New Warmoth website feedback from old timers seen negative.

[Kostas]

My opinion is based only on the desktop version:

I was expecting more after all the years waiting, aesthetically it looks simpler than the old site, it seems to me it's designed with the phone user in mind putting second the computer user.

I'm a showcase fan (and buyer in the past) and I don't like there's no showcase entrance anymore. I want to do window looking and see everything, that's how I built my W guitars. I never needed another guitar, my insiprations came from surfing the showcase and seeing something that impressed me. Now I have to click individually each body & neck shape to enter the showcase, I won't do that. I surf their site in my spare time to relax, clicking each one of them is not relaxing. Unless I haven't understood how to do that, I see the "see all models" but I don't see something similar for the all in stock showcase models.

I was waiting more showcase options, specifically when I search. I was waiting all these options the short lived alternate showcase had, my favorite showcase by far. For example, I'd like to click four different colors,  see the results and compare, not clicking each color by itself. The same for necks with different radius, back shapes etc.

...One thing to add is, they got rid of a few features that stopped making business sense (like customer build photos). I personally liked the build galleries since they helped get lots of ideas for my own builds, but Warmoth sits in the country of lawsuits, so it is understandable they got rid of it. Besides: Google images still work 

I don't understand that, the customers builds are part of their heritage, it was nice reading the builders comments and seeing the models over the years. The headstocks were cut where needed so what lawsuit? They have complied and stopped making too many body shapes over the years.

 

[stratamania]

Its easy enough to add some links such as those below to bookmarks to view showcase items of a particular type to browse directly if it helps anyone.

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/stratocaster

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/telecaster

 

[NedRyerson]

Some people know how to provide constructive feedback, but some people don't. That's kind of the cost of doing business. My analogy is a restaurant taking Yelp reviews. No matter how good the restaurant is, there is always going to be someone sharing some unreasonable or not super polite feedback.

My sister and her husband own a restaurant in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and know this all too well.  After reopening, they did their best to space out seating. One self-important, entitled family threatened a negative Yelp review because they felt the restaurant didn't space out enough -- in essence, wanting the whole place to themselves.

And of course, a restaurant can't appeal to Yelp to take down insincere, disingenuous reviews because Yelp doesn't care.

 

[aarontunes]

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback.

Besides the general resistance to change inherent to stuff like this (come see the repression inherent in the system!), another thing that fuels people's fires is that from the outside everything seems obvious and easy. OTOH, when you're the one in the arena, sweaty and dirty and bloody, you see things that inform your decisions that most people never see or even think about.

One small example is the gallery. It's easy to assume it was at least semi-automated, but that was far from the truth. It required endless attention/moderation. People submitted photos with inappropriate content. People tried to use our gallery to solicit business for their own products and services. People submitted photos of non-Warmoth products, or worse yet, photos of things the violate Warmoth's licensing agreements, which could expose the company to jeopardy. No beuno. In attempt to help mitigate those things we posted clear instructions on content, image size and aspect ratio, image quality, etc., and it made no difference. People would submit all the wrong stuff, all the time, which required our time every week to sift through the photos, edit and resize them, try to make them look decent, create thumbnails, remove things from the photos and text that violated our license, etc.

It was originally created (forever ago) as a place for people to share builds, when there weren't such things around every corner. Now you have FB groups, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, UW, Gear Page, Bass Talk, and on and on. For all these reasons we decided to forego the gallery on the new website.

There has also been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the hardware and back view being gone from the visualizers. There is just as much behind the scenes info I could give you about the problems those things created, but I won't go into it. I would just ask that you remember that three weeks ago only about 25% or our products even had a visual builder....just over half of the guitar bodies. The other half had no visualizer at all. Nether did any of the bass bodies, any of the guitar necks, or any of the bass necks. On all those items you were just choosing options from a series of dropdown lists. Now every single one has a visualizer, and new products down the road will as well, because we have streamlined how they work.

There are lots of kinks to be worked out, to be sure. Most of them are things the public will never see or think about, so while it may look like we aren't acknowledging the beefs people have, the truth is we are working like crazy on aspects of the site people don't see, but that are higher priority. There are two people in the web dept here, and we are getting to them as fast as we can, but it's gonna take a little time.

