and not for cutting tests (in case you were wondering...)

We have set up a secure shopping cart version of our site, and I'd like people to cruise it and let us know what you think. If you were planning on placing an order anyway and wouldn't mind doing it this way, it would be great to see how it works for you.

Over the next few weeks I will be working on the look and feel of the site, but any suggestions you have would be welcome!

here is the direct link -- it will not be "public" until next Monday.

https://www.albion-swords.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=ASL

Best,

Howy

Hi Howy,

Overall, a nice looking, efficient design, but I have a few suggestions:

Regarding the looks:
- The Script in the top navigation bar does not look so good ( I'm surfing using using firefox with a 1152 * 864 resolution. )
- The grey script could be a little darker, when it's used on a light grey background, increasing readability. on high resolutions.

Regarding the info:
- I think it would be good, if one could see the availability of the swords, before ordering.
- Also, the info that custom grip colour costs 25$ extra should be on the screen, where one selects grip colour, too.

Otherwise I think it's a great, fast, design.

And the nitpickers question: Is the Agincourt really for free? That would be a christmas present... ;)

Pretty smooth all around. I didn't catch anything off on my go around. :thumbs up:
:cool:

Hmm... I checked it out briefly, though I didn't follow through on a purchase (but would have for the Reeve to test the waters, had I not already done so via phone)...

Honestly, initially, my thought was WTF?! :wtf: I was looking at it from my perspective alone. When I called the first time to place an order, I had a lot of questions, and I was a little uncomfortable. After a lengthy conversation with Mike, I was extremely comfortable, had ordered 3 swords, and found a really cool new friend. Since then, my relationship with the entire Albion crew has grown tremendously (for which I am grateful!), as has my collection - my medieval swords are exclusively Next Gen and Museum Line, though there is a single custom piece in the works. Had I not called Mike, had that conversation never taken place, I may have stopped with one (or none!), and may or may not have continued. I like personal contact in certain business dealings.

I realized a few key things pretty quickly, though:

1) Customer service access isn't going away - this is an alternative, not a new mode of business.
2) I was looking at it from my experience and preference, not from anyone elses.
3) Both customers and Albion could benefit from an additional method of ordering.

Not everyone wants to call, so this would be a good, easy alternative to that. Yeah, there's the split-info 2 email option, but you have to kind of dig through the site to find out what to do to make that happen... a lot more work than it might be worth on an impulse...

Ok, so I see where this could benefit both Albion and the customer. Now, we look at presentation and content... and there are some issues here. Hey, you asked for input - here you go. To start off on a positive, it doesn't totally suck. :p Honestly, I'm trying to be constructive and helpful, even though the following comments are generally "areas for improvement".

Immediately, navigation buttons and the page in general - not at all easy to pick out - there isn't enough contrast - things are all light on a light background. I felt like I had better things to do than to strain to find what I was looking for.

The text is too wide - the menu bar on the left plus the text in the right frame requires a horizontal slide bar. That is aggravating to me...

After adding something to the cart, I had to figure out how to get to it, then how to get back to the list. Now that I have done so, it's not bad, but initially, I was lost for a minute.

Pieces that are not in production may not be a good item to have available this way. Take the Maestro line, for example. I want a couple of longswords, so I go ahead and order the Mair and Liechtenauer. I make my purchase, and nothing comes. I made my purchase half on planning, half on impulse, and now I'm upset because I don't know when I'll get my tools. I want what I want when I want it... and I can't have those yet. Breeds frustration...

Scabbardworks - I can order a custom period scabbard for the Regent for $900, or I can order a period custom scabbard for any Albion sword for $700. Uh, so what's the difference? What's the backlog on them anyway? Same as with the swords that aren't in production yet, this would be aggravating. In the long run, purchases of these types via this method without clear explanation of "it'll be a while" or better yet "it'll be ____ months" (which needs to be fairly accurate) will cost you customers - and perhaps not just the one that got pissed - might be his/her whole reenactment or WMA group.

This appears to be a paid in full option, not a $300 down, balance due. That could be a nice option for some, but also might be a logistical issue... or limit of the software suite.

This looks a lot different than the company website. It'd be a lot more friendly and inviting if it was familiar (even if I had only seen the company website once)... this feels like I'm headed somewhere else.

Again, not seeing the whole picture, but I would consider making a link to other contact methods, and make it a point that it's ok to call or email as well... unless that's worked out in the new site design.





