Feature requests, ideas, suggestions for the future

Got any ideas on things you would like to see happen with the Shops? New Features, new ideas? Reply..

I would prefer a next and a previous button to move in the detailed view of the item to the next of the gallery.

Andreas

i i would like to see something like a price range bar soo that you can serch for things within your budget and were you can negotiate with the buyer on a different price also how do you get to use different materials all i get is white and how can you make more than just lights and bowls etc also more competitions and i stumbled upon this website thanks to webuser.co.uk and there magazine please reply somwhere :laughing: :twisted:

Ability to customize page, with html, or being able to create our own page - so it's just ordering and shipping done by shapeways.

Being able to search by price is a good idea!

Negotiating with buyers, not so much to my taste.

re: # of sales

I would like to see the sales monitoring tools privately available *only to sellers*. I'm not fond of others seeing how many of an item I have sold. The only reason someone other than the seller would be interested in how many sales an item has had, would be to know whether that kind of item is worth selling. I can tell you from experience that people will use this information to decide whether they should copy an item.

I would also like to see the sales monitoring tools available over a range of dates so that I can check to see buying patterns at certain times. If this info is kept in a database, and an interface is set up so that I can enter two dates and see each sale, with information including item/price/buyer/date, then it will be perfect

-Whystler

Agreed on # of buys not being public. I don't really see what good it does for the shops as a whole, does anyone else?


Haggling prices... ehh, not my cup of tea


One thing thats been nagging me, is that the shops don't seem all that different from a users design page. Visually or functionally. What is the distinction? In any case, adding some rotating items from the shops to the front page, as is already done with best new designs, latest printed models, and printed models by our community, would give some much needed exposure.

I think a shapeways widget will be tremendously useful, so that we can link to our designs from other sites easily.

I don't mind personally if number of buys is public, but I can see why others would find that tacky. I have no objection if it goes away.

I'm not very interested in customizing the look of my store. I'd like longer text -- the limits seem short to me -- and I'd like to have one offsite link. But I don't want to control fonts or layout or colors: that's what my own site is for.

The widget is a great idea. I want one!

Like bvicarious. I'm confused about the distinction between shops and user pages. Comparing these two pages:
https://www.shapeways.com/mydesign?user_id=252
https://www.shapeways.com/shops/aloopingicon
there is no substantive difference.

My understanding right now is that the shops page does not add value to the Shapeways site. It gives access to only a small subset of the models available for sale. There's no criterion for selecting that subset, no difference between shop models and user models, so what do customers gain by accessing the gallery in this more limited way?

Access from the shops page is inferior to that from the gallery, because the models are hidden under shop logos (which often aren't even there!), and because shops aren't sorted in any way that's useful to shoppers (by rating or price point).

How can the shops page be made more valuable?

The obvious way is by making it more selective. I can understand why Shapeways doesn't want to do that, it's better to have a huge amount of shops and let the good ones bubble to the top...but this only works if there's a way for them to bubble, i.e. ratings.

Right now the only difference between a shop item and a normal item that's for sale, is that the shop item has a markup. That difference is not exposed to customers, for the obvious reason that it's not a selling point. So the markup feature adds value for sellers -- I wouldn't be here without it -- but the question is, how can we make it also add value for customers?

I should clarify that I think there is plenty of room on this site for both 'shops' and 'users' insofar as neither should be crippled or given an advantage over the other.

From what I understand the big deal about shops was mainly in the concept and on the backend, the functionality to mark up prices et c. So hopefully their roles will be fleshed out more in the coming weeks.

My suggestion: If you want to make your stuff available to others, it goes in your shop page. If you want stuff available only to you, or just for display, it goes in your user page gallery.

To visually separate the two, shops could have large banners and other customizable things and of course the whole purchasing functionality, while user pages could be full user profiles and galleries and basically act as a portal to that users presence on the site.

This way, each has its own distinct purpose and shops can be more aggressively promoted without shortchanging regular users.

Bathsheba, how could mark-up be of any value to the customer? Are you suggesting better materials or higher quality finishing for shop items?



Another request: Right now there are 8 items per page in the shops. I have 4 pages of items (granted most of those shouldn't be there, I just haven't taken them down yet), and each click makes it less likely to be seen by a potential buyer. Could it be bumped up to at least 16?

I'm not making a specific suggestion; I'm just noticing that right now the shops page isn't an effective way to surf the selection, and thus there's nothing to pull people toward shop items.

Whether customers should be pulled is a different question. Maybe Shapeways is intentionally making no distinction between shop models and no-markup models...or as you say maybe that will change.

I agree it would be nice if everyone who wants to make their models available made a shop page. But that doesn't seem likely, since there's already a user base with lots of non-shop models for sale.

There is one way that the markup itself can be a selling point: if customers wish to support or tip an artist whose work they enjoy, it becomes a feel-good feature. Then again, this works less well if people are uploading designs that they didn't create.

Yes, it's a big help!

I didn't realize that non-shop-owners don't have this capability, because I think I can't upload a model without making it part of my shop. If I want to get something just for myself, I guess I make a second account?


But do think about what I said above -- that right now the shops page adds value more for sellers than for buyers. To be viable it has to be a useful search path, giving access to better quality or better sorted models than the gallery; otherwise customers won't use it.

I would like to see a way to send a message to the owner of a shop. This way one could easily contact someone to find out how they did to model their 3D models, ask specific questions about usage, etc. Maybe it would be possible to link the user name to the forum somehow?

I also find it difficult to browse the collection of items. It would be nice to be able to browse the items that have been printed only. Especially items that have been printed and that have a picture showing the result. I don't know how feasible this is but it would be a great improvement.

Hi,

When you are looking to a shop, at the right in the shop profile there is a link to 'contact the shop owner'. This let's you send a forum PM to the owner of the shop. (Feature available for users, as you can only send pm when being a user).

Kind regards, Arno

Ah, OK, then maybe I was not specific enough. You can (oddly enough) buy printouts from people who do not have shops. I guess this means that they do not receive any money for that model then. Anyway, these people you cannot contact in any way, although you can buy models from them. There could be a similar link there, I think. After all, as a customer it rarely matters if the owner has am official shop or not, you still have the same questions when you order the model.

Hi Joris

I would like to suggest that shop owners have the option of having separate departments (sub-folders) within their shops. This would be a tremendous help to me because my puzzles each require the buyer to order a set of pieces - each piece is effectively a separate model.
Having some way of grouping the pieces together would help buyers to see what pieces were necessary to purchase a complete puzzle.
It would also be very helpful if I could add a description of the puzzle (linked to the folder, in the same way as the shop has a description) instead of having to repeat the same description for every piece of the puzzle.

Would this help anyone else?

Richard

Yes please!

I have 8 items up now, and I could add 8 more, but until we have some kind of groups or folders, that's all I can offer. I'd like to put up 50 models, but there would be no point: customers don't respond well to a long disorganized list, especially when they're forced to page through it in short chunks. I can't even fix the ordering.

I'd like to offer a set of the 6 regular polytopes, but only if I can group them together. If I upload them now I can't put them together so people interested in polytopes can find the set -- and worse, uploading all of them would drive away everyone not interested in polytopes. After they've paged through 4 models which they see as all boring and all the same, it doesn't matter how many other great models I have later: they already left my store.

Here's a quote from Joris from another thread:
The problem with this is that I do not receive email notification of private messages. If this is intended to be a way for customers to contact me, that's a bug.

Is there a setting for this somewhere that I haven't found?

Hi,

Indeed you do not get a notification upon receiving a private message.

Good idea! I will forward it internally.

Thanks!

Robert