Re: [OT] What makes a good miniatures web site

On Sun, 17 Jun 2001 23:57:24 EDT, Glenn M Wilson <triphibious@juno.com>
wrote:

>Different horses for different courses... But a valid point.  For me,
>once I see what I want, then this becomes #1, but no pictures, no buy
>still stands until/unless I see them 'live and in the lead' 

Very good point. I haven't bought any figures "sight unseen". I have
either
seen the figures myself, or had recommendations by people. On the other
hand,
I also want to see the pictures. I won't buy figures from a line I
trust,
even, if I can't see what I'm buying. For one thing, I want to know that
a
ship, figure, vehicle, etc. listed in the catalogue is what I think it
is.

>>4) Images are nice, but not necessary.
>>
>>Don't blow the quality of the site by concentrating on the images!
>>Better to have a site with only the above than anything else with
>>every image you'd want to see.  In lieu of a complete picture catalog,
>>put up several representative scans in a gallery.

I disagree with this (I realize this isn't Glenn's comment). Having
purchased
figures online, I want to be able to see every figure. I want to make
sure
that the poses are what I think they should be, I want to know that the
entire
line of ships are of similar design, etc. This is less of a problem with
historicals, though, as a few representative samples are usually good
enough.

An example: I have some Valient starships, including the aliens. I saw
that
Valient makes fighters for their fleets. I went to the web site and
found the
alien ships. It turns out that I don't care for how they package the
fighters
(there are 5 different ships per sprue, 3 of which I don't like). I did
think
of buying the human fighters, though, but they don't have detailed
pictures of
these. I decided to pass on them. 

>>A lot of people will say that if they can't see what they're buying,
>>they won't buy it.  I'm sure this is true for them, but if this were
>>the norm, most of the companies out there would be out of business.
>>The fact is that people are willing to at least order some samples
>>site unseen to get an idea of a line's qualityp, or order based on
>>seeing a few samples.

I would argue that most people are not buying them sight unseen, but are
buying them after friends bought them, or they saw them at a convention,
or
had a recommendation, etc. I think that companies would get more "blind"
buying if their figures could be seen. Again, this is more an issue for
sci-fi
figures than historicals.

The easiest way to show pictures is to have a categorized web site with
a text
catalogue, and a link to the pictures. Valiant, funny enough, does this
and I
think it's the best method. You can click on the link to see the
pictures, but
you don't HAVE to wait for the pictures to load in order to see the
catalogue.

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,