New WTSBOOKS Site Unveiled
I’m pleased to announce the Grand Opening this week of the all new Westminster Bookstore Web Store. As with any new venture, we’re still working out some kinks, but we’re very excited about the new levels of user-friendliness and customer service we’ll be able to provide.
Among the improvements are…
- Password-protected customer accounts that permanently store your shipping/billing info
- Real-time inventory; you’ll know immediately if your book is actually in stock
- Ability to have samples of music & audio files (and soon to come: PDFs of book content!)
- Future addition of customer reviews and recommendations
I’m phasing in as webmaster for the new site, so I’d appreciate any feedback you have. And best of all…wtsbooks.com continues to feature “lower than Amazon” prices on everything we stock plus one-low-price shipping no matter how many items you order!
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December 4th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Mark, we’re so glad papers are over and you are blogging again. We’ve missed your posts.
Every year for Christmas we ask for stuff off of our amazon wish lists, but this year Mike made a point of directing folks to the WTS books website for better prices …
And, wow, you are really going to be busy with the webmaster job!
December 4th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
Thanks for pointing folks to the store, Rachel. We’ve grown incredibly in the past two years entirely as a result of friend-to-friend endorsements like that.
And I really haven’t re-started serious blogging yet. I’ve got some ideas for what I want to do with this site that will have to wait until after exams. Stay tuned!
December 4th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
I’ve only looked at the children’s literature section, so my comments are limited to that.
I like the layout/design. Neat and clean!
But everything is lumped together. The children’s theology books are mixed in with the story books. It’s hard to browse effectively, without opening all 8 pages, one after the other (which take a while with dial-up). I think it could be vastly improved with just some minor organization.
Other than that, looks good!
December 4th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
Thanks, Hannah. We’re going to be doing more organization in the near future. Right now we’re just trying to make sure everything works! The web store is functioning pretty well, but the retail side has been a bit of a nightmare.
December 4th, 2005 at 3:10 pm
(and if you ever need a children’s librian or young adult literature consultant… I’m there for you! hee hee)
December 4th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
Mark, it looks like these improvements will improve the customer experience. Let me know if you want me to hammer on it a while.
GFM <– still needs to read The Book of Discipline to see the General Conference statement on major credit cards
December 4th, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Geof:
Hammer away, if you have time. Our customers have been really helpful already in helping us spot bugs and mistakes. Just be patient on the product images. Yahoo stores wouldn’t let us export what we had there, so we’ve had to re-download all the images from the publishers, convert them to three sizes, and then hand link them to the books.
And if you bring your hammer, Geof, just please stay away from our Precious Moments figurine collection, OK?
December 5th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I’m allowed to whack away at the Thomas Kinkade prints, though, aren’t I?
Hand-linking is painful. You sound like you need a database badly. [That wasn't an offer! PROMISE!]
December 5th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
I should explain better…we DO have a database behind the site. When I say “hand-linking” I don’t mean writing the code for each link, just that we’ve got to associate each image in the database with a product.
December 6th, 2005 at 2:26 am
Mark,
I love the new look of wtsbooks.com. I think it’s a clean design. And the new way of highlighting product on the front is eye-catching (especially with the praise for the book added).
I noticed that the recommendation section, while cool, only uses the last name. For insiders I think that works out fine because we know Pete Enns and Doug Green, but for outsiders, potential customers new to the Westminster name, that might not be as clear, unless they compare the names first with the “faculty authors” section, or in the case of these names notice the wanted dead or alive posters hanging up at General Assembly.
That’s my two-cents for now.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:02 am
Thanks, Brandon, for the comments. We went with last names in the Rcommendation section because we wanted to get the verb “recommends…” after each name to clearly distinguish these links from the faculty authorship links. We dropped first names and “cool dead European theologian” initials because we didn’t want too many of the links line-wrapping in the left-hand menu bar, causing it to grow outrageously long. But perhaps on second look that won’t be a problem (if people clicked the “Recommendations” link then they know these are recommendations). Is that what you’re thinking?
December 6th, 2005 at 10:41 am
Ahhhh … the joys of data entry.
December 6th, 2005 at 11:08 am
Yeah, maybe something like that. I see that you have the “coming soon” at the top, so perhaps you could insert a blurb of some sort clarifying that these are faculty recommendations (if you need to). Otherwise, they will know that they are at the recommendations page since they clicked there, like you said, and then they’ll have the full name. Having the full name will also help facilitate searches on faculty books I imagine.