New Site Navigation

Today we are excited to launch a new navigation experience as a part of our continued efforts to help you discover and create the best 3D Printed products that Shapeways has to offer! In order to show you the most relevant information wherever you are on the site, we've split our navigation into 2 distinct experiences: Shop and Make + Sell. We've also freshened up the design of the navigation, including streamlining the notifications and allowing you to directly manage your settings and profile, including changing your password and update your email preferences.

Shop
When you first come to Shapeways you'll start out on our Shop tab, which shows you everything you need to find awesome products to buy, including showing all of the product categories along with gift guides, shops, and the blog. We're excited to show off all of the categories (which recently underwent their own refresh) and feel that by highlighting all of the categories shoppers will be able to find the 3D Printed product of their dreams more easily.

Make + Sell
The new Make + Sell tab brings together the "Create" and "Community" sections to present a coordinated toolbar of options aimed at makers to more easily make, sell and learn. We've added a quick link to upload new products and to create new models right on the toolbar, along with quick access to information about How It Works, materials, easy creator apps, tools and the API. When you are signed in you can also quickly access My Models from this menu. Here you'll also find information about how to open a shop or managing an existing shop. We've also added in resources on learning how to get started with 3D modeling or a Shapeways shop to help the curious soon-to-be makers in our community!

We'll be tweaking the nav to make it even more useful in the coming weeks, but we are excited about this big push to help the whole community get the most out of all that Shapeways has to offer!

I haven't logged in for a while, it took a little time getting used to how to find the forum, however it looks good

Cheers,
Paul

[hr]

stop4stuff Modeller for hireShapeways Shop - Controller PendantTwitterYouTube​

[hr]

Thanks, Paul

We are going to continue to tweak it based on everyone's feedback, so if there is anything you are confused by let us know!

Hi

Looks good and certainly laid out better.

Took me a while to realise there was a third menu bar for my own personal information, in fact I had originally thought that a lot of stuff had been missed off.

Would it not be a good idea to put a third button next to "shop" and "make +sell" to access this third menu bar, it would make navigation so much better.

My 10 cents...

I think the separation of the Shop and the Make and Sell is a good, logical idea. That works.

I do not like the new colour scheme. I particularly do not like the light coloured text with shadow or the cheesy geometric red design at the right.

The way that the user info is displayed is much worse than before and doesn't really make any sense. E.g. why is My Models both on the menu bar and the drop down, but the other items not?

I also agree that Private Messaging should be directly available from the Make and Sell page or the UserId drop down. It's all very well saying a notification will appear if you receive a message, but what about if you wish to initiate one?

The layout of the Menu Bar makes no sense:
- Why is Design a Red Button? It is surely in the same category as Materials and Tutorials.
- Why are Materials and Tutorials not grouped with Upload and Design where they should logically be?
- Why are there drop downs with no text? Are we supposed to telepathically understand what they are for? Or just randomly root around the page?

Also, since I send most of my time on the SW sit on the Make and Sell page but also go to the Blog it is very irritating to not be able to navigate in one click back to the Forums from the Blog.

In summary, I thought that with the exception of the separation of the Shop and Maker areas that the old layout was much better visually and logically. It's design was consistent and the navigation more logical.

I mean NO insult to anyone.. but webpages are kinda like the weather. If you don't like it.. wait 15 minutes and it'll change.
Ask any 10 programmers how to do something and you'll get 21 different answers.
Ask any 10 marketers how something should look and you'll get 100. <GRIN>

Personally, I like the red splash on the right side of the menubar. It adds some "anchoring" to the page that wasn't there before.

I do agree about grey or light blue text... my (old) eyes need a bit crisper separation between the font color and the background. But, I'm not asking for a 36 point yellow font on a black background either. There's a happy medium in there somewhere.

The two red buttons on the far left of the menu bar are a bit jarring, but I feel that they do help identify two major features of the site, and those functions really do need to be prominent. With them being a distinctly separate color, it's easier to tell that they are buttons instead of just information.

Overall.. I'm glad to see the new changes. It'll be good to see the (next) set of changes as well. <grin>

I too mean no offence - nor, will I take any if opinions differ to mine. But I hope the site does change.

The Upload button does need to be highlighted, I agree, but the Design I am not so sure. Now maybe Materials needs the 'Red Button' treatment as it is fundamental to the process, but the Design info is really at the same level and imo should be grouped with Tutorials and some of the other links on the 'secret' drop downs.

There is a hierarchy of information and some (more) thought needs to be put into the groupings of the information and the flow through the site.

I don't think the old layout was broken and I don't think it needed fixing, just 'tweaking'.

But, just my opinion. Fire away...

I think the "Make & Sell" toolbar is very confusing. Espeically the small (easily overlooked) down arrows,They look like pointers for drop down menus related to the point to their left - as it indeed does in the design button. But those next to Materials, My Sales or Forums have nothing to do with them. And the
sequence of menu points seems very haphazard. The old structure was much more logical. I have problems finding stuff now. I don't really remember to have had such troule when I started on the older version.

And the avatar and associated menu are far too small. I think customers will have problems finding their orders to track progress. Very poor design for an internet shop.

Who is the target audience for this design? Buying customers or designers / shop owners? It doesn't seems well focused for either group-

Greetings
Dragomans.

Another thought:

"Shop" could equally well apply to the buyer's as to teh seller's side. At least it confused me.

Mayybe call it "Buy"? It would also fit better with "Make & Sell".

Greetings
Dragoman .

