Dear Rob Lee - Website Fix Date?

[Keith Outten]

Rob Lee, I sent you a Private Message.

[Scott Winners]

Mr. Lee, I appreciate your hard work and hope it comes out well. Indeed 6 months of development ont he new thing, it won't be as refined as the one your team had been working on for twenty years.

Example for me, I want to try staked furniture. I found the tapered mortise cutters no problem. Still haven't found a matching tapered reamer to cut matching tenons. I did find 499+ tapered reamer products. I hope someday when someone finds the tapered mortise cutter the matching tapered reamers will down in the list of "related products" at the bottom of the page.

I am confident your guys are working on it. The only thing I would ask is don't let the quality of your actual products slip while the website is getting up to speed.

Thanks, and best wishes for 2020.

Scott

[glenn bradley]

Hi Glenn (et al) -

Yes - we have a lot of work to do to get our website back to where the previous version was. The base search engine (which is what is running now) leaves a lot to be desired. We are actively evaluating other search engine software - and will be implementing a much better solution as fast as practical. We continue to work with the taxonomy and navigation structures - and are making some progress there. (take a look at Festool, or Veritas in the tools tab). It is slow going - but we are making progress.

Our previous website was refined over a period of 20 years ... and we've had less than 6 months with this one. Our hand was a bit forced in releasing the site as we did, and then we had to freeze development work as we went through the Christmas period - what is visible now is only about 30-40% of our actual design.


We know the website is not what it should be (yet) - and we are focused on cleaning up what's there, and rolling out improvements on a continual basis. Your comments here (and elsewhere ) are certainly being heard - and are being addressed. Progress cannot happen fast enough for me either!


Cheers,

Rob

Great news. What prompted this sort-of open letter was that I was on another site and yet again, some folks were really stirring the pot on the new website. I have enjoyed doing business with Lee Valley for a long time and talk them up sincerely whenever discussions warrant (and sometimes when they don't ). I feel that I have developed a relationship with them as a company and it personally pains me to read people talking trash. My concern was that the performance issues were being soft-sold up the ladder. It sounds like that is not the case and that's terrific. I am sure I am not alone in wishing you best speed on getting things dialed in. Good luck.

[Chuck Wintle]

Great news. What prompted this sort-of open letter was that I was on another site and yet again, some folks were really stirring the pot on the new website. I have enjoyed doing business with Lee Valley for a long time and talk them up sincerely whenever discussions warrant (and sometimes when they don't ). I feel that I have developed a relationship with them as a company and it personally pains me to read people talking trash. My concern was that the performance issues were being soft-sold up the ladder. It sounds like that is not the case and that's terrific. I am sure I am not alone in wishing you best speed on getting things dialed in. Good luck.

I would point to the mcmaster- carr website for an example of how it could be done.

[Ken Combs]

I would point to the mcmaster- carr website for an example of how it could be done.

McMaster and Rockauto are the gold standards IMO. They are so good I go there to find part numbers to use for a Google search for that product all the time. Often results in finding the item at a lower price. I'm sure Rock and Mcmaster wouldn't like to hear that!

[mike stenson]

McMaster and Rockauto are the gold standards IMO. They are so good I go there to find part numbers to use for a Google search for that product all the time. Often results in finding the item at a lower price. I'm sure Rock and Mcmaster wouldn't like to hear that!

Interesting, I find rockautos UX to be pretty.. bad. The search works very well, but wow... the interface is from the 90s