Time to Give us a Product Order Tool

Discussion in 'Shapeways Shops' started by PeregrineStudios, May 22, 2014.

  1. PeregrineStudios
    PeregrineStudios Well-Known Member
    Right, enough's enough, as they say. I've spent hours using the incredibly broken 'Shop Inventory' page to arrange my products (slowly and painfully), only to check my shop today and see that it's all completely out of order again. I won't be rearranging my models properly; it's high time we had a proper tool to allow sellers to arrange their products. Frankly, the fact that that wasn't so high on the list of priorities that it wasn't already integrated before the site ever launched, is baffling.

    I don't mind waiting for this tool to get here; I understand Rome wasn't built in a day, and I know you don't have legions of coders sitting around just waiting for the opportunity to work cheaply. But to date, the ONLY thing I've heard is that it's on the 'wishlist'. A wishlist ain't good enough. I just want to know that you're working on it, that there's a definite plan in place, that it's not just 'on your radar' but being actively worked on as we speak. I've seen two major site overhauls in my time here, and neither of those included any improvement to this longest-running issue.
     
  2. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    ... correct it seems that the hours of work in arranging the default order was senseless.

    My ordering is completely out of order ...

    A rearrangement tool (and it can be very simple) would be a really need ...
     
  3. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    correction: it seems that the default order simple doesn't work
     
  4. AmLachDesigns
    AmLachDesigns Well-Known Member
    This is such an old problem, and it is beyond a joke that SW have not fixed it yet.

    We are told by the PR wing of SW that our shops should look like this or that and it is SO important , and yet::
    - we are not given the tools to correctly manage our shops;
    - old photos have been messed up by the recent cropping tool;
    - each new release of software seems to include more bugs than features (the implementation of the gold material has been particularly bad).
     
  5. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    Yes :) the shouts for shop management (I don't call it better then currently it's in some parts rudimentary) stays now unheared for years.

    I spent some hours to rearrange the default view since Computerwoche raised an half side article about Shapeways and my shop and the default view is always the entry point.
    (and new items always were put on the beginning of the list - what a crazy idea. I do a manual sorting and the upload of a new items overules my sorting criteria)

    What also drives me crazy every time I start working on an issue is.that you always loose focus when searching for a group of items and then working on a specific product. After you have done your work on this item and you want to go to the next you are completely lost (since back doesn't bring you to the side number nor to the search filter you have worked with)
    For that reason I have now my own tooling to do some kind of these changes on a group of items.

    No search filter for materials and groups

    No html like editor for product descriptions and shop description.

     
    Last edited: May 24, 2014
  6. 96635_deleted
    96635_deleted Member
    Hey guys,

    Thanks for the feedback, and patience. I know a lot of the things you're talking about have been issues for some time, and when you don't see updates on those specifically, it can feel like we're not really listening. I've been working at Shapeways for almost 3 years now, so trust me, I know it's been a long wait to get rid of a few painful site experiences.

    But please trust that we're 100% committed to enabling you to successfully bring your products to life AND to market. It's our #1 priority this year. We're making a lot of investments in both the making and selling experiences. We had to start by fixing some very thorny experiences in the making process, particularly trying to squash rejections and ensuring you have the feedback you need to make awesome products without facing difficult hiccups in the production process. Then of course is selling. Last week we released a big change to help make pricing products a whole lot easier, and that's one of many changes to come this year. It might feel slow between releases, but it's definitely a race internally to get some really important fixes out to make your selling experience better.

    I know this isn't a perfect answer -- if I were you, I would also demand a solution and not a promise. For now, I hope this helps provide some context and we'll soon be able to deliver better answers :)

    Have a great weekend everyone!
    Carine
     
  7. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    ... yes positioning also works with the new pricing tab.
    Helps me a lot to ensure a proper product change workflow:
    - selecting the group of items in focus, in that case:
    -- all items with "5 x" in name
    -- having Royal Blue as material
    - Getting a list of items in my shop
    -- where I can directly jump to the field I have to change (with one click)

    Screenshot from 2014-05-24 09:19:16.png
     
    Last edited: May 24, 2014
  8. SavIsSavvy
    SavIsSavvy Member
    Please keep the feedback up, this is a great discussion everyone! As we work to continue to improve the Shop Owner experience on Shapeways, this dialogue is incredibly useful. We hope to bring you tools to better manager your shop in the future- these discussions guide us!

    Cheers
     
  9. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    Maybe we should define some testcases which cause us a lot of troubles in shop handling.

    Testcase Woody64-01: Make a special dayprice/offer for a group of itms
    Models
    "Search within my Models" = "5"
    "Side 2"
    "Edit Model" for the 4th Item
    "Pricing"
    "Detailed Plastic"
    "Set a total Price" = 21
    "Save Changes"
    "View Product"
    Browser: <Back> <Back> ... <till Models>

    .... and now do that for 5 items in the same way.

    E1: Click path terrible long
    E2: ... <Back>: Side focus lost
    E3: ... Search Filter lost
    E4: Not sjuitable for mass changes
    E5: No filter for categories
    E6: No filter for materials

    Woody64-02: Bringing some items on the first page of the shop. Which is the entry point when placing a shop link. The mass of people are leaving after taking a look on the first page
    "Sell"
    "Shop Inventory"
    "Search within my Models" = "5"
    6th Item: Change Display Order from "42" to 8

    ... go on for further 5 items

    E1: Display time of inventory
    E2: You can only change one element on a side
    E3: Resorting time (terrible long)
    E4: Redisplay time

     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2014
  10. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    You can eliminate steps 10-14 if you merely right-click and select "Open in New Window"
    That then leaves the Search in place and you can edit in another window.
    Assuming of course, that you're not working from a Tablet. <grin>
     
  11. stannum
    stannum Well-Known Member
    New Tab/Window is the way to go... unless the coders decide to do something that breaks it. Some sites are pretty bad about this; in SW it's rare but there are still some, meaning they sneaked up by error or it's not in the "don't" list.
     
  12. PeregrineStudios
    PeregrineStudios Well-Known Member
    I can only assume that if Shapeways has time to add things like 'First to Try', 'Beta Product', and 'Material Renders', features that are nice but not necessary, they also have time to invest in the ability to order one's shop and product images, which is an absolutely necessary and very basic feature, yes? How soon will we see these added?
     
  13. SavIsSavvy
    SavIsSavvy Member
    I can't say precisely when features like this will be added, but I can say that I've taken this great feedback and passed it on to our product team- these are features I know you've all been patiently waiting for for awhile, and I want to help! Keep the thoughts coming :)

    Best,
    Sav
     
  14. I gave up on using the Shapeways Shop a long time ago. The inability to nest and group listings, deeper than just one category, really makes it difficult for the customer.

    We produce scale model car parts and these parts can be as diverse as a brake caliper to a steering wheel. Lumping items like that into one category "vehicles" or "mechanical" really does not work. So I opted to start a Google Site that allows me to group/nest my parts in a way the customer intuitively thinks. Thus making it much easier for them to bore down into our listings and find the parts they desire.

    At the end there is just a link that takes you to the proper Shapeways listing for the part. This site alone has improved our sales 3 fold!

    Here is the link to our site

    https://sites.google.com/site/tdrhtmllearn/home


    I understand that not all shops require the nesting and grouping characteristics as our product line does........so it might not be a big priority for Shapeways.......but the shop structure has a lot of room for improvement.