Howy, I hope this was useful... again, not wanting to just say "this sucks". It has merit, probably will bring an increase in sales... just needs to be more inviting, informational, easy to navigate, and integrated with your main page.

Speaking of main page, I have some ideas that I'd be glad to discuss with you next week, if you'd like...

A few issues and ideas on the site

The gray bar at the top is the first problem I saw. The text on it is hard to read and uneven. Overall it doesn't have the same look and feel of your main site and lacks a lot of the polish. I found the some pages a little hard to read in several places because of text size.

I found on the search engine that what ever I searched for I came up with almost the whole catalog each time and many of the items were unrelated to what I searched for.

In account setup you need to list the rules upfront for your customer (i.e. Login must be X characters with no spaces or punctuation same for password do you).

A nice addition could be an options when you select something (You select the buy it now on the Baron it should offer the scabbard, display etc. Basically the process Mike goes through when you call.

Me: I want this sword.
Mike: OK great what grip color do you want, do you want to get a scabbard, which scabbard do you like.

You might also avoid abbreviations some people might not figure out the GC: is Grip Color

On the main page and on the swords sub page you might want to have descriptions of the different lines are (museum, Hallmark, Next generation) to make it easier to browse.

And I think a Mike Sigman cartoon avatar to guide you through the site is a must.....

My $.02 worth as a near-future customer.

You should break down the Product list into sections with a link to that section. Let's say I want to buy a Crecy. I currently have to scroll to the fourth page and due to the small size of the font, I missed it the first time through. If the Product list were broken down by sections/sub sections it would be easier to find things. For example when you click the Product list link at the top, the next page shows several links titled with "Albion Mark Squire Line", "Albion Mark Next Generation Line", "Albion Mark Museum Line", etc. Clicking on "Albion Mark Next Generation Line" sends you to a page with six links with titles like "Viking swords", "Medieval single hand swords", "Medieval longswords", etc. Clicking on the Medieval longswords link would then bring up a list of longswords with "click for description", "add to basket", "add to wishlist" (more on that in a moment), and "buy one now" links. Perhaps with each item a thumbnail of the item could be included off to the side including a link to the sword's description page. This would of course require a link on the description page to get you back to the product list subsection you were in, which could be used by customers, whom upon coming to the description page of a sword they like, can quickly add it to their wishlist/basket/credit card.

A "add to wishlist" link (mentioned above) would allow people to note what they have in mind to buy, allow those who have accounts to receive an e-mail message saying "Only 50 swords of this type are left. Buy one today!", and allow an e-mail to be sent saying, "The ___________ sword is now available for ordering. Buy one today!" Of course some would have every one on their wishlist... :lol:

Finally, there's only one check box for Antiquing/Bluing/Browning. How are you to know which one I want of the three? This requires an e-mail follow-up, which could delay production while e-mails pass through cyberspace. The same with custom colors: a follow-up is necessary to discuss which color I want. Assuming most people are going to want some "normal" color, you could have a list of suggested colors (blue, navy, green, white, etc) and a final option of please e-mail to discuss the custom color (for those who just have to have hot pink) along with the fact that it is $25 more for the custom color.

I have agree with Aaron on a lot of points.

Although everything seems to work ok, it could use a few cosmetic changes. However, to me, the biggest thing is loss of contact. Like Aaron, I felt a little uneasy at first. But after talking to Mike over email and phone, I felt good and confident about Albion's service.

My opinion, keep both options. For those that like to do things via an online shop, that's oke, but I wouldn't mind emailing or calling Mike with details about an order. IMO, I'd prefer it, but that's just me.

I'll work on "PaperClip Mike"... or maybe a sock puppet?

Seriously though, this is good stuff. The software is pretty limiting, but I'm fooling with it and learning more ways around it by the hour. I have changed/added a couple of your suggestions already and will continue over the next couple of days, so keep looking and suggesting -- it is very helpful!

Best,

Howy

To be blunt, it needs a whole lot of work. My disclaimer is that I am a professional Web developer so that's partially where I'm coming from here. But note that I'm also able to critique things from various levels, so please don't dismiss my comments simply because you may feel my expectations are too high. They're not. After the dot-bomb, I've done a tremendous amount of low-budget work in recent years (one example below) and really have become aware of the interesting balance between limitations of functionality, end product-goals, and resource limits.

