I'm Just Going To Come Right Out And Say It...

Maybe shapeways is trying to get acquired and show profit to its investors.
See this logo:

Follow the money! They've made a name for themselves by catering to a market that was untapped at the time and less competitive, made a modest profit to grow and expand, and now they're shifting focus. It all makes sense from a business perspective (and it makes the choice of new CEO all the more clear) but in the process, they lose everything they were before along with many of the customers and their 'partners' that help them build their previous business model.

Definitely a dick move.

Well, I was very worried that the change would negatively impact sales. However, I got the word out to our fanbase that the look had changed and I am not seeing a loss in sales. Nor have I seen a huge increase in sales beyond what I would expect in a "mad month" (over 100 items added). As long as our sales are not dropping, I am good. I'll figure out how to do stuff while fussing under my breath that it takes more clicks to do so.

However, I think one of the things to take away from this rollout is that by not telling us in advance "We are changing these specific things," you (Shapeways highest management, not CS) created a negative climate. We couldn't prepare ourselves (the "you're going to love it" message was so vague as to be useless) or our customers. Anything that went wrong hit the forums with the undertone of "Shapeways broke this on purpose."

I totally understand some things needed to change to help you increase your profit. After all, we get a free shop with the brand recognition of Shapeways. We refer customers who get the wrong item shipped, a broken item, or something misprinted to Shapeways's excellent customer service reps. But what Shapeways may not realize is we contribute to your bottom line. Our customers help you turn a profit. I have over 4,000 likes on our corporate page on Facebook. Our fanpage focused on minis has nearly 700 people (https://www.facebook.com/groups/568564029852004/). Our shared customers paint their ships, show them off, and folks get to see the wonderful minis we design and you print. We feel like partners. And when we are treated as mere customers instead, we tend to react with a less-than-positive attitude.

The logo and colour are the least of my concerns. The website itself is just impossible to navigate. I used to be able to see all my models arranged in rows, select the materials from drop down menus, see the price udpate, add to cart, all without leaving the same page. NOW I have to go through such a tedious process to do ANYTHING. I tried to upload a model for quoting with some project managers watching over my shoulders. I simply couldn't figure it out.

I hate the new site so much. Go back to the old one!

Well..My sales changed for the worse this month so far.. Getting feedback from people that they can't find anything when they enter the site..the Change confuses the costumer base....

Not really sure what direction shape ways is going.. heck, it gets free model designs to sell.. Why kill the customer base?

woodguy32

I made a similar comment in a different post a few months back when they made other changes. It's not that we give them free models to list and sell. Users collectively create 99.9% of what people can purchase through Shapeways. Almost no content for sale on Shapeways is created by Shapeways themselves. Whether it is a customer designing and ordering their own print, or buying a product designed by another user, everything originates with the users. Though time and time again, Shapeways tends to ignore user requests/feedback/complaints/feature requests/etc and implement these bone-headed changes that "they" feel will make everything better. Too bad most of those changes have been 180° in the wrong direction and not what the users have been begging them to add for years.

Wow I'm sorry to have to say it, but this site is terrible. The new logo is bizarrely awful...was this shown to anyone before adopting? Red everywhere is not inviting. Huge autoplaying animated banners in the background, all the old usability bugs still going strong and a few new ones added.

I can't find my store, so I guess I won't be maintaining it now. I can no longer recommend this experience to small-scale makers, still less to lay customers...if I can't find my store, they sure won't.

Judging by the front page and main headings, SW is now deprecating maker-to-customer transactions in favor of brokering design services, and quantity production and fulfillment. It's a strange choice to my eye -- there are already many established b2b service bureaus, it's not a market I'd choose to enter -- but maybe I'd think differently if I saw the balance sheets. If SW couldn't make d2c work, maybe there was never a real business model there.

Ah well, water under the bridge, it was a glorious revolution while it lasted. March 2009 to August 2018, so not quite ten years.