I would ask everybody to be patient. Hope all that info helps!

 

[aarontunes]

My sister and her husband own a restaurant in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle and know this all too well.  After reopening, they did their best to space out seating. One self-important, entitled family threatened a negative Yelp review because they felt the restaurant didn't space out enough -- in essence, wanting the whole place to themselves.

And of course, a restaurant can't appeal to Yelp to take down insincere, disingenuous reviews because Yelp doesn't care.

Oh....it's easy to get Yelp to care. All you have to do is cough up money, and they will make your Yelp reviews sparkly and shiny. My wife owns a hair salon, and has found the opposite is also true. I'll leave it at that.

 

[aarontunes]

The distressing part I have seen on one of the warmoth fan pages on Facebook is that the people starting threads slamming Warmoth are also being VERY sloppy with their language, which just fosters a lot of misinformation.

Especially in regard to the visualizer. One guy had people thinking that Warmoth was eliminating Unique Choice woods altogether.

I saw all that. It was mostly one guy trying get everyone riled up, ambiguity be damned.

 

[ragamuffin]

I know that a ton of work has gone into the the new website and it has some major improvements over the old one, but my biggest gripe personally is that they new website is difficult to browse; if you're looking for something specific it great, but I'd REALLY appreciate a way to browse all new necks or bodies, even something as simple as the old RSS feed.

 

[aarontunes]

I know that a ton of work has gone into the the new website and it has some major improvements over the old one, but my biggest gripe personally is that they new website is difficult to browse; if you're looking for something specific it great, but I'd REALLY appreciate a way to browse all new necks or bodies, even something as simple as the old RSS feed.

RSS feed is on our list of thangs.

 

[ragamuffin]

I know that a ton of work has gone into the the new website and it has some major improvements over the old one, but my biggest gripe personally is that they new website is difficult to browse; if you're looking for something specific it great, but I'd REALLY appreciate a way to browse all new necks or bodies, even something as simple as the old RSS feed.

RSS feed is on our list of thangs.

Woot!

 

[Rick]

Maybe we could do a self moderated gallery here, with a few simple rules, like:
1) Just one picture and post of the front of the guitar
2) Maximum 50 word description
3) The Body and/or Neck must be Warmoth
4) All body styles go into the same single photo gallery
5) Posters acknowledge by posting that if they violate any of the first three rules, in addition to our normal rules, their post could be subject to removal by the moderators at the request of any member.

It could be started in the Off Topic area and if it's successful, moved over to its own category in the Gallery, maybe calling it the single photo gallery.  If members want to post more elaborate descriptions then they would use the specific galleries for the body types.  But this would give people a quick look, which is what most people want.

If it's not successful, it can be allowed to die a quiet internet death.

Anyone think this a good idea, just say aye, and I'll post the first pic.

 

[BroccoliRob]

Its easy enough to add some links such as those below to bookmarks to view showcase items of a particular type to browse directly if it helps anyone.

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/stratocaster

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/telecaster

YO it literally only takes one single click from the homepage to get to either of those links. People dont seem to be asking for more specificicity, they want more broad. but most a these peeps dont seem to be effectively utilizing the search feature.

"waaaah, i cant see every chambered body all at once"

"did u try typing chambered into the search box, clicking the bodies option, and htitign search?"

*crickets*

Ya'll gotta more effectively utilize yo' #GirlPower (not trying to be sexist, it's just a good phrase that anybody should be able to use).

Maybe some of u who get so easily worked up need to get an emotional support dog. i tried to get one recently but he

a. Wasn't accepting new patients and
b. Wasn't covered by my HMO

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[stratamania]

Its easy enough to add some links such as those below to bookmarks to view showcase items of a particular type to browse directly if it helps anyone.

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/stratocaster

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/telecaster

YO it literally only takes one single click from the homepage to get to either of those links. People dont seem to be asking for more specificicity, they want more broad. but most a these peeps dont seem to be effectively utilizing the search feature.

"waaaah, i cant see every chambered body all at once"

"did u try typing chambered into the search box, clicking the bodies option, and htitign search?"

*crickets*

Ya'll gotta more effectively utilize yo' #GirlPower (not trying to be sexist, it's just a good phrase that anybody should be able to use).

