As you might of read, we’re incredibly excited to see how
Anou's artisan community leadership manages all aspects of Anou's online store for a period of 30 days starting next week. The key to their success will depend on the tools they have at their disposal and the ease in which they can use them.
Keeping in mind that Anou's community leadership consists of artisans who not that long ago were not computer proficient, we had to rethink the administrative tools that Tom and I use to manage the Anou store. Our previous administrative page got the job done for us but that was about it:
The community leadership rarely used this page, with the exception of Brahim. When a trainer needed to add an artisan account on Anou, for example, they would simply call me up. After a couple of clicks on my part I would set up the account and the trainer would go on his or her way and complete it.
In redesigning the administrative page, we wanted to ensure that community leaders could complete all critical aspects managing the Anou store. With this in mind, we went back to the drawing board to create what is becoming Anou’s classic design: a clean, minimalist page, peppered with single colored, evenly spaced buttons:
All the buttons on the administrative page are organized by color. Blue buttons are used to review information (e.g. profiles for artisans or currently posted products), green buttons are used to create something new (e.g. a new artisan account), gold is to review anything related to orders, and purple buttons are research and insights (e.g. review expenditures/revenue). To create a new account an artisan trainer only has to make a decision between two buttons, can you guess which one it is?
Of all the tools the artisan team has access to, this one is my favorite:
Any idea what might it be used for? (hint: it’s purple!) This button enables any community leader to review a series of visual graphs that represent important stats for Anou: quantity of products added/sold, revenue, profit and expenditures, to name a few. In one such graph displayed below, blue represents the profit Anou generated in a given month compared with the expenditures of Anou, displayed in red:
This information is vital for the success of Anou's community. First off, it enables the community leadership to make more informed decisions based on Anou’s financial health. For example, leaders can determine how many new artisans they can afford to train in the next month, or if there is a windfall, they can elect to organize trainings that focus on design, quality, or other topics critical for the success of artisans in Morocco. It is the artisan’s money, after all.
The tools that the community leadership now has access to creates an unprecedented level of access and transparency. This enables Anou to successfully grow into a cohesive community of artisans capable of transforming how their market works. The more artisans that can be involved in Anou’s operations, the more artisans understand how Anou works and the vision it represents.
Starting next week, we'll begin putting these tools to the test!
