept 16 to Oct 16 2012

Browser usage 2012 period

1 month Sept 16 to Oct 16 2011 (previous year)

Browser usage 2011 period

What’s most interesting to us (aside from the rapid decline in Internet Explorer usage) is the rate at which non-PC devices has grown. Cloud-based services like ours open up the possibility for small business owners to run their business from any computing platform they choose. And our clients have clearly voted – Mac and iOS (not shown) has gone from under 3% of our secure app traffic to now over 1/3. We’ve spoken to several clients that now exclusively run their business on iPads. While that in of itself may not be news today – the fact that these business owners can run their business on mobile devices means freedom. Freedom from having to operate from your desk. Freedom from having to run your business during “regular business hours”. And most importantly, the freedom to do everyday business tasks (like bookkeeping and payroll) from anywhere.

This is amazing change in a very short period of time. Obviously, if your old desktop payroll software can’t keep up – we can recommend one that will :)

Better help

You’ve probably noticed a new look for our support, community and help forums. We’ve streamlined getting you the answers you need – like improving search and refreshing our help content.

What’s new

• Improved search – better suggestions for existing articles that match your query, integration with all content (feature requests, community help, announcements, tip & tricks etc)
• The ability to submit a support request online (and not just through email)
• Support history and log – you’ll be able to see the status of your support requests and interactions with our support team

Why the change

Over the past 18 months we’ve closely monitored the use of our previous community site. We noticed some interesting usage patterns. First, folks most commonly come the site looking for instructions on how to do actions like running a payroll. We’ve created a “getting started” section for these most frequently visited topics. Second, when questions were asked in our old public community site that pertained to a specific account or situation, we didn’t have a good way of tracking down the affected profile. This new support site encourages people to login so we can better assist with these types of inquiries (though you can still post questions or suggestions anonymously). If you’ve already logged into your payroll account, you won’t need to authenticate again on the support site.

We’ve also seen our clients move beyond email as a way to communicate. While email is still important, we wanted to be able to take support requests via the web, and other channels like Twitter. Importantly, we wanted to ensure a consistent (high-level) of response and service – which we can now do through “tickets” which you can track the progress of. If you haven’t already – go to the “check your existing requests” link in the menu above.

Lastly, we wanted to greatly improve our “search” functionality with instant suggestions and more relevant responses. The new search is a big improvement and will help you find the answers you need faster.

Our old community site is still up and we’re migrating the content as needed. If you see something that we should post, just let us know or create a topic on the site itself.

Looking ahead

Over the next few months we’ll be integrating support directly into the payroll app and making the workflow of processes like direct deposit enrolment happen right here. This will give you better insight into the status of your requests (you’ll see a full history of your support requests) and provide you a better way to communicate over your preferred contact channel.

Let us know what you think