My Web Store - Likes / Dislikes?

Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Burl Source

Weird Wood Pusher
Joined
Jun 13, 2011
Messages
4,340
Reaction score
7
My web store works well for it's intended purpose, selling knife handle wood.
But....I am sure there are some annoying aspects you might dislike.
Some things I notice, but I am sure there are some things I just haven't noticed.
For me it is not unusual to miss something that is right in front of me.

Those of you who have purchased items from my web store;
Was there anything that you disliked?
Was there anything that you liked?

I am trying to keep the store simple and easy to navigate.
So what do you think? Is there anything I need to change?

One thing that annoys me and tech support seems unable to find a way to change;
If you are going through checkout and use the back button during the payment step, it puts the order into a pending status.
When that happens it pulls the items from store inventory and holds them, but it can appear that the items are no longer available. If that happens I am able to send a paypal invoice to complete the transaction, but I am sure it is an annoyance for the customer.

I will make whatever changes I am able to make the store more user friendly.
I also need to know if there are features you like that I should not change.
Thank You in advance for any input and advice you are able to provide.
 
Seriously, overall, I like it. I like when you have newly listed and high end pieces separately.

It would be nice to be able to sort by price, or other features, but I don't know if that's hard to add on. I'd also like to have the option to look at all of the pieces in a single category sometimes (and not be limited to 25). Hovering on a photo of a piece and getting an enlarged photo could be nice, but again, I don't know how hard that is to do. Being able to select and compare several pieces, with side by side decent-sized photos would be nice.

Overall, you offer some great wood, to this community, and I'm sure others as well. Email confirmations are instantaneous, and your quick shipping are big pluses. And, your return policy is great, and you implement it well--it truly is "no questions asked."
 
What i like it is super easy to check out and all function very well
What i Dislikes is i can not see sold woods :( and miss maybe some wood WIKI :D
 
I like the basic look of burlsource.us. Clean and functional. I'm a professional web developer and spend days writing and debugging complex layouts/animations/effect. Pretty tired of this and appreciate it when site doesn't require user to have latest browser version and high speed internet connection.

Yet my experience with burlsource.us is quite limited as I only made one order so far. But it was easy and straightforward experience. Also liked it when you made a video to showcase some wooden blocks.

Would be nice if burlsource.us could display wood dimensions in metric system… not a big deal, but metric system is much easier for me to understand.

I've only used 2 different sites to order burls and burlsource was the best among those two.
 
"One thing that annoys me and tech support seems unable to find a way to change;
If you are going through checkout and use the back button during the payment step, it puts the order into a pending status.
When that happens it pulls the items from store inventory and holds them, but it can appear that the items are no longer available. If that happens I am able to send a paypal invoice to complete the transaction, but I am sure it is an annoyance for the customer."

I agree when I was making an order I hit the back button and it froze up on me ... Gerr .

It would be nice to be able to sort by price, or other features, but I don't know if that's hard to add on. I'd also like to have the option to look at all of the pieces in a single category sometimes (and not be limited to 25). Hovering on a photo of a piece and getting an enlarged photo could be nice, but again, I don't know how hard that is to do. Being able to select and compare several pieces, with side by side decent-sized photos would be nice.

I would like to see this implemented also while I like the over all ease of the site and the function Sometimes my eyes are not working with me and small photos mass with my eyes . I have ordered quite a bit from you Mark and do appreciate the fast response and shipping you give . You have provides me with the best Burl as of date for my needs and projects. I would really love to get into your Stash of Burls and get some of them that I see laying around and uncut as I know in my heart they have to be Awesome .

Thank you and Best Regards

Sam
 
Overall, your site is easy to use and makes it waaay too easy for me to spend money.

I'd really like the ability to see sold blocks. Sometimes I'll order things in successive days due to one of your sneaky sales, and I'll be scratching my head, "what did I buy again"?

Seeing more than 25 pieces at a time would be helpful, as well as a way to sort (by price)
 
I can do the metric sizing without much trouble. Just have to work it into my routine when listing new pieces.
Now days about 1/3 of what I sell is outside the US so this makes sense.

I will have to take some time reading the instructions to see about sorting by price and doing comparisons like you see on some of the bigger ecommerce sites.
There has to be a way.

I will be restoring the Brand new and High end categories when I get my next batch back from K&G. This will be in just a few days. K&G called me last week to tell me that a couple hundred new blocks are on the way. (I don't remember what they are though).

Vinster your comment of "What did I buy?" made me think of when I send wood to K&G.
I send wood to them at least once a week. Then I promptly forget what all has been sent.
The good thing is I have fun when it comes back because it is like a new present for me.

I will try to do more videos.
The main thing that makes the videos difficult is the time to upload.
Our internet here is so slow that it takes 3 to 4 hours to upload a 2 minute video.

I agree with Anton about the special effects and other things that use a lot of bandwidth.
With a slow internet connection I usually leave websites that are slow loading before I even see what is there.
Something that bugs me on other sites is background music. What if you don't like the music.
Since my taste in music is a bit eclectic it might chase people away.

Some of the changes might just be a change in settings while others might require conscious thought and reasoning.
If that's the case then I am in big trouble. Just teasing. I might be slow but I eventually get things figured out.
 
I could also use a few more prompts at checkout. Something to save me from myself... like "You already have ordered a gazillion pieces, are you SURE you want more?"
 
I can do the metric sizing without much trouble. Just have to work it into my routine when listing new pieces.

Just a suggestion, I wouldn't bother with all that double work. Just measue one way and hard code the website to display the conversion for the other, most likely measure in mm and convert to inches for better granularity.
Ie.
(Inch_field)=(mm_field) * 0.03907

That will give you decimals not fractions, but I don't think it would be a big deal. Or you could use a lookup table to convert the digits after the decimal to the nearest fraction if you really wanted to.
I'm sure many of us would be willing to help out with something like that if you needed.
 
Back
Top