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I think an exemplar is the "Flames of War" Website. Not only does this have all its products nicely photographed, accessible, easy to purchase and know exactly what you are getting. But it has so much more with painting guides, example armies and articles. It also acts as Hobby portal, with articles, PDF's and Intelligence briefs for unusual or non-standard Formations of Forces. It is an example of a superb well run, website that gives lots of value added, where as the GW website aspires towards this, but somehow doesn't quite pull it off.

nectarprime wrote:If a company cannot be bothered to make a decent website, I will not give any of my money to them.

I see it that if they aren't spending money on their website, they'll hopefully be investing in good service or the product itself.
Awkward sites can be tolerated, as long as the end result is worth the effort.

Pegasus Hobbies.

Good products. Crap site.

Skinnereal, I believe in the exact opposite and believe almost all Industry and Commerce is the same and invest in their Website.

"You never get a second chance, to make a good 1st impression"

If they cannot as an Internet retailer make a good website, then I am not going to waste my time expecting them to deliver quality service, quality miniatures and an overrall good customer service. Pride in your business and your products should be reflected in your image.

http://www.firestormgames.co.uk/

My local FLGS is Firestormgames, run by Rob West. His website is superb, his store and the back area with his 40 Tables is great. His customer service is brilliant and he takes pride in what he does. There is no way I will take anything away from him because he is not only a gamer, but a highly competent Businessman. Amateur Website means to me, Amateur operation.

kronk wrote:

mwnciboo wrote:1. KR Multicase (Great product - terrible website, I literally cannot workout what goes with what and even then i cannot be bothered)

I gave up after 5 minutes. If it takes that long to figure out how to buy your gak, you can keep it. I'll stick with Battle Foam.

I'm with East Texas on this one. I too looked at the KR site and wound up deciding it was too much of a hassle to find what I wanted. I'm not saying they lost a sale, per se - I'm already kinda locked into the Sabol ecosystem - but they did themselves no favors, certainly.

mwnciboo wrote:Skinnereal, I believe in the exact opposite and believe almost all Industry and Commerce is the same and invest in their Website.

"You never get a second chance, to make a good 1st impression"

I'm stuck in the mindset of taking recommendations over salesmanship.
And, from the days of craftsmanship over mass-production, I see well-made goods being worth a bit of effort to get them.

Oh well, I'm sure I'll get dragged into the the 21st century before it's out.

I battled through the site to get when I wanted while on work-time.
The clunky site didn't matter that much when I had time to fight it.

KR too for me. I half-expected to see spinning yellow 'Under Construction' gifs when I first stumbled on it. TBH they have an excellent reputation with me, basically from all the recommendations they get on Dakka. But if not for Dakka I might've ended up thinking they were some kind of scam.

Better site to go on for KR multicases is http://gamingfigures.com/viewProducts.asp?cat=181

A reseller of KR that has managed to actually make sense of the confusing mess that is KR's product line.

Also, to contribute to the topic, I have to give you this beauty as an absolutely perfect example of a horrible website:

http://www.perry-miniatures.com/

Seriously, try to buy something from that site. Go on, I dare you.

They actually require you to copy and paste the order code from each set of figures you want to buy, add the qty, then add up how much the entire order will cost before sending this information to them in an email submission form.

What.. the...

Also, 90% of the models they are selling do not have any sort of picture available, whatsoever. I really do think it wins the special prize as far as websites go.

Also, while not technically a company website... does anyone here actually browse "the miniatures page" website? If so, can you please explain how you do it without wanting to gouge your eyes out?

Why the heck TMP is the #1 most popular site for discussing historical and other miniatures online I have no idea, the place looks like it stepped right out of 1994 or something, before forums were invented.

Also, as much as I love the company, mantic's forums suck and do not allow you to edit posts, PM people, post images OR post hyperlinks. Atrocious. They have a painting forum where you *literally* have to copy and paste links to see pictures of people's models, it's laughably terrible.

I attended the mantic open day. At the seminar Ronnie mentioned something about why they don't accept feedback from posts on Warseer and how it was best to post on BoW or the Mantic forums.

Someone in the audience immediately said "Your forums suck!", and there were a lot of nods from everyone else.

I don't understand what's wrong with GW's website. Their dropdown menus are actually pretty decent.

I dislike visiting Avatars of War. Good site design, but it's very slow. Perhaps they could eliminate the high-res thumbnails.

I've seen this topic come up quite a bit over at The Miniatures Page. It's interesting when it does as there is a large community of retailers and small to mid size manufacturers as members of the community. The main problem seems to stem from two things.

