Tag: user interface

Coming Next Week: All New Vendor Admin

  • Jason@DPD
  • January 2, 2019
  • 4 Comments

We’re making this post ahead of the update (scheduled for Monday, Jan 7th) so everyone will have a bit of a heads up before the log in and everything looks different. We know change is kinda scary, but we promise this one is a good one. We’ve made it easier to find things, cleaned up the design and navigation, and gave everything a modern facelift!

Simplified Navigation

DPD’s navigation was getting cluttered with years of adding new features to our top-level navigation menu. Most stores had over 25 menu items in the main menu alone, and then sometimes multiple sub-pages and menus to get to the option you needed. It was a real drag, and features are cool and all but if you can’t find them when you need them that’s no good either.

So, we’ve cleaned that up quite a bit!

The new navigation shows what module you’re working in at a glance so you don’t get lost and is greatly simplified so you’re not spending 30 seconds scanning through a giant list of options trying to find the thing you need.

Primary and Secondary Actions

We’ve also refined navigation within modules- Instead of having 4 or 5 top level navigation links for product related functions, now you simply go to the Product list and either do the primary action (the green button) or open up the secondary action menu to do other things.

This same “primary action button, secondary actions menu” system is used throughout DPD. For example: the product detail page which is now the one-stop shop for all product related functions. We’ve tried to make all interactions in DPD linear, with a clear straight line to what you want to do instead of 3 different ways to get to a specific option.

Store Option Consolidation

Previously, we’ve been tacking on checkout options on the theme. You want to turn on the coupon field? You had to go to Theme > Edit Current Theme > Find and open the the checkout page options > Edit and save.

This was terrible for a number of reasons, mainly that it was impossible to find anything and you had to write us a support ticket to figure out where to turn on core functionality of DPD.

So, we fixed it! Now all checkout settings are on a page thats under Settings > Checkout. I know, crazy right?! No more clicking 3 layers deep in to the theme system and going through 12 pages of options to find the one you want.

We’ve also consolidated options like the actual store theme, store policies, error page messages, cart page text blocks, etc. to this page to further reduce menu items and places you have to look.

A million other updates too!

We’ve moved the customer view to a timeline layout that lets you see when notes and purchases were made in chronological order, and added stats like Lifetime Value (LTV) and lifetime purchases. We also try to pull in their Gravatar if they’ve set one up so you can put a face with a name, as shown by the ruggedly good looking customer below.

Pages like the Payment Methods page and Integrations page are cleaned up and easier to read and interact with and reflect how most people use DPD.


All in all, this update has touched every single page of the DPD vendor admin and we’ve spent hundreds of hours of development time working on it. We hope everyone likes it! As always, if anyone has a question about where to find something, needs to report a bug, or just general feedback please send us a support ticket or start a live chat from the admin and we’ll do our best to help!

DPD Update: New Vendor Control Panel

  • Jason@DPD
  • July 29, 2010
  • No Comments

This morning we published an update that introduced an all new vendor control panel. This fluid, full width admin interface makes better use of widescreen monitors and higher resolution displays- something our server usage stats tell us that most vendors are moving toward. We’ve also made a couple usability improvements that we hope will make things easier to understand for everyone that uses DPD to sell downloads.

New Vendor Control Panel

New Vendor User Interface

The new vendor control panel is based on the 960gs system and is a fluid, full width template that uses 100% of your monitor instead of the bit in the middle. This gives us the ability to pack more information on a screen, reduces scrolling, and gives us lots of places to stick new features 🙂

Of note in the new admin interface is the side navigation- we’ve moved all commonly used vendor functions to the left sidebar for easy navigation from any page in the admin. We hope this will help people find everything they’re looking for a little easier.

Usability Improvements- “New Product Wizard”

New Product Wizard
New Product Wizard

As far as we know, DPD is the only download cart on the internet that allows users to set up multiple websites, each with their own customizations, on one account. Sadly, this also made DPD a little more complicated than other carts. To help correct this and make DPD easier to use for all, we’ve created a “New Product Wizard” that guides you step by step through picking the store you want to sell through, choosing your product type, uploading your product, and setting its features and options.

Vendors no longer have to go to the specific store they want to create a product under and hunt for a create product button- just click the “Add New Product” link in the new left nav menu for every new product- we explain the process along the way in plain english once you get started!

New Customization Option… Tomorrow

Tomorrow we’re adding a powerful new customization option that will let you completely control the look and feel of your cart and delivery pages. Check the blog tomorrow for the feature announcement and a link to the documentation for this powerful new feature!

As always, we value everyone’s feedback and we read every message you send us. If anyone has any questions, problems, or comments please log in to your DPD account and submit a ticket- we’ll get back with you ASAP!