How Long Will My Ticket Request Take to Complete?

There are a lot of reasons that you may want to reach out to Punchmark for support. We generally find that client requests fall into one of three categories: bug fixes, additional platform features, or custom requests. We take all of these requests seriously, but because of differences in department, investment of time, and amount of benefit for our clients, they are given different priorities in our queue as well as different estimates for completion.

Bug Fixes

Bugs are errors that exist in the platform. All software has bugs, and we do our best to fix them in a timely manner for our clients. In general, bug fixes are a high priority for us, and we don’t charge to fix them. There are a few types of bugs:

Critical Bugs: these are bugs that break the core functionality of the website, and are almost always platform-wide. Examples include issues such as customers being unable to view products, errors with the cart or checking out, or SiteManager pages not updating the site as they should. These are our highest priority to fix, and you can expect us to work on them immediately as they’re reported and fix them as soon as possible.
Minor Bugs: these are bugs that break certain functionality, but don’t affect the majority of users on the site. Examples include being unable to add an item to a wishlist, issues with contact forms, or minor styling issues. These are still a high priority, but may not be able to immediately push them to the top of our dev queue. A minor bug fix will usually be rolled into the next feature update, which is typically every two weeks.
User Experience Bugs: these are issues that make parts of the site more difficult to use than would be ideal. The function still works, but the user interface needs to be improved to be easily used. This is different from front-end feature requests - these are specifically ways that existing functionality is hampered by a bad interface, rather than new interfaces that would add new functionality. These generally take about a month for us to fix.
User Specific Bugs: these cover any issues that affect your website specifically, and not the platform as a whole. Issues with pages you’ve built or errors with your EDGE or product data would fall into this category. These are the most unpredictable in terms of how long it will take to solve. Sometimes, we’re able to direct you on how to avoid repeating the issue with a five minute phone call; other times, we may have to manually fix and overhaul your data.

Additional Platform Features

When you wish that the platform could do something that it currently can’t, you can always ask us to add the feature you want. If it’s a feature that we can release to all clients and will benefit everyone, these features are typically added to the platform at no additional cost. Your suggestion of a way to improve our platform will benefit both us and all of our clients, so we wouldn’t want to charge you specifically for them. The types of feature requests are as follows:

Customer-Facing: these are new features for customers to use on your website. 360 degree draggable jewelry images, new ways to check out, improvements to the jewelry grid - these are all customer-facing requests. Customers are the end goal of your website, so we place the highest priority on these features.
SiteManager: these are new features to implement in SiteManager, to improve the administrative side of your website. We are constantly adding new ways to use SiteManager, but we get great feedback from our clients as well. It’s important to have control over your site, and as such, we place a high priority on these features, and you can expect to see them implemented within three months.
Reporting: any time you want statistics, exports, or anything similar, it falls under improvements to reporting. Formatted lists of orders and specific ways to organize your analytics data would fall into this category. These can be helpful to running your business, so we love to add them. Because they don’t affect the customers coming to your website, however, we generally take longer to process these requests.
Third-Party Integrations: these are features that require us to partner with outside companies to implement. Features to do with Podium, Instagram, ClearSale, Sezzle, or other companies are all in this category. These tend to take more time to complete, because there are always some elements that are out of our control. The time it takes to implement these features is heavily dependent on the company that we’re working with - our Customer Success team can give you better estimates on an individual basis.
- The EDGE: because of our close relationship with The EDGE and the number of our clients that use the point of sale system, we generally prioritize new features for The EDGE higher than other third-party integrations. The new EDGE Data Transfer System (EDT) is the result of our work to bring bi-directional integration to our clients, and is on a scale that we would not normally implement for most third parties.

Custom Requests

If you have something custom you’d like to see on your site, we’re able to do almost anything. We’ve worked with clients to create some really amazing custom features on their websites. Depending on what kind of work you want done, there’s a different hourly rate. We’ll estimate the number of hours the work will take and give you a quote to approve before we start.

Design: if you want special design on your website, one of our designers can create custom pages, widgets, or other elements. Our rate for design is $125/hr, which will go toward a designer personally working on and overseeing the request.
Development: if there are custom features that you want, we can have one of our developers build custom functionality just for you. Our development rate is $165/hr. If we think there is potential to expand the feature you want into a feature that other clients may enjoy, we may offer you a discount on this rate in exchange for being able to roll it out to other clients later.
Content: we can create several types of custom content for your website. Custom content helps to draw in users and let them know what your store is about. The cost is determined by the type of content that you’d like us to create for the site: $125/hr.
Products: if you want us to help work to make your products look as good as possible, our Customer Success team can help out. With some work from the experts on our team, your products can look as good as any of the Premium Vendor items that we provide. This service is $1/product ($100 min).

How do I submit a request?

To submit a request, you can go to https://www.punchmark.com/contact-support and fill out the form, or go directly to SiteManager and submit a ticket on the page under Home -> Tickets. A member of the Customer Success team will reach out to get any other information that they need and pass your request along to the best person to solve it.