Feature Release: Accept payments online with Tula!

I'm thrilled to announce we just released the most important new feature for Tula since we first introduced Payment Center. Starting today, all our customers can now sell their passes and accept payments on their own websites using Tula Software's new online store!

What's great about this new feature though isn't just that you can accept payments online - it's HOW you can accept payments online.

The 'usual' way companies enable this kind of feature is that they make your customers sign up for an account on their software platform. Then, once they have an account, they can purchase something from you. But we think that's the wrong way to do it.

That method adds friction for someone who just wants to buy something quickly by making them sign up for a software product just because their favorite yoga studio happens to use that software.

And on top of the desire not to require people to create user accounts with us, we also didn't want to take students away from our customers websites. These students are OUR CUSTOMER'S CUSTOMERS, not our customers.

So we took an approach that was far more difficult to engineer, but provides a much better experience for the students of our customers.

We now enable everyone that uses Tula to create an online payment form that they can embed on any website. This form is a direct connection to Tula Software, and is 128 bit SSL encrypted so it's secure. And even better, students only need to fill out their name, credit card info, and their zip code.

When someone fills out this form to make a purchase, on the back end we do a lookup on the name and email of the person that submitted the form and make a recommended 'match' suggestion inside Tula.

Once you match the payment, the credit card is processed and credits are assigned.

The result is that your students can buy something directly from you, without having to create an account with us.

And of course, when they do, we'll send you an email and text notification.

We think you'll love this new feature, and as with everything we build, Maile uses it for her own studio. Want to see the payment form in action on a real website? Check out Tula Yoga Studio's payment page right  here.

Oh, and if you don't use the best software ever created in the history of the world for independent yoga studios, you can check us out at www.tulasoftware.com

 

The rarity of disconnection

My wife Maile on the rarity of being disconnected and how it's likely to increase in value:

Looking to the future, I anticipate that the experiences that allow this disconnection will become more and more valuable. Right now, the value is placed on connection - Wi-fi, faster internet speeds, more wires, cell phone towers. I believe that in the future, that value will be placed on disconnection - internet 'dead' zones, retreats, getaways, yoga classes. This disconnection will be become more and more elusive and we are going to crave it in our lives even more.

Men and the misunderstanding of yoga

I mentioned to Maile the other day that I think yoga might be one of the most misunderstood things I'm aware of. I feel like I can speak with some small amount of authority on this because I never used to do yoga for many of the same reasons I hear now from my male counterparts, and because I now have a regular yoga practice. While I suppose I'm still a relative newbie at it all, I at least have some sense of what it's about.

The most common misconceptions I hear about yoga, and that I used to have too, are:

1) It's easy

2) It's basically a bunch of stretching

3) It's 'girly'

4) It's not a good enough workout

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I think a big part of the reason for these perceptions is singularly and solely because Yoga does indeed draw in more women than men. And because of that reality, the aforementioned perceptions persist. And because of those perceptions among men, they continue to stay out of the studio. And so the cycle goes 'round and 'round.

But I think I understand what's happening here and maybe I can clarify a few things for men as it relates to yoga.

First, yoga is an amazing workout. It's hard. You get sweaty. You lose your breath. Your heart rate increases. The reason yoga draws so many women is not because it's easy.

It's because it's holistic.

Most people are aware of the differences between men and women as it relates to the laws of attraction for example. If you ask a man what body part he finds most attractive, very often you'll get an immediate response.

But for a lot of women, it might be difficult to narrow down attraction in this way. It might have more to do with someone's overall stature and  a combination of many things. The body may be one component of course, but that alone likely wouldn't be enough.

I think it's the same thing with yoga.

The women I know that do yoga are drawn to yoga not because it's easy and is just a little stretching. It's that the holistic nature of yoga nourishes you in numerous ways, not just the physical. Likewise, you won't find yourself in a yoga class, looking in a mirror, focusing on how to make your left bicep a little bigger or your abs more ripped.

Yoga is more than that.

To men who might be considering a yoga practice, I'd encourage you to drop any preconceptions and just give it a try. What I can tell you is that you get all the benefits you might be used to from a 'normal' workout, but with the additional mental and emotional nourishment we're often afraid to seek.

Cage Free Customers

The best thing about making software is that you can share your opinions, worldview, and philosophy with others through your work. Though, I suppose this is true of most any creative venture and not just software. But for us, it's through various features, functionality and design elements that we're really able to show people what we're all about.  With this in mind I wanted to write about a new feature we've just released.

Over the past few months we've been getting more and more people inquiring about moving to us from other systems that aren't serving them as well as they'd like. We're always happy to have new people join us, but the one thing we've noticed is that in almost every single case these potential customers feel locked into their current systems.

And the reason they FEEL locked into these systems is because they ARE locked into these systems. There's literally no way for them to easily export all their data. In some cases we've had to help people enter in hundreds of students by hand because it was the fastest way to help them.

Locking customers, and locking in their data in particular,  is something I am fundamentally against as a software developer.  It is not right and any company that keeps their customers by locking them in displays a lack of confidence in their product.

We of course always want our customers to stay with us, but we want them to stay with us because they love our software, not because we've caged them in. After all, if our customers aren't free to leave us, how can we know if they truly love us?

Effective today, with a single click, all of our customers can export their most important studio information. This includes the name, email address, phone number, # of credits remaining, the expiration date of those credits, and the customer ID of our payment processor (which ties to customer credit card data) for every person in your system.

Yes, you read that correctly, if any of our customers want to leave us they can get ALL their most important data, including credit card data. The data in our system is our customer's data, not ours.

The only reason we hadn't built this in earlier is we didn't really think about it. We had always made it easy for people to export the names and email addresses of everyone inside Tula, and so this just takes that a step further.

While we hope our customers never have to use this feature, we think it will give them the confidence they deserve that they're always free to do what they like with their data - even if that means leaving us.