Let's Give Mike A Hand!

[suicideneil]

I smell a competition of sorts...

members draw up a diagram of the front page, of how they think it should look with all the menus and header etc, and then a seperate flow diagram of how each menu cascades into respective sub-sections for manufacturers/ vehicles etc. Let Mike & the web guy decide which design they like best & is easiest to implement, then the winner gets a cookie :)

[redshift]

There is one item I forgot.

If Mike was willing to do large quantity purchases through HK, battery sales would TAKE OFF. I know many members here (including me) would much prefer buying Zippys from a stateside wholesaler.

Mike could charge anywhere from 20-40% over HK warehouse pricing, whatever would cover shipping, and provide him with a good profit margin.
And they would still be competitive with the Hyperions and other packs he sells.

Anyone care to +1 on that?

[redshift]

Wow that's quite the cheering section Freeze!

[BrianG]

As far as correcting errors, adding descriptions, etc, a google docs spreadsheet would be the easiest thing to use. People can add whatever they want, and if someone sees someting incorrect, they can fix it. Whatever is used, it needs to be all in one place. Having a butload of emails would be a PITA to sift through.

As far as layout is concerned; I would make a few changes. In the item lists, make the pictures much smaller. and put only brief descriptions. Keep the detailed info and larger pictures for the details page.

And I agree about not having brand/model-specific logos/pictures on the main page because they come and go. Examples of this are the savage "video" at the top and emaxx picture at the bottom. They look nice but are dated.

Personally, the "brushless" menu item should be broken into seperate motors and speedos. After all, the point of the entire site is brushless, so why make it seem like a small part of it?

[jholthus]

Is there a way that sub menu's could be used?

Like you click on RC Monster parts, a box pops up to the right of it that has Battery Trays, Pinions, Slipperential, Motor Mounts, etc . Click on that sub menu and you are looking at all Mike's battery tray's or whatever

Have a seperate tab for Brushless motors, maybe sub menu by size or something. Same with ESC's.

Could do the same for Batteries (by brand), Chargers, etc? For parts for the vehicles, you click on that particular truck and the the sub menu pops up with Chassis parts, Suspension, etc.

Like mentioned, get rid of all the brand tabs, and just categorize their stuff under what vehicle its for.

[Finnster]

@ Mike:

I'll say a few things in general. I have no idea how you want to run things and what you want to keep, but as a general guideline:

• Smaller, more compact pictures so more items can fit on the page. Bigger pictures and longer desc can be displayed in the details page. The Flextec items you have are a good example of this.

Save all the long BS product desc for the details page. EG. For all the hyperion g3 lipos, you have the entire salespitch copied and pasted for every single batt. The detail is fine, but if its in the root menu, its the same BS listed 15 times on the same page. See page 1 of the batt menu to see what I mean.
Plus, it makes it harder to see the text I want, namely the cells, mah, and price. The medusa motors desc was also very bad for this. One motor would have their entire webpage CnP'd including all the charts and stuff for every single motor. Huge waste of screen space and made way too many pages necessary. All the castle stuff is like this too.

Make sure the important info is listed. Sometimes there is a lot of text, but I can't find the basic info first. The FLM parts are a bit like this, but so are the Neu motors. A motor is listed as a 1512 2.5D/F. Ok, how many kv is that? Most neu motors don't say in the root menu.

Also, in regards to custom stuff like FLM and some of your own parts.. listing more detail is handy, such as dimension, weight, etc. This site is oriented towards custom modders anyway, so we may use a part not for its intended purpose. EG. I may be making a custom Savage, and if I see the skid plate for their BL kit would also be the perfect size for mine, bingo, I'm likely to buy it.

• Submenus. Let me drill down the menus on the sidebar w/o having to reload whole pages.

Ie:
Batteries-> Lipos -> 5S -> Displays all 5S batts in the store.

It makes sense to me to organize by cell count, some stores go by mah. Whatever makes sense to you. I would probably not break down by brand as you want people to browse all the items, but at least order by brand in the final display.

• Promote more popular items in the menu sidebar w/ their own category. RD Logic (of which everything is OOS) and Flextec have their own cat on the sidebar, but you have to click thru "brushless" to find the "motors" submenu. ? Honestly I have to remember that's where the motors are, as its not immediately obvious

• Too many redundancies cluttering up the site. The sidebar catagories for Savage parts has all the same stuff under "Savage," "HPI/HB," "Hop Ups" and pretty much "FLM." There is a Revo and Emaxx sidebar alongside a "Traxxas hopup" bar.

• Consistency! Some pics of motors are small, some are huge and pixelated. Some brands have everything as a simple pull down menu (warriors,) others have every single motor listed (Neus.) Some prods have long 1/2 page desc, others say almost nothing.

I could on, but I think I've made my point. Slimmer, more organized, and easier to find things. Put the important stuff in the front, less so towards the back.

Lastly, give a reason to keep coming back to the storefront. A clearance or special deals tab would be great. I know I check Neus site every now and then as I know some good stuff shows up now and then, and I prolly bought a few things I didn't really need, but it was a good price and it was going fast.
If I go to the RCM store, click on "new stuff," and the first item is a MGM esc in a list 18pgs long.. then I'm figuring I'm not ever missing anything if I only go there when I am actually buying something.

I hope you don't take anything personal. I genuinely wish you the greatest prosperity and appreciate listening to us armchair entrepreneurs.

[_paralyzed_]

Originally Posted by redshift

There is one item I forgot.

If Mike was willing to do large quantity purchases through HK, battery sales would TAKE OFF. I know many members here (including me) would much prefer buying Zippys from a stateside wholesaler.

Mike could charge anywhere from 20-40% over HK warehouse pricing, whatever would cover shipping, and provide him with a good profit margin.
And they would still be competitive with the Hyperions and other packs he sells.

Anyone care to +1 on that?

haha, great minds think alike. I suggested this quite some time ago. Zippys would just detract sales from what he does stock.