Hi Everyone,
As many of you know, we created a new Livestock website at
http://www.premiumaquaticslive.com/
several months ago. We had planned for it to be a nice new modern site with a lot more updates and "what you see is what you get" corals.
Unfortunately the site has proven to be difficult update and integrated with our back end order system. So we are looking at doing a completely new website in the future, probably 2008, but for now we are going to incorporate the livestock fish and corals back into our main drygood website. It's just much easier to update and already integrated with our backorder order taking system.
So now where we need your help. We would like your opinion on these questions.
1. Does anyone think moving away from premiumlive and back to our main website is a big mistake? It's a more modern web layout, but to keep it up to date, would take probably 2 to 3 times more man hours.
2. Picture quality. We can take some excellent photos of the corals if we need to. This involves moving them and setting up each coral under a black box and taking photos from the top. Comes out great, but takes a long time. There is just no way we can get all corals online with this method. That's why in the past we only did Cherry Picts. My idea is a more "down and dirty" approach. Shooting through the tank wall, means the farther the coral is from the front glass, the less quality it will be. This method is fast and we can take the picture with our "new" numbered poker chips, to show the exact item code in the picture of the coral. So it's easy to make sure you are ordering the correct coral you want and we are pulling the correct one.
Wow, sorry that is a long one. So basically. More corals with less quality pictures, but all true WYSWIG photos of every coral. Or less pictures and just high quality on the cherry pict corals.
Here are examples of the down and dirty shots. These corals are real items for sale. Just put them online tonight.
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SPS
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SPS-TR
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=LPS
3. Inventory - controlling inventory. If you look at the above links, you'll see that each coral has an inventory count. The nice thing about setting that inventory is it keeps people from buying the same coral and us having to call and break the bad news that John Dow ordered L-00001 before you did etc. The MAJOR drawback to our inventory control on that website though is the shopping cart. If someone adds that to there cart, that inventory is gone until they delete it or expires. That means lots of people browsing will be putting them out of inventory and will be difficult to order. A coral will appear sold out, then 90 minutes later would show instock again.
So another long one, but basic question. What is more frustrating, trying to get the coral that is instock, or ordering a coral to find out later it was sold already?
I think that is about it. Would love to hear any opinions on any of these issues. This week we'll be working to get more of those corals online as well and then depending on feedback we get we might make a few changes on how we are doing the updates.
Thanks
As many of you know, we created a new Livestock website at
http://www.premiumaquaticslive.com/
several months ago. We had planned for it to be a nice new modern site with a lot more updates and "what you see is what you get" corals.
Unfortunately the site has proven to be difficult update and integrated with our back end order system. So we are looking at doing a completely new website in the future, probably 2008, but for now we are going to incorporate the livestock fish and corals back into our main drygood website. It's just much easier to update and already integrated with our backorder order taking system.
So now where we need your help. We would like your opinion on these questions.
1. Does anyone think moving away from premiumlive and back to our main website is a big mistake? It's a more modern web layout, but to keep it up to date, would take probably 2 to 3 times more man hours.
2. Picture quality. We can take some excellent photos of the corals if we need to. This involves moving them and setting up each coral under a black box and taking photos from the top. Comes out great, but takes a long time. There is just no way we can get all corals online with this method. That's why in the past we only did Cherry Picts. My idea is a more "down and dirty" approach. Shooting through the tank wall, means the farther the coral is from the front glass, the less quality it will be. This method is fast and we can take the picture with our "new" numbered poker chips, to show the exact item code in the picture of the coral. So it's easy to make sure you are ordering the correct coral you want and we are pulling the correct one.
Wow, sorry that is a long one. So basically. More corals with less quality pictures, but all true WYSWIG photos of every coral. Or less pictures and just high quality on the cherry pict corals.
Here are examples of the down and dirty shots. These corals are real items for sale. Just put them online tonight.
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SPS
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=SPS-TR
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=LPS
3. Inventory - controlling inventory. If you look at the above links, you'll see that each coral has an inventory count. The nice thing about setting that inventory is it keeps people from buying the same coral and us having to call and break the bad news that John Dow ordered L-00001 before you did etc. The MAJOR drawback to our inventory control on that website though is the shopping cart. If someone adds that to there cart, that inventory is gone until they delete it or expires. That means lots of people browsing will be putting them out of inventory and will be difficult to order. A coral will appear sold out, then 90 minutes later would show instock again.
So another long one, but basic question. What is more frustrating, trying to get the coral that is instock, or ordering a coral to find out later it was sold already?
I think that is about it. Would love to hear any opinions on any of these issues. This week we'll be working to get more of those corals online as well and then depending on feedback we get we might make a few changes on how we are doing the updates.
Thanks
