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I work as a creative director at a communications agency that does a lot of web, and have worked with web for the last 8 years or so. I thought "Naaah it can't be that bad", dove in, and promplty noped the hell out. As others have pointed out, an insane distance between entry and product, and just a whole lot of weird prioritizations and bad usage of space. I'm flabbergasted, honestly, despite how much crap GW gets I find they actually get a lot of things right. This is a disaster though, and I have no clue how they could have allowed it to happen, especially with that rumoured price tag. Heads should roll because of this.

15 hours ago, Sothalor said:

image.thumb.png.a47011a2756fb772d62ce48378e7d6e5.png

 

Have to disagree there. This is what a bunch of Black Library product pages looks like, for instance. Big, vast swathes of empty page space with clunky, unintuitive overlapping UI elements.

 

Meanwhile, having to entirely cycle through the hidden dropdown menus to navigate to anything else, combined with an stupidly unhelpful filter system (limiting the filter to specific page categories) is just... bonkers unfriendly..

LMAO, the broken breaks (sic), I cannot even. Is this a high-school project by the CEO's kid or what is this actually, ya multimillion corporation, you? :D

1 minute ago, Kastor Krieg said:

LMAO, the broken breaks (sic), I cannot even. Is this a high-school project by the CEO's kid or what is this actually, ya multimillion corporation, you? :D

 

One has to wonder what is happening on these projects. Taking years to do things and producing outcomes that look like they were rushed at the last minute. The website is just the latest one, and it won't be the last.

2 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

One has to wonder what is happening on these projects. Taking years to do things and producing outcomes that look like they were rushed at the last minute. 

Because the implementation of the work in itself often does not take years. 

In my experience of corporate projects, something can indeed be "in the pipe" for a long time, it can be in a stage prior to actually letting the little people in and getting them to do their stuff for a long time, then suddenly it gets dropped on the "people that do the thing" at the end, after the business has mulled it over, and they get 6 weeks until completion. 

3 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

Because the implementation of the work in itself often does not take years. 

In my experience of corporate projects, something can indeed be "in the pipe" for a long time, it can be in a stage prior to actually letting the little people in and getting them to do their stuff for a long time, then suddenly it gets dropped on the "people that do the thing" at the end, after the business has mulled it over, and they get 6 weeks until completion. 

 

Yeah, I do this stuff for a living too, so I have seen all the ways these things can get messed up (although people can always find new ways to surprise). When it happens often, it is usually not the fault of the people at the ground level actually doing the work. Frequent rushed projects point to a bigger problem with the way the company does things, often at the management level or above.

4 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

Yeah, I do this stuff for a living too, so I have seen all the ways these things can get messed up (although people can always find new ways to surprise). When it happens often, it is usually not the fault of the people at the ground level actually doing the work. Frequent rushed projects point to a bigger problem with the way the company does things, often at the management level or above.

The sort of thing we are talking about has occured in every business I have worked for in my life, and I'm nearly 40. 

I'm starting to believe it;s because businesses do their thing and the job of the workforce is to "make it happen". 

There's always issues and things they don't want to address before launching. Granted, this one didn't fully crash the site when it launched, so it's not the worst I've seen in that regard.

 

I work more on native applications than on web, so a little more attention is spent on detail there, as things quickly become a bit worse if your released product is crashing for those kind of applications. Especially when it needs to work on all of the platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux.

Edited by WrathOfTheLion
19 minutes ago, Stitch5000 said:

The sort of thing we are talking about has occured in every business I have worked for in my life, and I'm nearly 40. 

I'm starting to believe it;s because businesses do their thing and the job of the workforce is to "make it happen". 

 

This is true. However, plenty of businesses can and do "make it happen." Some are just better at it than others, for whatever reason.

I have to say it’s a very frustrating website to try and navigate now. I’m not sure why they thought they needed an entire redesign when the old website worked fine. Could have used a bit of a refresh maybe but this is clunky.

 

 I went to the warhammer 40000 tab and you have to scroll down to nearly the bottom of the page to find the faction links and the xenos one has a great big picture of Ghaz and the faction slider is below that. At least in mobile. It makes it silly to navigate. And I haven’t found any forgeworld stuff at all! 

Trying to be balanced on this, IIRC the previous incarnation of the webstore wasn't warmly received to start with and was criticised for being a simple catalogue of stuff made by the CEO's wife*, and being overpriced for what it was etc... Though over time it's generally done the job ok.

I'll admit though the new site isn't fun to use at all, and it should be exasperating to shareholders that a company that prides itself on 'selling toy soldiers' is dropping the ball on the manufacture, distribution and selling of the said toy soldiers lately...

 

if you know what you are looking for the website is just bad but if you are new to the hobby its just awful. It should be a funnel to get you to your minis in as few clicks as possible. Big simple icons for factions not hidden menus. So now i have a reason not to go to GWs physical store AND their digital one 

9 minutes ago, sarabando said:

if you know what you are looking for the website is just bad but if you are new to the hobby its just awful.

 

I suppose I am viewing it through a very specific lens as someone who never browses and just beelines straight to the thing I'm after via search, but also someone who objects to paying full price wherever possible so almost never order direct from GW anyway. As that user, it's... fine. Not good, but tolerable.

 

I can see how for people who do actually want to just browse it and people coming to it for the first time it is a significant downgrade on the old one.

The more time I spend on this new webstore, the more it seems to be everything I despise in modern website design rolled into one abominable Chaos Spawn of a site.

 

Also, random little query: did they do away with wish/gift lists? If not, where on Terra have they hidden them?

Edited by Tymell
2 hours ago, phandaal said:

 

Yeah, I do this stuff for a living too, so I have seen all the ways these things can get messed up (although people can always find new ways to surprise). When it happens often, it is usually not the fault of the people at the ground level actually doing the work. Frequent rushed projects point to a bigger problem with the way the company does things, often at the management level or above.

 

I can only imagine the lack of technical and project management expertise within GW is the fault. Too much dependance on the vendor, and the wool keeps getting pulled over their eyes.

6 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I can only imagine the lack of technical and project management expertise within GW is the fault. Too much dependance on the vendor, and the wool keeps getting pulled over their eyes.

What even is a Gantt chart?  Nobody knows... we don't need to pay anybody to make sure our major endeavors and overhauls go smoothly.

...
 

Or even "Smooth enough"

Edited by Dark Legionnare

=][= Alrighty the folks, I think this thread has served it's purpose. If you have any issues with the site, want to give feedback or if you have any issues or concerns with orders, vouchers etc it's best to contact GW Customer Support directly =][=

 

GW have also put up a handy FAQ for the site launch found HERE

Edited by TrawlingCleaner
Added link
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