Fighting 15s' redesign goes live

As Fighting 15s’  Facebook followers will be aware, I have been playing with a redesign of the Fighting 15s website to bring it kicking and screaming out of the early 2000s and into the 20-teens. That redesign is now live.
There is no maintenance mode for the site, so this change was enacted live on Saturday afternoon. I had warned in advanced on Facebook that some odd pictures might appear, but those should now all be gone. Not that anyone would pay heed to the fact that I’d adapted a fashion website, nor that pictures of people in underwear would be unusual on some wargames websites…
I emphasise that the navigation of the website has not changed – it just looks different. It still works the same way, using a hierarchical system to categorise figures. I am still working on streamlining this, as evidenced by the new AB Figures Quick Codes section, which will eventually roll out to other product ranges. I still need to add images to most of the navigational aspects of the new site, which should help customers find their way around by providing more visual clues.
New features that I had been trying out on the old website, such as the ability to sort products by various criteria, as well as a login system to check on order progress, are obviously still available on the new site. The new site provided the motivation to add these in the first place.
Products now have even more information available about them. The short product listing now contains details of pack contents to stop customers asking what every code contains – this simply shows that customers treated the website as a code list without going that extra step to click on a product to see the full description. The new product description pages are clearer and the ability to email product details to friends or print them off is now available.
The site now has a privacy policy. The old site needed one but the limited allocation of webpages simply didn’t allow it. The Fighting 15s policy is very different from most others because I regard email marketing as the scourge of the internet. Therefore, quite simply, Fighting 15s will not use customers’ details to send out newsletters, conduct marketing, or send out information to third parties. I believe customers will simply come back to the Fighting 15s site because the products we sell are good and do not need aggressive marketing to sell them, and because Fighting 15s will not pelt customers with sales literature just because all they wanted was a few packs of unique figures.
This is, however, stage one. I am evaluating other ecommerce providers that offer better search options for a shop, with the ability to filter products. However, any change will not happen for a long time.
Ian
Fighting 15s