[WAAAAYYYY OT] What makes a good miniatures web site

>> And hours, and hours, and hours of time, which costs money.
>> 
>> If you have a company with a several hundred thousand miniatures
range,
>
>This company I would have to see.  I'm guessing, but I would bet Ral
>Partha at their height had fewer than 500 miniatures.	GW may border
>on 1000.  
>
><chuckle> several hundred thousand.
>
>Roger

Hiya folks,

Hear, hear on that <chuckle> Roger...

Several hundred thousand?  Um, no.

OTOH, GW does market something like 200 - 300 new miniatures per year
(according to a retail store owner I was talking to on Saturday, who has
a
huge pile of their stuff).  If you look through their published
catalogues,
there are a *lot* of miniatures in the current range, let alone all the
stuff they can do out of the older ranges by special order.  But
100,000+???  No.

Having said that, and being in the web development business myself as an
independant contractor, doing websites for little companies...	it would
cost a bundle to do a miniature company's site, no matter how you look
at
it.  Unless the company only has 50 miniatures...  If you hire someone
like
me, and get me to do the pics with a digital camera, it's going to cost
too
much.  Yes, I can set up an assembly line for the photos, with a
lighting
rig all set up, my digital camera mounted, focused and ready to go, etc
etc.  But still...  Taking 500 pictures will take quite a while.  Then
resizing them, setting them up as a thumbnail and a "full size" version
properly webified for good download speeds - even if working on-mass is
still pretty time consuming in those numbers.  It isn't complex, by any
means, just time consuming - and someone like me will bill by the
hour...

If you hire a student who is hungry, they'll probably get annoyed with
the
whole thing and realize they're being taken advantage of by the time
they
get through it all, unless you pay them an even vaguely reasonable
amount -
and then it's getting pricy again.  Or you'll *maybe* get lucky and get
a
hungry student who is *really* hungry and has nothing to do for a couple
of
weeks.

If you have the skill to do it yourself and put up your own website,
it's
going to cost you a bundle in terms of your own time.  Either time out
from
work, which might incur business related costs (not doing other money
earning things) OR time out of your private life, such as it is, which
is
*more* expensive in my opinion, though not cash-wise.

Either way, as Heinlein said, TANSTAAFL!

(There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)

Generally speaking, when it comes to the web just as with most other
places
in life, you get what you pay for.

Yes, you don't need pictures at all for a catalogue website.  Yes some
people will be satisfied with a written description.  But the topic line
of
this thread is "What makes a GOOD miniatures web site" (my emphasis). 
The
issue here is not whether or not a site can be made at all, but what
comprises a GOOD site.	A good web sales site these days has pictures of
the product.  A poor or mediocre site does not.  And that's all she
wrote...   (and yes, I know there can be POOR sites with pictures...
that
isn't my point - most people who shop on the web want and expect
pictures
of what they're shopping for - no I don't have actual stats for this,
just
my experience in the business - but ask *any* web designer/developer and
they'll say the same thing).

Ok.  That's my $0.02

Now, this has been an [OT] thread for a long time.  Many emails,
actually.

Some people like pics, some people don't care either way.  That's cool.
Whatever.

Perhaps we can agree to kill the thread.

Adrian

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Adrian Johnson