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Thread: New Lee Valley Web Site

  1. #46
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    Sep 2007
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker View Post
    Jim, the direct link for tools is slightly different as well as the categories, but you can still jump directly to tools with https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/tools
    Thanks Jim.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  2. #47
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    Sep 2010
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    I'm going to assume that Rob Lee is open to feedback especially from us since we are big users so I will continue to offer my observations. (Complain about the new site ).

    This whole "Choose an Option" thing is really not working for me at all. You used to be able to see all the options at a glance including the price. Now it is a painful process of 'choosing the options' one at a time and writing down all the sizes and prices you want to compare. In this case I was looking at water stones. There were multiple sizes AND multiple grits! Then when I hit the back button to go back to the previous page I was on in the 'Sharpening' section, it took me to the first page of 'Sharpening', not the page I was on. Really frustrating.

    If all this is being done to improve the mobile shopping experience, it is coming at the expense of all those (the majority?) who prefer to shop at home from their desktop computer.

    Seriously, poking around on Lee Valley's website exploring all the wonderful products you have has gone from a fun experience to a tedious chore.

    Sorry to be so harsh but I'm feeling like something got fixed that wasn't broken.

  3. #48
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    Aug 2014
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dave Zellers View Post
    ... I'm feeling like something got fixed that wasn't broken.
    Unfortunately there was a lot that was broken. (I got to speak to LV/Veritas reps recently.) The problems were pretty much everywhere except for the (traditional) user that went directly to the website. The website software was old and expensive to update. It didn't integrate as well as it could with the other aspects of their business. It didn't work well with mobile devices. And, I suspect the biggest problem, was it didn't meet Google's definition of a "modern" website and wasn't being prioritized in search results. This becomes a big problem when search results for a LV or Veritas product don't return their website.

    They are clearly working hard on this migration and I hope they can tune and tweak things to get us desktop users back to the equivalent to what we're used to seeing. But first they need to get the lost products back on the website, add translations for as many old links (e.g. bookmarks & forum posts) as they can, and make sure the hiccups (e.g. logging people out) are all fixed. I'll withhold my judgement for a while yet.

  4. #49
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    "the (traditional) user"

    Welp, that would be me, Mr traditional.

    I'll be patient too, but 'Choose an Option' has got to go!

  5. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Bassett View Post
    ... it didn't meet Google's definition of a "modern" website and wasn't being prioritized in search results...
    Who uses Google? It's all about Duck Duck Go.


  6. #51
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    It seems a lot of web site updates have been to make the computer user's experience mimic the phone user's experience.

    If that was my preference, then my computer would be a smart phone.

    Maybe they should start trying to make smart phones more like a computer.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  7. #52
    Hi All -

    A few quick comments on what I've read here...

    We had little choice about moving to a mobile compatible platform/schema if we didn't want to disappear from search engines altogether. On top of that - we also have to meet accessibility standards set by various governments - no choice there either. Those two issues alone constrain design choices.

    Running a primarily in-house built site was also becoming problematic for us as well - too many operating systems and devices to handle - we needed to switch to a platform that handled that for us.

    We started down this road years ago with a small firm that was just not able to handle the project. We had to switch to a tier one firm that could scale to re-develop and re-code what was necessary to get us up for this fall.

    Additionally - we implemented suites of tools to manage digital assets, as well as product information - all of which pour data into the website through another tool. As a result - the first time many of our folks see a "page" is when is goes live (and the data from multiple systems feeds a template).

    There's a lot we are working on cleaning up - now that it's "visible". There were some decisions made that just did not turn out the way we had expected. Those we'll work through too.

    The previous site had been continuously refined for 19 years and two days. This one has about 2 weeks under t's belt. And - it does not have the richness of function and content that we have planned, and designed. We'll continue to roll that out as time goes on.

    Today - we are continuing to work on straitening out product treatment issues (I agree with the comment about "options" - too many dimensions!), working with navigation and filtering, tuning the search function, and load balancing the site.

    None of this is much fun on this side of the counter either....

    We'll get there though. We have the same group of folks here that have been working on web and content for decades. They'll become more proficient with the new tools, and will wrangle the content into a format that's much more accommodating.

