Lost On New Website Configuration.

Carlos2k10 · Aug 14, 2018

Seriously guys, this is not the way to handle things, I have plenty of experience in the customer support area and this is not the way to handle feedback.

Even if we are not happy (obviously we are not), somebody from the company needs to speak.

Because this time, time will not make this go away, we are not holding a grudge against you but your position needs to be made clear.

Either you don't care or you are taking our feedback on board but say something, as silence usually means that you do not care and this is not positive for any company image once it spreads in the social networks.

From the designer perspective, I can't help but think that we are relegated into oblivion, first the newsletter was gone and replaced with the magazine in the website that most people do not even know it exists, let alone visit.

Then the search improvements, the introduction of facets, material cost changes and removals and now the feed is gone and the marketplace is relegated to a link in the bottom of the page where people most likely will never be looking.

So as I said in one of my previous posts,
It goes down to a matter of respect, if we are partners we need to treated as such on the other hand if we are just a nuisance and we do not fit anymore in your grand scheme of things, just say it and we will spend our time and money elsewhere.

MitchellJetten · Aug 14, 2018

Shapeways, without the capital W

But sorry for not replying, my main job here at Shapeways is Customer Service, and as much as I'd love to reply here as well, i can't split myself up between the email (main job) and forum.

The feed system was never as popular as we hoped it would be when we first launched it.
After the change that the feed is not the homepage anymore, it got even less traction and only a handful group of designers still adds products to their feed.

Since the the group of users was getting smaller and smaller, it was removed with our new branded website.
I'm sorry if you relied on using this service as way to communicate with your customers.

While I agree that we shouldn't be as vague, I think in the long run these changes will benefit you as well as Shapeways.
Keep in mind that I have a successful shop here at Shapeways as well so I do feel your pain that the marketplace is burried away on the bottom.

However my sales are exactly the same as last summer and the visitor amount hasn't dropped at all since the rebranding.
Likely because my customers go directly to my shop and/or find me on google instead of first seeing the homepage.
That said, I can understand this could be different for your shop, I'm sorry to hear that in that case!

I think it would be good to have a look at our ShowCase website called Spring and Wonder:
https://springandwonder.shapeways.com/

Greg, the CEO, talks about this for a bit here:
https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/spring-wonder-launch.97457/

When this tool is going to be launched and the blueprint will include the steps to take to actually do this yourself, I think it will be a great usage to a lot of people.
Shopify allows you to customize your website, the branding, the fonts etc in a way you want to showcase your products and still allow you to use Shapeways to have it printed by using the API (to me this still sounds like rocket science btw, but the tool will make it rather easy to use and implement)

MitchellJetten · Aug 14, 2018

Sorry Carlos for not being around on the forum as much, though all feedback is ofcourse taken in consideration and if need customer support, the fastest way to get a reply would be to send an email!

This is definitely not intentional, we of course care and like said above, I'm sorry for not being active here as much

Carlos2k10 · Aug 14, 2018

Thanks Mitchell,

I appreciate that you took the time to answer to our questions.

I have a request for you though, would it be possible to get a rough roadmap of what direction is Shapeways heading for?

One of the most critical points is if there are plans to scrap the marketplace, reason is that Shopify is not a free service so you need to sell a certain amount monthly to be able to keep a shop running.

So for most designers that do this as hobby, a shop in Shopify or similar services is a no go.

Roolz · Aug 14, 2018

While we're at it...
I can understand the rationales behind the various changes (though I can agree or not), but I'd be very curious to know why the princing structure (hovertext) has been removed, and how removing it is beneficial to any user/designer.

srnjm420 · Aug 14, 2018

Well, since my shop is a hobby and a very specific market, and if Shopify has minimums and not free I guess the end for me is very near... Thank you Shapeways for killing off my shop...

Brian

MitchellJetten · Aug 14, 2018

Hey @Carlos2k10

I read your message the moment you posted it but wanted to hold off replying because I wanted to check in with Greg.
Greg has replied in a separate topic on the recent forum feedback, hopefully this will answer some of your questions!

https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/recent-forum-feedback.97814/#post-228413

All the best,
Mitchell

southernnscale · Aug 14, 2018

There problem they say they know what they are doing and we the shop owners and customers don't I believe that they really don't put the time into the complaints and just changes things for them selves. like they do for Miniatures to small to handle just reject. We are just a group of people that aren't in the big thing at Shapeways! what we do isn't in there best interest! I know this sound bad but after years of trying to work with shapeways and knowing they are still in the learning process and some changes are never brought to the ones that use there service the most! I know because I have a big investment because I have bought most of my models at their price to make sure they print then fine out it really doesn't matter if I buy because the next print might not print because of the rules which they say we have to follow. I'm talking 1000 of models printed and not just the ones I have bought and these piece are never printed the same way. I could go on and on! but thanks! for changing things when they just started working again after the last change and the one before that! But it would have been nice to know before all the trouble started. Still don't know what caused my problem just blame in on windows10 and Microsoft Edge! Brand new PC Desk top!

ldemrys · Aug 15, 2018

Okay, I just posted this to: Official Announcements/Recent Forum Feedback...

It bears repeating here...

Okay, I'm gonna have a real hard time NOT using profanity here.....WHY do you keep changing the user interface?? I have been using Shapeways for some time now and there have been too many changes for me to keep up with. Today I tried to upload a new model twice and only succeed a little while ago (third time is the charm). Now, when I want to try and list it for sale, ALL I can find is the option to order it and add it to my cart!
The user interface for this site has NEVER been user friendly ( in my opinion ) but now it's TOTALLY ****** up!
If your gonna make these radical changes, the LEAST you could do is post a change log or something. If it weren't for the fact that I have several models with a good print record, I would be uploading everything I have to competitive service where they prepare a "3D Print Dossier" in PDF format to let you see what you've created. So far I have not explored to option of setting up my store there, (but it's looking better and better all the time) but these "improvements" are causing me to re-think my choice in using Shapeways.

