what happened to the midwest photo website?

[Paddy Quinn]

What's happened to the Midwest Photo website?

It used to be ugly, a bit clunky but nice and functional.

They now have a new webstite that is full of bells and whistles, but is terrible to navigate - finding your way down through subfolder after subfolder, links that don't work, you can't easily view lists of items, the search engine doesn't work properly and things that were on the old site aren't listed on the new one.

It may make their e-commerce a bit more effecient from the sales end, but it is nothing like as nice to browse for things like used equipment or obscure gadgets. I suppose that's the price of progress.

But where did they find those brand new manufactured Deardorffs though?

[Steve Hamley]

Paddy,

Jack Deardorff is making them new. They are not old cameras. You could get a brochure if you ask I imagine. He's making them up to 11x14 IIRC.

Steve

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Yeah, the new website was put online before it was tested. A big mistake. It is a horror now. I hope they get feedback and do something about it.

[gfen]

Actually, on first perusal, I like it.

-shrug-

[Scott Rosenberg]

i'm sure jim would welcome constructive feedback...

what would changes would you suggest?

what do you like / dislike about the site?

i'll let this thread run a couple of days, then compile a list and send it his way, compliments of the community on this forum.

[Ted Harris]

Or .... send him an email direct jim@mpex.com. I spent a good 30 minutes on the phone with Jim and Stu yesterday giving feedback. You should also note differences in the website behavior from browser to browser. I noted it acted differently in Safari than in IE.

[Scott Rosenberg]

ted... with all due respect, jim VERY busy. i was simply trying to avoid him having to answer bunches of calls and read tons of emails about the website. it would be far less time consuming for him to see a summary off what we think in one letter.

[paul stimac]

I like it...

[Henry Ambrose]

<meta content="Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 7.0" name="GENERATOR">

There's nothing like proprietary Microsoft web pages arrggghh! : >(

The site really sucks on a Mac. Its not even functional in all browsers. In Safari it is mostly legible if you can read type thats run over photos or other type. And I could not get past the first page of six (alleged) pages of cameras. Last time I checked a fair number of photographers use Macs.

And even though it seems attractive for MPEX in a business sorta way to have full e-commerce the very best reason for doing business with them is that you get to talk to Jim (or some other real person) and get your questions answered and get VERY well served. With the old site i could go and browse their stock pretty effortlessly. Not now.

If it were my store I'd send the new web company packing without a paycheck unless they could fix this immediately.

None of this is a jab at MPEX because they are a great store to do businesss with and I hope they get it right.

[Kerry L. Thalmann]

In Safari it is mostly legible if you can read type thats run over photos or other type.

Text formatting is also screwed up in Firefox.

At least the $50 bill image no longer blocks the photo of that beautiful new Deardorff. So, I know they are working on it.

On a related note, has anybody noticed the Quality Camera web site has been in the process of being updated (with no visible inventory) for about four months now. Not that their old web site was exactly easy to navigate, but at least it worked.

Yeah, ecommerce is great and all that, but I almost always call and place my order after locating an item online. There is just something reassuring about talking with a fellow human on the phone - especially fellow humans like Jim Andracki and Jeff Taugner who are also fellow large format photographers.

Kerry

[Phong]

Besides the problems already mentioned, the new layout takes too much of space per item, and you can see only 10 items per page. In general, the layout does not make good use of space.

Other bad stuff:
Big sign: "See Our Specials" on the home page; yet the sign is not a hyperlink, and there is no sign of where to click to see the Specials

There is no visual cues to which graphic element is a hyperlink; you need to click on them to see if they are hyperlinks or not (typically, the mouse pointer changes from an arrow to a pointing finger if the element is a hyperlink)

I think it is a a poorly designed and poorly implemented web site. Really bad. I spend less that half a minute on the site, and had to leave. Would you trust such an implementation to provide secure e-commerce ?

I hope they will improve, as I like MPEX.

- Phong

[Ken Cravillion]

I liked the old version better with the big list of stuff in stock. I can easily browse and see if I "need" anything

[Andre Noble]

In comparison, the B&H website is quite advanced. Nothing quite like it, except perhaps Amazon.com

[Frank Petronio]

An inadequate upgrade (it's broken on Mac OSX Safari and Firefox, and I imagine it ain't pretty even on a PC.) - they either should have done it right (B&H photo gets "more" right than the others) or they should have simplified it even further than their previous version. Plus, considering how long the lag time was to get the old site updated, I rather see them do a simple html website without e-commerce, but spend the time and money updating the product availiability and comments.

Anyone remember the old Del's ads in Shutterbug? - we all knew what a Nikon FM looked like - but they would stick little comments and even jokes into their text only listings. It made it a lot of fun to read and I bought more stuff from them because I could scan it faster than any of the other ads. That's what somebody (Badger, Quality, or MPEX) should do - simple, fast, cheap and effective marketing.

I hate those drop down menus - lousy architecture compounded by buggy code.

[Witold Grabiec]

My vote goes for MPEX to return to the old site. I've only dealt with them a few times, but I liked getting it done on the phone with Jim. Now am turned off by missing inventory listings and too much info cramped into too small a space. As it stands, they may lose fresh customers who are unfamiliar with an otherwise great supplier of photo gear.

I don't mind drop downs as long as they serve the purpose. In this case, they don't seem to.

I do agree with Frank's comment: improve the gear description/life inventory update in an otherwise simple HTML format. As many have already said: the old one wasn't a high-style site, but it was easy to navigate

B&H site is a well trimmed, and after recent updates, very effective site. Adorama's is also up to the task.