The bottom line is that it really needs to be incorporated better into the design. I know the software that you're using and the limits it has. It's quite frustrating. But it really can be better incorporated into the design. Right now the user experience is completely different than your site and it's quite bad. I'd suggest not making this live until you're able to play with the templates and get a feel of all the things you can do. As an example, please browse the Londer Vineyards Web site that I recently did (low budget!) that uses an even more limited version of similar software yet still incorporates the e-com into the site better and has a more pleasing user experience.

I'd *strongly* suggest incorporating purchase links into your existing site rather than separating it all out into a "storefront". I truly do understand the limits of the software you're using, and would like to encourage you by telling you that there are ways of doing it even with that software.

I think what needs to happen is a complete re-think of the structure of what you're doing. It looks that conceptually you're trying to separate everything into its own beast, a storefront. Much of your information is now repeated in two areas, complicating the user experience and your development tasks. If it were me, I'd keep all the product pitch info and other site content in the existing site structure and only use the e-com for an order page and related functions. This is what was done in the Londer Vineyards site, linked above. This means that the only people who are actually using the e-com features (and thus, the limitations that it imposes) are people who are actually going to make a purchase. At that point, their needs as a Web visitor are very small: add item to shopping carts, view cart, check out, etc. They would still be able to utilize the existing site to browse items, read about them, and use those pages to add to cart, etc.

I'd *strongly* suggest scrapping it and going a different direction entirely. This may mean picking another e-com solution, learning this software better, or as I suggest, re-thinking the entire structure and concept of implementation.

You asked for feedback. This is my critique. I hope it finds you well as it's intended to be constructive and helpful. I used to get paid a lot of money for this sort of feedback.
:\

My personal opinion is that the ordering method you have had in the past is the best. This quote is from Albion and is one of the things that drew me in in the first place.

"We don't have a shopping cart, because we like to talk to our customers and we want to be sure that if you ever have a question or an issue with our product or service, you will have a real person to talk to about it."

The animated Mike Sigman assistant sounds cool (do we all share the same perverse sense of humor?. . .)

I've got to say I'm with Nathan 100% on this one - you have spent far too much time and effort tuning the Albion site to just cobble together a "storefront" and tack it on.

I think you would be far better served investing the time to figure out how to integrate (ideally so transparently not even those of us who know otherwise would notice until long after implementation) the e-com into the main site rather than basically building (and hosting) the whole site twice - once with a shopping cart, once without.

Maybe best put as a matter of perspective: try looking at e-com for Albion as "adding a new feature to albion-swords.com" instead of "making an e-com site for people to use if they want to because we were told we need one but it really doesn't fit our current site design" - a well thought-out and designed element rather than an afterthought.

I know I won't give up talking to Mike (and everyone else at Albion) for the world - you folks are all part of what make your company great. Customer service with a personal touch is very rare to find these days, and it would be just as tragic to see on the other end (in-house at Albion) the possibility of a customer becoming just a dot-com click, an electronic funds transfer, and a "bill to/ship to" on an invoice instead of a real person. There is a dehumanization of the thing that can happen on both ends of the process which (in my opinion for what its worth) I find very sad.

Good luck in however you try to tackle it, Howy. I hope I was at least a little help :)

I think the wise thing to do is to take Nathan's suggestions to heart: Sometimes one must go back to the beginning before going forward, if one has purchased software one tends to want to make use of it even if the best thing is to buy some other software. There is also a learning curve so maybe this software is usable but not always in the most initially obvious way.

Anyway I see a cart convenient if I know exactly what I want, have no special needs or questions, also as someone has mentioned one expects that something you can put in a cart is immediately available and any product months off in the production queue won't be there or will be clearly marked as " forthcoming " or backordered etc .... In any case that usually means that the transaction isn't going to be just check a box, wait a week, receive product: E-Mails will be sent, questions asked.

If you do use a cart just add very prominently that personal contact is not only available but welcome.

Not getting into the specifics of the cart because Nathan knows Ten thousand times more than I do .......... :eek: :lol:

Let's face it Mike is the best and you need to CLONE him: A whole bunch of Mighty Mini-Mikes. :p :lol:

Howard;

I would jump on the offer: Money well spent that will make you money and you won't only get you a competent and debugged job but a visually attractive addition to your site that will bring people in and won't make them run away from it because of frustration dealing with bad design.

Oh, well too bad if this sounds like sucking up to Nathan. :p :lol: