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How do!

Link - https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1tSExWot8zVGvrPyXJOEJo/dc17ba0f8fc48a497ca6026f2a1fae4d/2023-24_half_year_report_-_final_for_IR.pdf

Initial stuff? Takings up at Constant Currency. Just the first page. Lots of bones to pick, so off you go.

I have no idea how much these things cost normally but £10.8 million for the new website seems very expensive

Licensing down slightly (not concerning, but a bit), sales of models up at Constant Currency more than making up for it. Dividends up, cash buffer increased, core gross margin up. New CFO will probably have to do a bit more about currency holding management, just saying "we don't manage this but will tell you what happens" is beginning to look a bit unsustainable for a company of GW's size and share price.

Very worrying to see them dishonestly misrepresent to shareholders the state of the online store however, and that they do not expect to have to spend any significant money fixing it. Both are transparently false and the board should be asking hard questions.

The launch of our new web store was a key morale boosting milestone for them, and me too.

Genuinely baffling. As GW have quite a few small shareholders I'd be actually interested if this comes up at the AGM. The downplaying of the IT issues in general is delusional.

Warhammer+ subs up quite a bit given no investment.

Doesn't sound like the Amazon show is coming until 2027 at the earliest.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matrindur wrote:
I have no idea how much these things cost normally but £10.8 million for that website seems very expensive

It is. It's a shitshow.

But when the business makes £20m more revenue regardless at a better margin to be honest shareholders are not that likely to ask too many questions.

 Matrindur wrote:
I have no idea how much these things cost normally but £10.8 million for the new website seems very expensive

These projects are never based on a realistic use of resources, they will cost as much as the customer can afford to pay.

 xttz wrote:

 Matrindur wrote:
I have no idea how much these things cost normally but £10.8 million for the new website seems very expensive

These projects are never based on a realistic use of resources, they will cost as much as the customer can afford to pay.

While that is true for 10.8 million I would have at least wanted a usable website

 The Phazer wrote:


Very worrying to see them dishonestly misrepresent to shareholders the state of the online store however, and that they do not expect to have to spend any significant money fixing it. Both are transparently false and the board should be asking hard questions.

The launch of our new web store was a key morale boosting milestone for them, and me too.

Genuinely baffling. As GW have quite a few small shareholders I'd be actually interested if this comes up at the AGM. The downplaying of the IT issues in general is delusional.

I see this quote slightly differently. I totally agree that for a customer, the new store is not as good as the old one, but the IT staff don’t use the store, they maintain the store. The new store may be and probably is far easier to maintain on the back end compared to the old one. If that is the case then the new store rolllout WOULD be a morale booster - I’ve managed enough tools at the dog end of their life to know the day it finally gets shoved in the bin is a good day!

Well could be worse. At least with GW store I can find any item I want that they sell.

At catalyst some products I need to go by google Store is missing direct link.

tneva82 wrote:
Well could be worse. At least with GW store I can find any item I want that they sell.

At catalyst some products I need to go by google Store is missing direct link.

Well I also have that with the GW store. When I want to buy a model that is locked to a Combat Patrol/Vanguard and not sold separately for example it won't show the CP if I search for the units name. So unless I know which box its included in I have to go to google. Or when the search just doesn't work even thought I input the exact name of the unit.

Sounding cheap I know, but seriously. Those having difficulties with the website? Have you let GW know directly, perhaps via email?

 Matrindur wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well could be worse. At least with GW store I can find any item I want that they sell.

At catalyst some products I need to go by google Store is missing direct link.

Well I also have that with the GW store. When I want to buy a model that is locked to a Combat Patrol/Vanguard and not sold separately for example it won't show the CP if I search for the units name. So unless I know which box its included in I have to go to google. Or when the search just doesn't work even thought I input the exact name of the unit.

Doesn't help that you sometimes need to know the english unit name and sometimes the german one (which is not that easy when they change the translation with every new edition, so every 3 years ).

Doesn't help that when you enter "dice" in the search, it also gives you german "die" and "der" in the first rows, plus pretty much everything else, from dire wolves to vermin lord deceiver.
Probably someone else thought it would be great to spend 1k for the website and buy a few Ferrari's.