[Brian Ellis]

I looked only at "large format" and "lenses" and "cameras" within "large format" but I thought it was very nice, I don't see what the problem is supposed to be unless it's elsewhere in the site. I particularly liked the "more info" addition, where it looks like a picture of the product and some detailed information about it is planned to be added eventually. It worked fine for me with Internet Explorer 6.0.

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry for the double message but I just noticed the question about Quality Camera's web site. I don't know what Quality's problem is with web sites but they sure have one. Their web site was "under construction" for years, long after every other photography dealer in the world had one. Then they finally got one up and it's a disaster even when it works which it apparently seldom does. Last time I looked at it, about a year ago, it couldn't be conveniently browsed, the assumption seemed to be that when you go on it you know exactly what you want and are ready to buy. It's very strange because it must cost them a lot of business. I know I never even think of Quality Camera when searching for equipment just because they've never really had a good working site.

[Frank Petronio]

I design a lot of websites for work, but honestly I like Lens & Repro because you can just scroll a quick text list of inventory that they actually update. Except I never buy anything because their prices are too high...

But, sort of doing the supreme effort that B&H did (a half-million dollar project, I guess), it works and any smart amateur could do it just fine.

I'd be fine if all these half-baked e-commerce "solutions" got axed and people just went to PayPal check-outs. I think PayPal works really well, and is secure except for all the fake emails I get to "verify" my account.

[Nick_3536]

http://www.harrysproshop.com/Used_Large_Format/used_large_format.html

I like Harry's. Simple. Easy to navigate. Even has pictures. No e-commerce you have to email.

[Diane Maher]

I don't like that the LF lenses aren't sorted by format anymore. If the descriptions indicated what format the lens was useable for, this would help new LF photographers.

[MIke Sherck]

The new site seems to work correctly only if you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6, which is not a surprise since it's written in MS's Visual Studio.Net 7.0 using their mangled HTML 4.0 generator. It's pretty ugly with Opera 7.54, which is what I usually use. Lots of text and little GIFs overlapping, etc. Functions in lists don't work properly in Opera: "more info" space for pictures is a gray square in every one I tried, links for other pages don't work, etc. It's a real pity that some of the lower tier of web design houses still haven't figured out how to write browser-agnostic code. Probably done by someone's kid: cheap but not terribly effective.

Other things I disliked (some of which others have already mentioned:) only a few items per page with no way to tell it I'd like to see more items at a time, no "next" or "previous" links for lists (you have to click on the page number you want to see, which links don't work in Opera,) search doesn't work in Opera, "Contact Us" forms are scrambled badly in Opera, with tiny text boxes and overlapping text. I could live with the flaws, which are really usability concerns and I'm pretty flexible on that, but so much doesn't work outside of Internet Explorer that I'll probably avoid the site and just call Jim instead.

Mike

[Al Seyle]

30 percent of the sites I visit are designed on and for pcs. They look horrible on my Mac--if they work at all. Unfortunately, most web designers don't give a sh** about Mac users. It seems they are more interested in making special effects than making the site work for everyone.

[Chris Pandino]

Though navigational links require more diligent bookkeeping, I think the site is a huge improvement over the old one. The old site was frame-happy and had several consistently broken/misdirected links.

Here's my feedback for Jim/MPEX.... I see two glaring oversights in the new site:

- The lack of a keyword search.

- No provision for sorting results by mfr, price, focal length, etc.

I personally applaud them for the effort and expense. I hope they have the resources to get the images loaded. Especially for used equipment. I browsed the old site frequently for used equipment, but didn't pull the trigger simply because I couldn't "see" what I was buying.

FWIW, I use MSIE6, so I'm not seeing the errors.

[Capocheny]

Paddy,

I have to concur that it's terrible... I can't access much on their site for whatever reason! I use a Mac with OSX...

My main reason for going onto the site was to see the new Dorff! Alas, such will not be the case!

I hope Jim rectifies the situation soon.

Cheers

[neil poulsen]

The thing I liked about the former mpex site was how the items were all lined up in a list. It was easy to see both the item and the price pretty much at the same time. They used a blue color for text that wasn't as stark. It was also easy to scan down the list to see the items in which you were interested.

With their current site, the lettering is too small. Plus, I don't care for the way it scrolls. Because each item respires so much space, there's up to 17 windows for a single category. Also, the older website was subdivided into brands, which made it easier to search. Again, this makes it more difficult to scan.

One good thing is that mpex appears to head in the direction of providing photos of each item. We didn't have that available on the older system. For my browser, I couldn't see the photos. But, it appears that's the intent. (Can others see the photos?)

I agree. I much prefer to review the website for that in which I might be interested, and then call to make the order. It offers that personal touch. Plus, I don't like entering credit card info over the internet.

Have to give them credit for trying to improve their site. That takes a lot of work. One way to do that is put a new system up and be on the alert for constructive feedback.

[Hans Berkhout]

How about a comparison with the KEH site?

[Dean Cookson]

FWIW, I've exchanged email with Jim a couple of times about the new site. He's thrilled to have specific, constructive feedback from folks and they seem to be acting on it. The site rendered much better in Firefox on Tuesday than it did over the weekend and it's pretty close to rendering perfectly now, so they are making progress.

If you have specific, useful things to say about the site (ie. Feature 'A' which currently works like this should work like this, and not: The site sucks, B&H's is better) I'm quite certain they'd love to hear it.