First, a lot of operations are very small in nature i.e. they have few employees. This means revamping a website takes someone away from production time. For this reason a lot of places with popular lines (like peter pig) can't afford to take the time to dedicate someone to web redesign. They also don't run high enough margins to hire a contractor to redo the site.

The second thing I see mentioned a lot, particularly where lack of pictures is concerned, comes from people who did get into the web game early, but before download times allowed for lots of pics. These people usually have a vast catalog of minis, but updating the whole line would take a long time. This leads us back to the same issue and the first case. Taking someone off of casting and packing means slower delivery times, and angry customers. In some ways it is reassuring that a lot of these places that can't take the time to update their website are running at peak capacity.

In contrast to this, you see very good websites in a couple of types of companies. First, the large companies. Once a gaming company gets big enough (look at Battle Front) they can get into the realm of a dedicated web team. The second, are newer companies. These are recently started manufacturers who "came of age" so to speak within the internet age. Since they can add nice pictures and modern web layout as the company grows, they can easily stay up to date.

You can judge the validity of all of these reasons for yourself, but I make it a habit to worry more about a company's reputation with other gamers, than the look of their website. Good end product, and good service are paramount. I'd rather be assured of a good product that took 3 extra clicks to find than buy something that looked great on a beautiful modern website, but looked awful, or never arrived.

Dan

scarletsquig wrote:Better site to go on for KR multicases is http://gamingfigures.com/viewProducts.asp?cat=181

A reseller of KR that has managed to actually make sense of the confusing mess that is KR's product line.

Very nice. I had to resort to spreadsheets and fractions to get my last order in with KR directly.
There are a couple of trays missing from the full KR range (Land Speeder Storm and Wave Serpent), but I'll try there next time.

scarletsquig wrote:Also, while not technically a company website... does anyone here actually browse "the miniatures page" website? If so, can you please explain how you do it without wanting to gouge your eyes out?

Why the heck TMP is the #1 most popular site for discussing historical and other miniatures online I have no idea, the place looks like it stepped right out of 1994 or something, before forums were invented.

It is a weird, old-fashioned system. One thing I've noticed is that it's very 'non-hierarchical' so things can appear in multiple sections, etc. The forums are extremely bare bones, nut they have a devoted fan base. I get annoyed when I try to follow a company link and have to go through their manufacturer database.

I tend to wonder if a lot of the historical manufacturers are in a position where they have so many older models and cast on demand, and may not have cast a lot of them in years... So no picture until they have a slow day (Ha!) and time to cast a bunch, paint or at least ink them for better contrast, and photograph them. It's a lot for a $2 mini...

Not that this is an excuse. Pics definitely help buyers get their wallets out.

EM4. Great figures, but the site makes no effort to draw you in to the various figs they sell with visuals news or whatever. They sell alot of cool stuff, but you really have to dig to find it.

http://www.em4miniatures.com/

The really sad part is that this is the new site that was updated this year.

The upside is that there's no website costs to pass on to the consumer and their prices are just wonderfull!

BuFFo wrote:For KR Multicase, It took me three clicks to get a Dark Eldar carrying case into my cart from the home page.

Yeah, it is ugly, but it isn't hard to understand.

Sounds like you bought one of their "standard" layouts.
Go try to build your own, then come back to us with your opinion on THAT process.


Eric

biccat wrote:I don't understand what's wrong with GW's website. Their dropdown menus are actually pretty decent.

The current GW site isn't terrible... it just suffers by comparison to the last one, which had a lot more focus on the articles and gaming content. This site is very clearly a sales cart with an articles module slapped on as an afterthought.

This is turning out to be quite an interesting thread after it was rescued from Trolls (and yes i did fall for one...you'd think I know better).

SKinnereal, I genuinely agree with you on the Artisan/ Craftsmanship side of life. I cannot really afford anything that is too expensive or bespoke, Peter Pig is a bit iffy on the face side, but with some creative painting you can cover it a bit. I know where you are coming from too, with the whole Quality issue sometimes if there is a particular range is beautiful I will endeavour and then get frustrated that things are not straight forward or simple. I had a similiar thing at work with a new piece of software that defy's all Conventions in its GUI like the left click = Affirm Right click cancel, right click hold = Menu (this software was completely the opposite!). It is so bloody annoying when companies ignore convention, the Shopping Basket is a classic, we all know what it does, the same with Credit Cards. A good example is the internet it is based around Protocols and conventions, look at USB. Its all great and convient when their are international standards. How long is PAL going to exist against NTSC? What about DVD Regioning? What about Blu-Ray? Too many different standards are holding us and industry back.

On the subject of selling Miniatures, if you cannot afford to update a website or use it effectively it becomes a liability and you are better off with Magazine adverts or just use open an Ebay Shop to take the effort out of life.

OMG - Perry Miniatures...