Maybe some of u who get so easily worked up need to get an emotional support dog. i tried to get one recently but he

a. Wasn't accepting new patients and
b. Wasn't covered by my HMO

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yes, there is search or bookmarking links for those who don't want to click one or two to get there.

Or after using a search term that is useful for somebody they can always save the resultant link in their bookmarks.

Personally I think it is not a big deal either way.

 

[Wolff05]

Its easy enough to add some links such as those below to bookmarks to view showcase items of a particular type to browse directly if it helps anyone.

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/stratocaster

https://warmoth.com/index.php/guitar-bodies/telecaster

YO it literally only takes one single click from the homepage to get to either of those links. People dont seem to be asking for more specificicity, they want more broad. but most a these peeps dont seem to be effectively utilizing the search feature.

"waaaah, i cant see every chambered body all at once"

"did u try typing chambered into the search box, clicking the bodies option, and htitign search?"

*crickets*

Ya'll gotta more effectively utilize yo' #GirlPower (not trying to be sexist, it's just a good phrase that anybody should be able to use).

Maybe some of u who get so easily worked up need to get an emotional support dog. i tried to get one recently but he

a. Wasn't accepting new patients and
b. Wasn't covered by my HMO

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have to manage the Screamin' Deal section, and I couldn't figure out how to display them all together to check on them, until you suggested using the search box  :doh:

Also, I found this pic of you from high school.

 

[mayfly]

Also, I found this pic of you from high school.

Woah!  You've been totally outed Rob!

 

[Seamas]

I feel bad for the guy in the Dallas Cowboys shirt, he started his day thinking he had a funny/clever take on this.

 

[BroccoliRob]

lol wow. if i ever needed proof that my cross country travels in the  early 90's resulted in some offspring (not the band) I'm not aware of, this image is it. see i used to find nudist colonies and go reverse streaking as a gag. They were usually mad like "why is this guy sprinting through our enclave wearing a tuxedo?" and they'd yell at me to leave, but im already running so what did they I was gonna do? If youre running its streaking, if youre standing still it's flashing and I wasnt into the reverse-flashing scene. Too slow and gives the people who want to hit you too much opportunity.

but anyway, sometimes the people with a sense of humour who "got it" would chat and maybe I'd join their totally-not-a-cult enclave for a few days or weeks and who knows, maybe I unintentionally fathered a child or two or a dozen. It was a long road trip but that was the goal (whole country). The movies make it seem like road trips only take 90-120 minutes; trust me, it's not true. But that's why they call em goals. if u already did them, they'd be called history.

Anyway, my only hang up on the new website is that seems like u can't get a Floyd nut prepped on the necks in stock. i'm pretty sure the neck meets the requirements but the option is not showing up. NBD (short for not a large deal), tho. i assume the Big W is aware and itll get rectosolved (portmanteau of rectify and solved) eventually

 

[Frankencat]

Where did the Showcase go? Also can’t browse just bass necks let’s say. You have to drill down to a specific one. I get why they do it but it makes the site harder to use. I have bought many guitar and bass necks from the showcase or in-stock but it seems to be a big pain in the arse to browse now. Sorry but thumbs down for usability.

 

[Frankencat]

I tried Screamin Deals and Showcase in the search box and nothing was found. So much for that idea. If those things are there then why not just link to them from the menu? Why make people have to “figure it out”?  Not trying to be negative but when you change so much that long time users are used to you are going to have to help people do business the way they are used to. So many times these things are driven by IT when they should be driven by the user community.

 

[stratamania]

I posted this link in another thread several days ago.

This is the URL created for a screamin deals search - save it in bookmarks.

https://warmoth.com/index.php/catalogsearch/result/?cat=0&q=screamin+deals

 

[Wolff05]

Here would be a search term to search all bass necks. (Just a warning, there's only 3, until the custom orders are caught up and showcase can start being made again).

All bass necks will start with the item number prefix BN, and until there's about 9,000 more made, will be in the 10,000 number range, so searching for BN-1 will show all bass necks except deluxe 5s and Geckos. Those would be searched for under D5N and GN.


https://warmoth.com/index.php/catalogsearch/result/?cat=0&q=bn-1