{"id":103,"date":"2026-04-02T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T06:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/2026\/04\/02\/taking-on-excel-how-we-invented-quick-claiming\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T11:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T08:54:09","slug":"taking-on-excel-how-we-invented-quick-claiming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/2026\/04\/02\/taking-on-excel-how-we-invented-quick-claiming\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking on Excel. How We Invented Quick Claiming"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I send you a link to my wishlist. You open it, find a great gift, hit \u201cClaim\u201d\u2026 and that\u2019s when a registration form appears: you need to create a password and confirm your email. For many people, that\u2019s where their introduction to the whole wishlist concept ends.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The pace of modern life \u2014 and simple human laziness \u2014 breaks the user journey that wishlist services like this rely on. Our team has long been receiving feedback that Ohmywishes users find it hard to get their friends to actually join. People don\u2019t claim gifts simply because they can\u2019t be bothered to sign up for yet another app or website.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On paper, the wishlist concept sounds perfectly simple: someone creates a list of wishes, shares it with friends, and their friends each pick one and claim it so nobody gives the same gift twice. In practice, everything falls apart:<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So some of my more resourceful friends don\u2019t bother \u2014 they find a workaround in\u2026 Google Sheets. The setup goes like this: create a spreadsheet with a list of gifts, add links, share access \u2014 friends jump in and write down who\u2019s taking what. It works, but there are catches:<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/EN-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-59\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The element of surprise disappears \u2014 the wishlist owner can immediately see who claimed what;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Anyone with the link has full edit access \u2014 the spreadsheet can be accidentally (or not so accidentally) ruined;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And have you ever tried to navigate a spreadsheet on your phone?!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet people still use it because it\u2019s \u201cthe fastest way.\u201d I\u2019ve personally received links to spreadsheets like these more than once:<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"589\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0-1024x589.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-70\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0-1024x589.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0-300x172.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0-768x442.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0-1536x883.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/RU-0.jpeg 1614w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There\u2019s also another option. Some people use wishlist services that allow claiming without registration (yes, those exist). You get a link and claim right away. Sounds convenient, but the same problems surface:<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Anyone can claim anything \u2014 or everything;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>There\u2019s no way to know who did it, or why;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you claimed something and then changed your mind, you can\u2019t undo it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result: two extremes. Registration pushes people away, and claiming without it creates chaos.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like many good ideas, this one came to me mid-run \u2014 somewhere around kilometer seven of a ten-kilometer loop through the park.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>What if registration didn\u2019t feel like registration?<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You open a wishlist link, pick a gift, hit \u201cClaim.\u201d Then what? Instead of a standard registration form \u2014 a small pop-up asking for just your phone number or email address. You get a link or a four-digit code back. One click \u2014 and that\u2019s it, the gift is claimed.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Technically, it\u2019s still registration: the user still creates an account. But now we\u2019re not asking for any unnecessary information.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/EN-2-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-60\"\/><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The sign-up process happens quickly and almost invisibly. Later, the user can come back to the wishlist \u2014 to change their claim or pick a different gift \u2014 by signing in again.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And an authenticated user is a potential future wishlist creator in their own right. All they have to do is fill out their profile and add their own wishes.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The short version: we studied user behavior, came up with an idea at the intersection of psychology and UI design, and found a simple solution to a big problem. Your move, Excel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We studied user behavior, came up with an idea at the intersection of psychology and UI design, and found a simple solution to a big problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-functions","category-ui","category-user-experience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.ohmywishes.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}