With only a few days left of 2020 we look back at the last 12 months with incredible positivity. As we reflect on our 2020 activities and progress, it impossible not be reminded about the global impact of Covid-19. Just 12 months ago this pandemic that has brought unprecedented changes into our lives, seemed like a fictional scenario. However there is great reason to be positive, the year 2021 is just about to start and we expect an incredible outcome as we plan to double down on all our product features, technical advancements, team and talent. We can't wait 🚀
2020 was an unbelievable year
Reflecting on our achievements in 2020, it's clear that we have reached a lot of milestones and further extended the capabilities of our product offering. During the last 12 months, we have continued to grow the number of brands using our solutions, reached thousands of new end-users globally and grown our business by a factor of 10.
The 2020 achievements further solidify the importance of our offering. During the past year, we have remained focused on building unique after-sale experiences, while at the same time improving our feature offering and enhance our service value. In parallel, we have also commited significant work to ensure that our platform provides best-in-class tools and benefits for brands who seek to make after-sales an important part of their go-to-market strategy. The colmination of our efforts, in conjuction with great customer support, we have established a great premise for achievements throughout 2020.
Besides, the constant commitment to continuously push updates and improvements, while at the same time enhancing our platform architecture and data portability, has significantly increased during 2020. Not only did we plan a lot of new improvements, but we also saw an increase in inbound request for changes and enhancements. To fulfil our goal of keeping up with the demand and needs, we have closed a round of external funding in September 2020. This capital has been our fertiliser for 2020 and will help us further expand our milestones far into 2021.
Finally, while we have released hundreds of updates across our Admin tool and Product Assistant applications, we have also spent considerable time promoting sustainable environmental choices. Throughout 2020 we have remained certain in our environmental efforts, and to this day push then need to minimising paper and ink production and utilisation by providing digital and smart Product Assistants.
Early days & massive potential
We have spent a lot of time and effort listening to customer feedback. This has been a source of tremendous insights and has provided us with crystal clear clarity on how large the need is for better after-sales solutions.
Throughout 2020 we have been investing and measuring the global hardware product market with an after-sales perspective. Due to the speed of technical innovation, easy access to production facilities, global shipping options and access to capital, the rate of new product categories (including variations) has never been higher. Based on our research to date, there are nearly 100.000 brands worldwide who have realised that after-sales activities are not done adequately if done with the conventional apparatus of printed documentation, PDF etc.
Moreover, supported by insights from our global survey conducted late last year, the trends for 2021 can be themed into the following categories:
46% never read the product manual and 92% never open the warranty declaration before using their device.
Modern customers expect content to be presented in less cognitively heavy manner and with clear benefits.
84% prefer digital instructions (videos, images) and 69% want easily accessible information on their mobile.
Customers want to access and find the right product information instantly.
35% never get the support they need while 76% are not using all the benefits of their products due to lack of know-how
. For customers, support and product satisfaction is the key driver for brand repurchase.
Product changes
There is no doubt that 2020 has been a year that has been driven by our constant urge for product improvements. It's safe to say that our offering and feature set is unrecognisable compared to the offering we have had just 12 months ago. Some of the major product changes have been:
December product update
With the 2020 recap, we also want to take the opportunity to release a couple of final 2020 product enhancements. This update is particularly important for us as we have been trying to fine-tune our editor for some time, and we wanted to come up with a solution that is incredibly powerful, easy to use but also allows us to be explorative with interesting concepts over the next many months.
We are very confident in this solution, and one could easily say that we have been keeping the best for the last. In fact, we have been working on the this update for the last several months and are today releasing a completely new and reenvisioned editor.
Slash commands
Today we are releasing a sophisticated editor that allows you to write, customise and insert components fast and easily. Also, the new editor helps you organise and style your content to fit your needs when writing, but also when adding images, tables and even videos.
The new editor is based on "content components", which is the way for you to visualise your content. In more detail, a component is defined by the type of content you want to add which can be static, dynamic, media-based or fetched from a 3rd party source. As demonstrated above, to use a component you simply need to type "slash + the of the component", e.g. "/ bulleted list".
Component types
There are more than 20 different content components, and are divided up in 4 following categories:
Basic includes i.e. H1, H2 etc.
Media includes i.e. Table, Image etc.
Standouts includes i.e. Tip, Warning etc.
App includes i.e. Google Sheets, Youtube etc.
Basic components
With the Basic components, it's easy to create your content structure. When you start adding your content, the editor will by default consider your material to be an ordinary paragraph but with the help of Basic components you can create one of the following:
Big heading: Make H1 headline by /h1
Large heading: Add H2 headline by /h2
Medium heading: Create H3 headline by /h3
Small heading: Show H4 headline by /h4
Check list: Checkboxes for tasks/activities by /check
Bulleted list: Add Unnumbered list by /bullet
Ordered list: Insert Numbered list by /ordered
Media componentes
As the name represents, with Media components you can add images, videos by also other types of content as tables when establishing product specifications. The available Media components are:
Image: Insert an image by /image
Video: Add a video by /video
Table: Inline table can be added by /table
Code block: Show code snippets by /code
Divider: Add page line divider by /divider
Link: Add a link by /link
Standouts componentes
Standouts are very powerful and have a great impact when you need to create attention for certain content. You can add four kinds of Standouts:
Info admonition: Adds an info component by /info
Warning admonition: Add a warning component by /warning
Tip admonition: Add a tip component by /tip
Quote: Insert quote by /quote
App components
Finally, with App components, you can show content directly fetched from 3rd parties. Supported Apps are going to be added constantly, and from today App components include:
Google Sheet: Insert a sheet from Google Sheet by /googlesheet
Lucid chart: Add a Lucidchart page by /lucid
Youtube: Add a Youtube video by /youtube
Vimeo: Add a Vimeo video by /vimeo
Style your content
With the new editor, you can also style your content as you might expect from any other powerful tool.
Highlight the content you wish to style and a styling menu will be presented with the following styling options:
Bold
Italic
Strikethrough
Highlight
Code block
H1, H2, H3, H4
Quote
Link
Customise tables
The new editor also packs a punch when it comes to tables. Not only do we now support cell styling, but we are also supporting variable row sizes which can easily be adapted to your needs.
Following table customisations are available:
Cell, row & column colour
Cell text alignment (left, center & right)
Add row
Add column
Delete row or column
Markdown
What about Markdown? Don't worry, the upgraded editor still supports a wide range of markdown shortcuts.
To use markdown while creating your content just write your shortcuts directly in line as demonstrated above. Super easy, as it should be.
2021 plan
We are super excited about our 2021 plan. Not only are we heavily investing in bringing amazing talent to our team, but we are also going to increase our product commitments.
Following the strong product year of 2020, the 2021 roadmap will be equally as progressive yet it will bring even more product enhancements. In practice we will continue pushing our product updates with several enhancements going out every month, each focusing on important areas of our platform. But 2021 will also include major changes that we have been planning and working on for some time.
We are going to work hard on building solutions that bring customers and brands even closer together with the most powerful after-sales solution on the market. Our data has shown that customers are looking for better ways to gain knowledge about their purchased products. At the same time, we also know that brands are seeking tools to maximise their content value not only in terms of availability but also customer-product benefits. With this in mind, 2021 will be the year where we push even harder on the advancement of after-sales solutions.
Thank you for your support!
The new editor will be rolling out over the next few days is expected to be done fully deployed by January 1st 2021. All features, mentioned in this post, will be available for all plans.
The whole Layerise team wants to say thank you! Thank you for your support and trust in Layerise. 2020 has been great, but 2021 will be even more fantastic. We wish you all a great holiday and a magical new years eve.
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