PLEASE FIX THIS SHIT !

In case nobody has figured it out yet....I AM NOT A HAPPY CAMPER!!

sirenwerks · Aug 15, 2018

And the consumers who relied on the feed? How about them? You expect us to go digging through the mountains of crap to find diamonds?

You've abandoned consumers who visit regularly. How do I find new items by my favorite designers? I have 117 designers I follow; when I go to that list, I can only see 24 of them, there's no way to scroll through to the rest, I have to search for them if I can remember all of their names. When I open a designer, I have to click on their store and then reset the preset "Most relevant" to "Newest", and then I have to back out because it becomes a pain to get into the list of designers I am following.

Why not make it so the feed its based on a consumer's list of favorite designers, and the feed is compiled depending on the consumer's list of favorite designers, without the need to opt in/out? Or are you not considering a consumer-centered scheme?

Designers think the site redesign sucks for them? Repeat consumers are getting screwed too.

wozwasntere · Aug 16, 2018

I hate having move my cursor around the screen to see which bits change colour and therefore have a menu hiding behind them.

southernnscale · Aug 17, 2018

I think it's they have to many people handling the same problem! and it just doesn't go any were. This isn't a way to run a business. Working with normal products large piece isn't that bad but when it time to step into the future with these miniatures and all other scale the QA just isn't there. these update might cause problem and we all know that happens when anything is up dated but it really nice to know it going to happen and have a heads up about it! At least your ready and know thing are going to happen. I was in process of doing several model for folks when trying to get them up to fine they wouldn't go thru. so then I was stuck trying to figure out what happened!! WOW! One of the problem was windows 10 did a windows update during the same time and some of my driver were changed and caused problem to! which I didn't know till I check the history on windows up date an found a driver for graphic card !. Well I think it's fixed some of the problem but still having problems uploading and I think it that there to busy!

starbuckshollow · Aug 19, 2018

sirenwerks said: ↑

And the consumers who relied on the feed? How about them? You expect us to go digging through the mountains of crap to find diamonds?

You've abandoned consumers who visit regularly. How do I find new items by my favorite designers? I have 117 designers I follow; when I go to that list, I can only see 24 of them, there's no way to scroll through to the rest, I have to search for them if I can remember all of their names. When I open a designer, I have to click on their store and then reset the preset "Most relevant" to "Newest", and then I have to back out because it becomes a pain to get into the list of designers I am following.

Why not make it so the feed its based on a consumer's list of favorite designers, and the feed is compiled depending on the consumer's list of favorite designers, without the need to opt in/out? Or are you not considering a consumer-centered scheme?

Designers think the site redesign sucks for them? Repeat consumers are getting screwed too.
Click to expand...

I think I found my feed ... I had to click my avatar on the right of the top bar, then select "Public Profile." THEN I had to select "Activity" from the section options in the middle column. That appears to be my feed ... hope it works for you.

starbuckshollow · Aug 19, 2018

The hover functions aren't even working for me, for menus OR direct links, which is extremely problematic.

starbuckshollow · Aug 19, 2018

MitchellJetten said: ↑

Shapeways, without the capital W

But sorry for not replying, my main job here at Shapeways is Customer Service, and as much as I'd love to reply here as well, i can't split myself up between the email (main job) and forum.

The feed system was never as popular as we hoped it would be when we first launched it.
After the change that the feed is not the homepage anymore, it got even less traction and only a handful group of designers still adds products to their feed.

Since the the group of users was getting smaller and smaller, it was removed with our new branded website.
I'm sorry if you relied on using this service as way to communicate with your customers.

While I agree that we shouldn't be as vague, I think in the long run these changes will benefit you as well as Shapeways.
Keep in mind that I have a successful shop here at Shapeways as well so I do feel your pain that the marketplace is burried away on the bottom.

However my sales are exactly the same as last summer and the visitor amount hasn't dropped at all since the rebranding.
Likely because my customers go directly to my shop and/or find me on google instead of first seeing the homepage.
That said, I can understand this could be different for your shop, I'm sorry to hear that in that case!

I think it would be good to have a look at our ShowCase website called Spring and Wonder:
https://springandwonder.shapeways.com/

Greg, the CEO, talks about this for a bit here:
https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/spring-wonder-launch.97457/

When this tool is going to be launched and the blueprint will include the steps to take to actually do this yourself, I think it will be a great usage to a lot of people.
Shopify allows you to customize your website, the branding, the fonts etc in a way you want to showcase your products and still allow you to use Shapeways to have it printed by using the API (to me this still sounds like rocket science btw, but the tool will make it rather easy to use and implement)
Click to expand...

This is not a fix; Shopify requires minimums, so this is not the way to go for many sellers.

Additionally, this sounds EXACTLY like Shapeways is saying they no longer want to be part of the customer service end of our shops, which means every one of us who can't absolutely predict minimums for Shopify should all be looking for different manufacturers. You are clearly going to be eventually shunting our shops off of this site entirely. This is Shapeways affirming the Shopify model: that if we don't have the assurance of meeting our minimum for you, you have no interest in working with us. It's fine to have that as a business model, but you need to be upfront instead of lying by calling us partners and being malicious enough to try to string us along while you prepare to screw us over a final time in totality.

megmaltese · Aug 30, 2018

Man this is crazy and should at least be put on the RIGHT top corner of the page, near the PERSONAL stuff, not in the GENERIC section on the left.

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