In a recent issue of the N Gauge Journal our Chairman, Arthur, mentioned that work is being undertaken on the website. Let me put some flesh on those bones and give you an idea of what’s coming!
Before I begin, I should set expectations by reminding you all that the Committee work as volunteers. As such we fit NGS activity in around work and family priorities. So, unlike a business where precise delivery timescales are given, we aren’t able to do this.
What’s coming?
Actually, a better place to start is “What problems are we trying to solve”?
Like many activities today we conduct much of our day-to-day lives online; the NGS is no exception. Members won’t be aware, however, of just how much manual intervention takes place with our current shop to process orders, whether these are membership renewals or a kit purchase. This is down to the inherent limitations of the shop platform.
What you may be aware of though are the somewhat awkward workflows and content design which are present within the current online shop.
We also outsource our shopping platform and this is on a tiered “pay-to-play” basis; the more we sell the higher the fees. As prices increase this means we now routinely breach the next tier of pricing.
Furthermore, having our online presence spread across two websites – the Society’s main website and the NGSJoin website – means it’s confusing for potential members to get a clear view of what we’re all about. It also dilutes our impact with search engines, further hindering our efforts to raise awareness of the NGS with potential members.
So, that’s a flavour of some of the issues we currently have.
What we are working towards is to cut through the bureaucracy and thereby provide a streamlined, modern shopping experience which serves you and the Society, takes as much of the manual processing out of the equation as possible and deliver this in the most cost-effective way possible.
Progress to date
A new webstore is being built on the NGaugeSociety.org website. This is currently hidden from view whilst development and testing proceed.
The vast majority of society products – running to many thousands of product variants – have been imported into the new webstore. This was quite a task as much of the work had to be done manually, creating each product at a time. Thankfully some parts of our catalogue, e.g. the ex-Modelmaster range of nameplates were amenable to automated importing, albeit a lot of data cleansing was involved.
In this post I’ll finish by showing a quick snapshot of the front end of the shop. But in upcoming posts I’ll give a tour of other parts of the shop so you’ll know what’s coming.
In the meantime I’d like to wish you all “Happy Modelling”.
Andy – The WebMaster
