Hey all,
Today we're pushing a big release to Shapeways.com and I wanted to give you a run down on what's in it. The changes are broken down below into which area of the website we've worked on, and we get into further detail from there.
Design Update
* New look for products across the site!
* New look for product detail page!
* Faster page loads for most pages!
Gallery
Categories:
* Popular Shops: The Shops page used to display the most recent shops, most of which hadn't been properly setup yet! Instead, we've got...
* Per Page: We've changed the number of 'Rows' to be called 'Per Page' which controls the number of items displayed per page. It works more or less the same as before, just has a new name and different numbers.
* Removed: Search Inside - Instead of searching inside the gallery, you can now use the new and improved search box in the top right to find what you're looking for.
Search
* Facets - You can now filter your search results by a few different
criteria. We hope this will make it easier to find all the cool stuff
on Shapeways!
*** by Material
*** by Price
*** by Category
*** by Customizable
** In Progress: Relevance
** Removed: Google Site Search
** Removed: Advanced Search
Product Detail Page
* Images: We've bumped up the image size to really make your products shine. The new image selector also loads faster and lets users easily click between your images, videos, and 3d renders.
* More from this Designer: To increase sales of items in your shop, we've added a 'More from this Designer' area which features your popular items.
* Pin It Button: With the rising popularity of Pinterest, we've added the ability for users to 'Pin' your designs and share them with the world.
My Models
* Add to Cart: You can now add models to your cart directly from your My Models page. Currently, the button will add one model in the default material to the cart.
* Pending Results: Each time you update one of your models, you can now see how it will appear across the site! Because of this, we've introduced a small icon on the 'My Models' page along with a note to let you know when pending changes are being updated.
Shop Page
* Removed: Shop Categories
Shop categories took you off of one shop and onto another. We want to encourage people to explore your shop more deeply, instead of to leave.
Coming Soon
* Better search relevance
* Improvements to Model and Shop management
In preparation for this release, we've exposed these changes to a handful of users, something we will be continuing, and expanding in the future. This has already helped us identify and fix key issues.
Finally, I'm sure you'll still have additional thoughts, suggestions, and will notice things we've missed. To discuss those, please head on over to
this thread. We will be considering fixes and further improvements after the release, based on that discussion.
Thanks!
Ana