judging books by their covers

[ixfd64]

I'm just curious, have any of you been guilty of judging books by their covers?

I know I have been. For example, I used to think that Wicked Lasers was awesome because its website and its products looked very cool. However, a few months ago, I found out that Wicked's products were far from good! ;D

On the other hand, Optotronics' website appears cheap (no offense, Jack) and looks like it was coded in just a few hours, but in reality, Optotronics' lasers are among the very best on the market. [smiley=grin.gif]

 

[SenKat]

Man - you shoulda seen MY site before High Octane worked on it !!!!

 

[andy_con]

like wise with mine.

some guy said want me to make you a site and i said yes. dont know who he is and never spoke to him since LOL

 

[Benm]

I've noticed that many chinese manufacturers use websites based on rather bad templates, including the ones getting pretty good reviews on their lasers here.

Personally i think a really bad website is a major turn off, unless the product has really, really proven itself in reviews and such. I wonder why companies don't realize they are losing business this way, even a company like aixiz has a downright appalling website.

Perhaps i'm a bit more ciritical on this than most visitors since i work in e-commerce myself... but i still wonder how a company that can't even invest in a decent website built would be able to deliver a good product.

 

[ixfd64]

I do agree that a poorly designed website will give buyers a bad first impression. Of course, the first impression is often the most important impression one will ever make.

That having been said, I do think that it would be within Jack's interest to give the Optotronics website a professional redesign. The same goes for Chuck and the old AixiZ website.

 

[Benm]

I don't the the optotronics website is -that- bad really, but it would benefit from more logical navigation and consistant use of fonts and colors. Using the standard paypal shopcart function for $1000++ products is a bit cheap though

 

[Dave]

I used to assume that people who enjoyed not-straight pictures were not straight, but I got straightened out on that one! Hoo-wee!

 

[Things]

well yeah, last time i went to aixiz's website, they didn't even have their products online, and no way to contact them.

 

[FrothyChimp]

I don't the the optotronics website is -that- bad really, but it would benefit from more logical navigation and consistant use of fonts and colors. Using the standard paypal shopcart function for $1000++ products is a bit cheap though

Don't knock the PayPal merchant system. One of the things that gets expensive is credit card merchants. Every credit card transaction costs the seller between 1-7% depending on the card used as well as monthly fees just for the privilege. When you are in business it seems if you want to do anything there is always someone there with their hand out. PayPal provides a virtually free service and exceedingly low transaction fees even for American Express cards. This translates into lower prices for you, the consumer. My company uses PayPal for direct purchases on our site but we also use a different merchant provider for card swipe and phone orders. I guess the old adage is applicable, "if it's dumb but it works, it's not dumb." You may not like a business that uses PayPal but it's saving you money.

 

[Benm]

I am not knocking paypal as a payment service at all, i actually like using it. But you can use any e-commerce application to create the shopping cart on your own website, and only transfer the aggregate total to paypal in the final step. I'm not sure if that makes any difference for american merchants, but here the rates are the same as far as i know.

 

[Rhith]

Well back to the topic. I voted a while ago but I have to say that even though WL's products are fairly horrible they all (except the signature flame laser) look amazing. Now if we could get CNI to use some of those cases or similar designs we would be set!

 

[Hanshotfirst.kc]

Yep. Like Rhith said, WL products LOOK great at first glance. I luckily found a post on their site that referenced aNother Laser company. So, I searched for that phrase, found Nova, and ended up here. Here, I saw that WL was a bunch of hype.

 

[me_too_lazy]

i think optotronics' site can use a makeover