My thoughts exactly. They've been hinting at a new direction for D2C but thus far, all signs point to B2B and it's hard to find any semblance of truth to their claims. I really don't understand the marketing move here to tell us one thing and overwhelmingly demonstrate another - creator trust in Shapeways has only stagnated and subsequently declined rapidly with previous changes over the past two years or so (removing pricing transparency, promising new and exciting materials and pricing that don't pan out as they have presented them, UI changes that fly in the face of designer preferences, etc) so for them to think that they can continue on that path and expect us to place any amount of trust in their 'message' is foolish at best and diabolical at worst. It just feels like a big 'ol bait and switch to me but with no bait and all switch lol.

I'm really trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here but they're making it damn near impossible. Since the website changes, I haven't added any products to my shop, I barely care to respond to customer messages concerning new product offerings, my shop sales have declined to about half of the normal sales I've seen pretty consistently over the last year, and the only reason I log in anymore is to visit the forum to see what others are saying about all of these changes - and I have yet to see any real positive response. The best feedback I've seen is "I don't mind the bad logo, just fix the UI!" Hell, even the thread created for the sole purpose of finding positive changes is hard pressed to find people willing to speak positively of them.

Shapeways can tell us all they want that these changes are good or that they will be beneficial to this community, but they've shown us frack-all to support the claims. They need to give us something we can work with and get behind in this respect but are simply not upholding their burden of proof on the matter.

From here
https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/38584-shapeways-updates.html
"New Homepage
We have launched a new Shapeways.com. We optimized it for what people use the most (including: make a product, materials pages, contact forms). For shop owners, FYI the marketplace is still on the homepage. Notably, a large percentage of shoppers bypass the homepage and go straight to product pages from search rankings (so the homepage placement is less important than you might think)."

Two things here.
First shoppers bypassing the homepage to go to product page. Feedback I got confirmed this, but Shapeways didn't look further into the reasoning. For my customers at least, they did this because the search function wasn't doing it for them and bookmarking my shop was a work around. One customer didn't notice the website change because he had stopped using search for so long it was normal for him to come straight to my shop.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure most designers upload form some kind of computer, to optimize the entire website for mobile alienate the computer users, obviously affected designers a lot. This should have had been looked at before being implemented.

Oh, now I know.
Shapeways thought let's develop an original branding.
Have they developed this themselves or are they a bunch of chickens and did they take Colonel Sanders' advice a bit too literally?

When the best thing you can say about a UI change is that maybe one or two things aren't worse than they were before, you're looking at a dumpster-fire of an exercise.

I'd try to offer some constructive criticism, but honestly, there's so much to be criticised and so little to be congratulated that I just lose the will to live.

Bad job. bad, bad job.

For what it's worth, I taught web UI design for about a decade, and if this had been submitted to me it would have got a failing grade.

I can't stand the new web interface. I was quite happy with the way it worked before, and proudly showed it off to people. Now I really don't feel like using Shapeways and will try to find other vendors. Listen to your customers. We all seem to hate this new interface.

I'm in the same boat. I haven't used Shapeways since the change and I all but ignore messages (or at least I tell them that I'm not currently uploading new models).

ye, old interface was more clearer. even the one between the old-newest was good. plus I prefer the old logo too

First. It took me two days to get to "Mymodels" page. I found no links anywhere. The only links I found was to models for sale which was incomplete.

Second. It's more difficult to tweak the model due to the layout/function change.

totally agree with everyone here, Shapeways looks like it wants to sink itself, very bizarre

does anyone know since the latest update where the orientate your file for printing has gone?

Last seen in the 3d tools (which you can access from the three vertical dots at the end of the row in the models table) - but I have not done anything here in earnest since the troubles started.

thanks mkroeker, found the 3 dots (sort of like demo man and the 3 sea shells)

but shapeways has locked them out until the new pricing has kicked in,this place is getting worse

Well I hate to tell the people who kept reminding us about the "Rename Model" pencil option, but it's long gone.

Anyone know how (if) I can rename my models now?

You literally can't. There is no way to rename models anymore, it's gone. You can thank Shapeways' brilliant redesign for that.