 Matrindur wrote:
I have no idea how much these things cost normally but £10.8 million for the new website seems very expensive

I'd have gladly ruined the site for 5% of that. Hell, even 1%. And my effort would probably be far better because unlike the clowns doing it I look at it a lot so know what customers expect and how they do use it (also I tend to present my efforts in usable state, TYVM)

MaxT wrote:
I see this quote slightly differently. I totally agree that for a customer, the new store is not as good as the old one, but the IT staff don’t use the store, they maintain the store. The new store may be and probably is far easier to maintain on the back end compared to the old one. If that is the case then the new store rolllout WOULD be a morale booster - I’ve managed enough tools at the dog end of their life to know the day it finally gets shoved in the bin is a good day!

Is it, though?

The amount time it took them to fix 3D rotation pics (and the ludicrously stupid '12 only ever' limit that should never make it through first testing, never mind production run) indicates the new site is really slow and cumbersome to work with, unless the staff took 2 months vacation immediately after deploying and calling it a day. I just don't buy it, especially seeing how slowly new 3D pics are being added to new entries (especially now that GW slowed down with releases, there is no excuse not having it on preorder day) and the fact it seizes and goes into queue at random times due to 'heavy load' at least 20x more often than old one. Between the two, the old one felt much more responsive and easier to work with.

And if anything, I will take old and supposedly 'clunky' interfaces sites used to have over the gigantic amount of useless and superfluous code these newfangled mobile friendly sites pile up behind the curtains. For one, problems in sites 10 years ago were fixable by one person instead of dedicated team you need now (and sometimes you can't do it even with full staff because no one can figure out how dozen plus templates glued together by lowest contractor in 'modern' junk interact and which one causes the problem never mind how to actually fix it)

 Matrindur wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well could be worse. At least with GW store I can find any item I want that they sell.

At catalyst some products I need to go by google Store is missing direct link.

Well I also have that with the GW store. When I want to buy a model that is locked to a Combat Patrol/Vanguard and not sold separately for example it won't show the CP if I search for the units name. So unless I know which box its included in I have to go to google. Or when the search just doesn't work even thought I input the exact name of the unit.

Bit different issue. I'm talking about say this:

https://www.warhammer.com/en-FI/shop/Combat-Patrol-Blood-Angels-2020

Not being there no matter what links i click on store. I could even browse through every product and i wouldn't find it.

Only way to find via google.

I can't even navigate their website anymore. I've given up on even looking at it to find out what is coming out or what is available - much less where they've hidden it on the site.

MaxT wrote:
I see this quote slightly differently. I totally agree that for a customer, the new store is not as good as the old one, but the IT staff don’t use the store, they maintain the store. The new store may be and probably is far easier to maintain on the back end compared to the old one. If that is the case then the new store rolllout WOULD be a morale booster - I’ve managed enough tools at the dog end of their life to know the day it finally gets shoved in the bin is a good day!

My work implemented a new system that was great for the people on the back end who had to deal with the data that it generated, but a nightmare for anyone who had to interface with the system. Apparently the low price of the system was part of why they implemented it.

After 18 months and wasting days of literally everyone else's time both in initial training and also in having to use the system on day to day basis (the lost wages would have to be many times the original cost of the system), they're now replacing said system after about a 6 month implementation and 12 months of usage.

As far as the GW site is concerned though, I also struggle to believe it is any easier to maintain than the old one, given the quality of life changes they've had to make even in the few weeks after it was launched, and having a better backend is a poor excuse for having a bad frontend even if that were true.

we already joked about the last website being 5 millions and made things worse for the user
so this is just the usual inflation with GW, a little bit more, a little bit worse

main problem with the new website for the user is that you need to already know what you want, what it is called and where to find it when you get there


in general the new site is supposed to unify the different shops from before and be direct linked to the inventory system to avoid selling what is not on stock
my guess is that there is a also a lot of data collection with the new site to get better sales predictions, as who buys what from where at which times


more interesting from the report is that they are planning a 4th factory in Nottingham and warehousing is more than double the cost than production

so yes they have a production issue and with ever increasing warehousing costs, selling out instead of long term stocks is not necessarily an issue

 kodos wrote:
main problem with the new website for the user is that you need to already know what you want, what it is called and where to find it when you get there.

