The new ShopKeep POS app is now live in the App Store! We’ve introduced a range of great new features, so if you haven’t already, get yourself in front of your iPad and download the latest version of the ShopKeep POS App. For a quick overview of what’s new, you can check out this video.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s important to update the App only when you are physically in your store! We have changed how ticket printing is setup and our auto-migration of your previous details will only work if you are able to connect to your remote printer(s) during the update. (see more details in our blog post on printing)

To help you make the most of our new features we have written up a couple of posts that outline some of the key benefits. This post covers updates to your new, redesigned item layout.

Redesigned Item Layout: Color Buttons and Pagination

We know that every second counts when you’re ringing up customers, so our focus when redesigning the item layout was optimizing the speed of every transaction. We’re pleased to say we’ve done just that. In our tests we’ve seen a three second reduction in average transaction time! We’ve achieved this change by giving you more flexibility and control than ever before over your button colors and layout. Here are some of the key changes:

1) You can choose from nine colors to customize up to 3,000 buttons. This gives you the opportunity to group ‘themed’ items under certain colors. For example, a wine store could use dark red buttons for red wines, yellow buttons for white wines , light red buttons for rosé wines, etc… We’ve found this kind of visual cue to be a highly effective aid when cashiers are trying to quickly find a particular item.

2) You can also group ‘themed’ items on different pages and give each of those pages a name to aid quick item discovery. To follow the wine example, once you’ve used button color to group different color wines, you could then break out the wines into different pages depending on country of origin, Page 1 = Italy, Page 2 = France, Page 3 = Argentina, etc…

3) You can then quickly scroll through your pages using the new scrolling page bar. You can now scroll through your list of pages with a swipe and tap the one you’re looking for and be there instantly. Our new interface will get your customers what they need faster than ever before.

We asked some ShopKeep POS merchants to help us Beta test the new design and Joel Branson of One Girl Cookies in Brooklyn, NY has noticed a big impact on their speed of service, “We work in a high volume environment, so there’s really nothing worse than seeing a potential customer leave the back of the line because you haven’t got through things quickly enough. This kind of small time-saving on each transaction adds up to a very real dollar saving for us.”

What other changes are included:

1) ‘Priced in-store’ items are no longer constricted to the first page of your interface. You are also now allowed more than 30 ‘priced in-store’ items.

2) You can apply shortened names for item buttons, with full descriptions still printing on receipts and showing up on your reporting.

We’ve also made some smaller updates to other aspects of the ShopKeep POS system. Please check out our blog post on our new printing functionality and on our other updates if you haven’t already.

Paul Nugent

Paul Nugent

Paul Nugent is a small business advocate who uses his background in the startup space, along with his POS system expertise, to allow small business owners to make informed decisions within their specific budgets.