Online Payment Calculator

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jen4950

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Apr 25, 2001
Messages
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I have been working on a calculator for our company for a while off and on.

http://vacorp.com/calculators

We serve a relatively niche market with a great deal of flexibility in the terms. And we provide the credit app and contract forms- so it made sense to make a free calculator to fill in the blanks on the form; our typical new client is not savvy in the note business (just no experience in it, they are really savvy businessmen- so they will get it eventually..)

So- First, I developed a spreadsheet that captured the functionality that we were looking for- Idea was build it first and the reverse-engineer it into our website. So here is what I came up with:

http://www.vehicleacceptance.com/calculators/VAC_Calculator_04212008.xls

It works- but it's kinda choppy in some places. But many of our clients do not have Excel. So, part 2 of the project- converting to a web-based app.

There is a really nice app that I bought that does this.

http://spreadsheetconverter.com/

F'n sweet- does 90% of the work, and works with Excel 2007. Plus a really nice interface and clean code. They are working on JAVA versions of the converter, and working on implementing conditional formatting etc. But for me, I can use this template to work off of - saved me a shitpot full of work..

So I worked thru dumbing down my spreadsheet- removing validation and conditional formatting to get it to work smoorth. and here is what I have right now:

http://www.vehicleacceptance.com/calculators/VAC_Calculator_04232008_Web.htm

I will always provide an Excel version- because amazing as it is to this crowd, many of our clients still don't have broadband. So I want something they can download. But at the same time I don't want to give our competition the code to our calculator without some work. Sure- you can get the password out of a spreadsheet pretty easy, but at least it takes some nominal effort and intent- which with nominal tracking efforts can be the basis of a lawsuit. The thing is it's easy to validate the numbers work after you present them, but working them out of the minimal field entries that we require takes a little bit of effort.

Next I plan on converting my simple HTML/JavaScript calculator to an ASP / AJAX based application- so I can work in the conditional formatting and data validation. And protect my efforts in a much stronger fashion.

Still have a few minor formatting bugs- but seems to work so far.

So any thoughts or critiques so far?
 
hard for me to tell what i can type into and what i can't, since it's all green with no boders
 
so- the dropdowns are not obvious? I don't know how to make the entry fields more obvious..
 
well, for starters, make it not look like an excel spread sheet, imo. the drop down was obvious once i noticed it, but frankly it's in a sea of green so i didn't at first. i think styling is the biggest issue at the moment. e.g. the fields are right next to each other, filled with the same color and have nothing to distinguish them from each other. also, dropping it down to monthly didn't seem to work for me, but i might have used it improperly.
 
Well, we wanted it to look like a spreadsheet so they can print it out an fill in the truth in lending disclosure boxes- it looks exactly like the fed box on the form..

Some of these people aren't very technically gifted- tried to dumb it down as much as possible. We've had people using various versions of the Excel spreadsheet for about 6 months, and this is the version that got the fewest questions. Plus we have a 10 foot tall banner for our trade show booth that says free calculator and has a screenshot of the spreadsheet- so just keeping everything consistent.
 
colors are beyond horrible and make it look low class ( to much lime green ). IMO.

d.
 
The majority of people using this are horribly computer illiterate- so it has to be as stupidly simple as possible; hence green for input and nothing else to make it complicated.
 
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