I really appreciate what Chris and Paul have started with OwnerRez and their effort to make the best property and channel management software, but more and more OwnerRez's UX (user experience) is growing increasingly sloppy, disorganized, and difficult to navigate. Really and truly. Every day it gets harder to get from point a to point b. I don't have time to go into it all in detail, I am just expressing my frustration. And it doesn't seem like they are actually listening to us users.
Just one example is - I get an inquiry from a guest via Vrbo, I respond, and then some time after they book. So I get an email notification that I got a message from them, so I click on the link to respond. I try to select a template for that, and the template I want doesn't come up because the interface limits my response to Vrbo. So I click on Activity Timeline, and that still doesn't allow me to respond because the conversation is limited to their initial inquiry, not including the booking they just made. So that leaves me to try to find their booking via their Related Activity. But only their inquiry shows there, too, not their booking. So that leaves me with having to either click on Contacts and find their booking via that interface or click on the calendar and navigate month to month in the future in order to find their booking that way. Tons and tons of steps!
And the new layout that they're all proud of totally sucks! Way worse than what they replaced it with. No easy way to get to where you can communicate with the guest. To email them you have to click on a tiny envelope icon on the far right. To message them otherwise you have to click on the three tiny dots way in the upper right and then select Activity Timeline from the menu that appears there. The horizontal menu puts "charges" and "transactions" in the right spot but the least important items right after that and then the most important items, such as Email and Messaging, far away or hidden in tiny places as I described. And the labeling is non-intuitive.
The best interface is what they relegated to "Activity Timeline," and the banner over it constantly reminds me that it's going to be gone soon - replaced with what, I have no clue. The Inbox sucks, as I described, but that's only part of it. If that is a unified inbox, I hate to experience what isn't unified, because the inbox is about as far from unified as I've experienced with any software.
I could go on, but I really can't right now. It just seems like it's all being winged - throwing up whatever they think will stick and very little of it is sticking. Really and truly, a skilled UX designer is desperately needed! If they have one, then they need to be let go of them and hire someone who really knows what they're doing to take their place. I could do a better job, and I have no background or practice in such work. All I know is that the basics of all this is being pulled all out of shape and making it harder and harder to use. Focus on the putting those basics together, get users to give you feedback as you go along before even going into beta, and play with the bells and whistles once those basics are in place.