    Please keep the comments coming - our staff appreciate the feedback, and are acting on it.

    Cheers -

    Rob

  8. #53
    Join Date
    Jan 2018
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    Vancouver Canada
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    Tonight in a fit of idleness, I started looking at "Festool Domino". Checked a local supplier, then went to Lee Valley. Typed in Festool Domino, takes me an option page but no 500 or other Number. I had to hit "tool" before it came up, and on one side of my screen (iPad mini).
    If I had nothing but time, I'd shrug. I'm getting older and I don't want to die before my choice of tool comes on my screen.
    Young enough to remember doing it;
    Old enough to wish I could do it again.

  9. #54
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    Jan 2007
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    Ottawa, ON Canada
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    The only issue that I have with the new site is that I cannot check out using the latest version of Firefox. I can put items in the cart, but that's as far as I can get. This past weekend, this was still a problem, so I placed my orders using Edge - no problem at all. If you are reading this, Rob, I did send and email to customer service, so I am sure that someone is looking into this as I type. I'm raising it here in case others are experiencing the same issue.
    Grant
    Ottawa ON

  10. #55
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    Grant, if you read from the beginning you will see this was the reason I first started this thread. Try whitelisting leevalley.com in firefox and the checkout process will likely work for you. DM me if you have questions on how to do that. Of course your issue may be something different, but worth a shot.

  11. #56
    Tonight I was on the new LV website trying to check out. I was attempting to use my gift card balance to pay for the order. The system acknowledged my gift card as a method of payment but when I clicked the button to proceed and "review order", it kicked me back saying my credit card expiration was invalid. I had not put in any credit card info because I was trying to check out using my gift card balance.
    So for laughs I decided to try putting in all my credit card info alongside the gift card to see if the system would basically ignore the credit card as a method of payment but proceed on the next screen. No go.

    So I tried removing the gift card entirely and then putting in the same credit card info. Bing bing bing, that worked and I was able to proceed on to the next screen and process the order if I wanted to do so. Problem is, I want to use my gift card, so I cancelled out and I guess I'll have to call the order in tomorrow if I want to use my gift card, not a good outcome for an online retailer.

    From what I can tell, the new site has a problem handling gift card transactions. Has anyone else here successfully completed a gift card transaction on the new LV site?

    Edwin

  12. #57
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
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    NE OH
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    I did use an e-gift card successfully on the new site and didn't have any issues. I don't recall if there is an apply button to hit after entering the GC info, but if there is, did you hit it?

  13. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Paul F Franklin View Post
    I did use an e-gift card successfully on the new site and didn't have any issues. I don't recall if there is an apply button to hit after entering the GC info, but if there is, did you hit it?
    I did apply it, enough that it acknowledged the gift card in the total and showed the remaining balance to be zero. I gave up last night and tried again this morning and this time it worked. I'm still not sure what gummed up the order process last night but I thought I'd update that I did eventually get it to work.

  14. #59
    Hi -

    Gift card issue and Firefox issues fixed today.

    Our staff told me "We narrowed down the issues related to checkout to be because of ad-block and tracking blockers that some of the browsers support.
    As an example, Firefox in private mode is a default feature that a user can enable, and in doing so all our Google Analytics and other implemented tags are blocked, thereby not allowing the user to proceed past the cart. ../ fix for this issue to the production environment this morning. They verified it using Firefox (private mode) and with a couple of different Ad-block extensions. We also tested this morning using Firefox and things look good.

    We reported the bug with using gift cards as payment on the US site yesterday. A fix for this was also pushed to production this morning. We have tested it live and gift cards are now working as expected.
    "


    Thanks for your patience, and for the heads-up on the issues!

    Cheers -

    Rob

  15. #60
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Ottawa, ON Canada
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    Paul: My apologies. I did read your post on the day you posted it, then promptly forgot the gist of it. I do know how to whitelist sites. Thanks.

    Rob: I'm not surprised that your guys figured this out and fixed it. I exchanged two emails with your people, with them asking for more details. They clearly had a good handle on the issue. I expected no less from LV.
    Grant
    Ottawa ON

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