Glö Launches Paperless Invitations and Wedding Websites

London-based start-up Glö offers paperless wedding invitations, save the dates, and wedding websites for brides who "didn't say 'yes' to addressing envelopes." Glö provides brides with designs and functionality that enable them to save time, money, and trees while maintaining the customized look and feel of traditional invitations.Glö offers a broad range of designs to choose from or allows users upload their own designs, giving couples the option to work with a favorite designer or coordinate their online communications with other paper stationery products.

Glö enables couples to create e-invites or save-the-dates that mimic paper communications. They can also create a matching wedding websites and add unlimited pages of information, events and RSVP questions. Glö has an RSVP system where couples can select which guests are invited to each event (such as the rehearsal dinner, brunch after the wedding, etc.) and the Glösite will only display the relevant events & RSVP questions to each guest. Guests can view and edit RSVP responses for everyone in their household or party. 

According to founder Taryn Westberg,“Glö was born from a need we had for our own wedding.We had lots of out-of-town guests and numerous activities taking place, so we needed to collect a slew of RSVP information like arrival/departure date, attendance at various activities, dietary needs, babysitter needs, accommodation choice, etc. to help us plan.We wanted to send online invitations but couldn’t find anything that looked sophisticated enough for a wedding, plus had the website and RSVP functionality we needed. Ultimately, a web-professional family member created our invites and website as a wedding gift, and we had such a tremendous response from our guests and other engaged-couples that we decided to start Glö.”

MyPunchBowl- Fabulous New Features but Nonsensical Flow

When I read about MyPunchBowl’s latest updates on TechCrunch, I was excited to check them out. Indeed, the Design Studio- where one can create an invitation from scratch or customize existing invitations- was impressive. I could quickly and easily change the background design, font, colors, and even add decorative ribbons. The functionality was so impressive that I wished they already had the ability to print out real invitations. (TechCrunch mentioned that they are currently working on adding that capability.) I also thought the ability to poll friends for a convenient date was clever.

The site’s usability, however, was poor. I could not view any invitation designs without first creating an account. Asking for users to provide personal information is a deterrent even after the users have been engaged; asking for personal information without showing them anything is undoubtedly losing MyPunchBowl users. After signing up and naming my event, creating an invitation was the fourth and last option in the menu, ranked underneath Get Inspired (party tips), Poll for a Date, and Save the Date. Those three options are significantly less important to users than the ability to create and send invitations, and I was surprised to see that the online invitations option was so under-emphasized.

If I had a tool like the Design Studio, I would give it prominent placement on my homepage and let users play around with it before requiring them to sign up. Saving the best for last is not an adage that works well for the Web.