I think the main idea (having one navigation for buyers and one for shop owners) is good. So I agree with the two tabs.
I don't like discussing colors, but concerning the orange color, there was an axplanation about the graphic convention: I don't remeber well, but orange should stand for contribution/creation/action (for example the buttons, like "submit" are orange). So there is a meaning - perhaps not obvious - but a meaning anyways.

So, now my 2 Eurocents:
On my side, I would also put the "My Account" menu (where your avatar is) as a third tab. This double menu is confusing, and not really accessible: if you are on the Shop tab, and you want to go to the blog, if you move your mouse a little bit too fast, you go on your avatar and a new menu pops up, preventing you from clicking on "blog": there are 3 menus, put them in 3 tabs please. This "blog" link should be at the same position, whether you are on the "Shop" tab or on the "Make+Sell" tab: currently it is moving because of the help item that appears on "Make+Sell".
But the most disturbing thing is that if you are on the "Make+Sell" tab, you go to your models, edit one model and then exit the edit mode (on the object page), you switch back to the Shop tab. The activated tab should change only if you click on another tab, instead of depending on which page you are navigating.

Does someone else agree? or is it only me?

Thanks,

Magic

I think it looks cool , As a designer I am not sure if its better or not. Most of my new clients who have me create printable designs find me via shapeways, threw the modeler for hire section. So of course when I make money shapeway also then makes money when the clients have they're models. So it will be interesting to see, if the new people who are looking for a designer will be able to find me easier than before? Guess only time will tell. What does anyone else think?
But again I like the new color theme and so on. I haven't really navigated threw everything yet.

I agree, there should be an option to lock the tabs.
When I'm in the make section and i have a look at the changes I've made to my shop page i find myself back in the shop tab.

I do like the new look though, customers only see a fabulous web-shop until they chose not to.
if i could choose between having the old website or to improve this one i would choose the last.

Cool. I can't find the button to change avatar anymore, though.

EDIT: Nevermind, found it. That top bar did not make the tabbed configuration obvious...

I agree it's a serious problem that editing a model dumps you into the Shop tab. If I'm editing a model that's pretty much the definition of me being in make+sell mode, not customer mode. Both my workflow and sanity itself require that I stay there.

Also agree that the across-the-top menu in make+sell lacks logic. Seems like poor UI design to have drop-down menus with no indication what's inside them! There's nothing in the way this is organized that helps me to remember what's where, so I have to drop and read all of them every time I want something. And I'm perpetually surprised that Materials is a drop-down, none of the other items are.

This is my suggestion for the menu structure, with -> indicating a dropdown:
My Models / My Shop / My Sales / Materials -> portfolio, samples, comparison, status / Power Selling -> apps, tools, api, labs /
Community -> blog, forums, messaging, events, live // Help -> tutorials, faqs, shipping, troubleshooting, engineer

That include all the items now present, in a structure that makes sense from this user's POV. I feel like redundancy isn't needed if the menus are organized.

As I mentioned crossthread, we need a Messaging link at the top level. "Notifications" doesn't do the job if I want to view my mailbox when no new message has come in, or if I want to send one.

The Upload and Design buttons...I don't mind the color, but it bothers me that Design looks like a button but is really a menu. Signaling that with the down-arrow is better than not signaling it, but still, why make it look like a button when it's not one? If you want it to stand out from the rest of the menus it could be a different color or have a shaded background or something, but the way it is now just isn't the right way to UI. (Also API doesn't belong under Design. The API isn't a design tool.)



Lastly, also as mentioned crossthread the avatar at top right is too small. There's plenty of whitespace around it so how about just making it bigger? I mean, is there a disadvantage?

Thx for considering,

So as far as I can tell you have options as how to sort search results in various ways but it can no longer be done for store categories.

I'm also trying to update my avatar but cannot seem to find where this is now located. I can't seem to do it by clicking on "Public Profile" or "Settings" from the upper right pull down menu. Clicking on my default avatar icon just brings me back to that same page which also has model items located on the same page. Things seem a bit obscure or scattered.


ETA: I finally figured out how to load an avatar. Click top right pull down menu "settings" option and then from the settings page click on the top "profile" tab. From there you can edit your avatar. For some reason I was thinking the change would be made from the "Public Profile" option of the top right pull down menu. Now I know...

Hey everyone--thanks so much for your feedback! We've made a few tweaks based on your feedback here and in other parts of the forums to increase the contrast of fonts to improve readability and moved around links to make them easier to find (including adding a link to the Feed!). That being said, we're still working on how to address where things should live in the user profile, including messages, and what tabs should be default on different pages.

Thanks for all of your feedback and patience so far, and keep it coming

Thanks for taking into account our feedbacks. But...
I am afraid you will not find solution to this problem. According to me, having static tabs is the main issue. As I stated, I am convince that the tabs should be dynamic: any page can have any of the two tabs (or three tabs if you add the "My Account" tab) activated depending if it was active or not before.
In case I am not clear, what I suggest is:
- the tab and the page should be two separate things
- changing pages by clicking on a link should not change the active tab
- if I want to change tabs I click on another tab by clicking on its title ("Shop", "Make+Sell", "My Account")
- changing tabs by clicking on its title should not change the page: you have done them as menus, let have them react as menus

I guess that technically, switching from static tabs to dynamic tabs is not easy but trying to satisfy everybody by associating this or that tab to each page is just impossible. So, you have the choice between "not easy" and "impossible". What you prefer?

Just my 2 cents.