Except even that doesn’t work; I just went looking for the Deff Dread (to check a detail before answering a question over in the painting & modelling forum) and it didn’t show up in the search results, just using “Deff”?! I had to browse to it manually. Now it was tagged as temp out of stock, so either it’s not tagged correctly at all or they’ve made the really stupid decision to exclude out of stock items from search results, which would just be bizarre. I still want to look at the model, even if it’s out of stock, and, given GW’s habit of quietly dropping things from the range, I might even assume it’s gone OOP.

 Jadenim wrote:

 kodos wrote:
main problem with the new website for the user is that you need to already know what you want, what it is called and where to find it when you get there.

Except even that doesn’t work; I just went looking for the Deff Dread (to check a detail before answering a question over in the painting & modelling forum) and it didn’t show up in the search results, just using “Deff”?! I had to browse to it manually. Now it was tagged as temp out of stock, so either it’s not tagged correctly at all or they’ve made the really stupid decision to exclude out of stock items from search results, which would just be bizarre. I still want to look at the model, even if it’s out of stock, and, given GW’s habit of quietly dropping things from the range, I might even assume it’s gone OOP.

I typed deff and sure it wasn't there first but it was there. Out of stock but still in search results.

And unlike catalyst it WAS there. Catalyst I couldn't even browse manually to find.

And of course shop, 40k, xenos, orks and I can find every ork kit(if you think shop same as burger from last shop it's pretty much same route. Only difference is lack of filters in filter button)

Catalyst? Nope. Can't find every miniature that way.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sounding cheap I know, but seriously. Those having difficulties with the website? Have you let GW know directly, perhaps via email?

Yes. I sent them quite a detailed e-mail, to the point where I had to stop because any more and I'd have to charge them for my web design experience.

£10m for that website is an absolute joke. I can only assume the stock/inventory system costs are included as those systems likely link into the site database but even then those numbers are insane. Go look at the websites of any of the big wargames retailers and ask yourself how much they're paying for their websites. Sure, some of those retailers have good webstores and others aren't so good, but they'll be paying a fraction of the money GW is shelling out and I'd argue all of the big sites in the UK are superior to GW. As an example of how bad it is, I went to pre-order some ToW stuff late on Saturday and, after queuing, got dumped onto the site homepage and had to navigate manually to the products I wanted, which were split across multiple categories and didn't all appear in one nice, easy screen to browse everything. I couldn't even see all the rulebooks in one place due to the categorisation GW uses. It's madness.

tneva82 wrote:

 Matrindur wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well could be worse. At least with GW store I can find any item I want that they sell.

At catalyst some products I need to go by google Store is missing direct link.

Well I also have that with the GW store. When I want to buy a model that is locked to a Combat Patrol/Vanguard and not sold separately for example it won't show the CP if I search for the units name. So unless I know which box its included in I have to go to google. Or when the search just doesn't work even thought I input the exact name of the unit.

Bit different issue. I'm talking about say this:

https://www.warhammer.com/en-FI/shop/Combat-Patrol-Blood-Angels-2020

Not being there no matter what links i click on store. I could even browse through every product and i wouldn't find it.

Only way to find via google.

I followed your link, then clicked Shop, Warhammer 40,000, Space Marines, Blood Angels. It gives me this link: https://www.warhammer.com/en-FI/shop/warhammer-40000/space-marines/blood-angels It then is the first item I see, followed by Combat Patrol: Space Marines.

Us3Less wrote:


I followed your link, then clicked Shop, Warhammer 40,000, Space Marines, Blood Angels. It gives me this link: https://www.warhammer.com/en-FI/shop/warhammer-40000/space-marines/blood-angels It then is the first item I see, followed by Combat Patrol: Space Marines.

For me it shows up for some language/location settings and doesn't for others. But what I dislike way more about the SM sorting is that every subfaction has all the vanilla SM kits. You already have a Space Marine category, put all the generic SM kits in there and leave the chapter specific stuff for the chapter sortings. I hate having to scroll through hundreds of vanilla SM to find that single BT unit I want.
I know that it would look very sad this way for some chapters with only two kits in there but currently I don't even know how many kits there are in Raven Guard for example. Are there only two? or did I miss one by scrolling trough a hundred generic kits? No idea
Or at least give us an option to hide every generic kit