Japanese Knives Re-doing our website again... time for some customer input

Hey guys... its that time again. I've finally gotten to a point where the number of problems we have with our website and the frustration they cause both you guys and us has taken a toll on my patience. So, we're going to redo our website once again.

This time, we are transitioning to an entirely new backend system, which should improve basic functionality and make things easier for us to update and fix more regularly. We plan to keep the same general aesthetic design, but will be changing some things (i.e. getting rid of the stupid mouseover thing, making the site responsive and mobile friendly, improving our shipping handling and quote system, etc.).

Anyways, i thought i'd ask you guys if there are any specific things you'd like to see on the updated site, or things you'd like to change from the current site. For example, i want to add a feature that shows how many of each thing is in stock, add new options for payment handling that re not paypal, add new shipping options like fedex, and finally get our international order handling working like it should be.

Anyways, thoughts?

-Jon

Jon, I'll offer some observations.

1.) The site is too dark. I know you're into Black but i find it too dark when viewing from a tile POV.
2.) Like to see a "Whats New" and when something is in "back in stock"
3.) Like to get a News Letter on whats new with JKI (Even if Kenzo and Sara are occasionally the stars)
4.) The site should be optimized for Mobil
5.) More Videos, even if its you eating Yakatori. Your personalty really shines behind the camera. Even if we're only looking at your hands and fingers.

I know its hard to please everyone especially running a small business and I'd still continue to buy from you even if not changes were made.
Hope that helps.

MB

yeah.... this kind of thing is very helpful. Thanks.

Jon,

When refining your search it would be nice to have the ability to have more than one selection checked. As an example, I select gyuto, then I want to check semi stainless and stainless. I can't do that now.

Also, say I have selected gyuto and stainless. There are 33 choices. I want to be able to search by size, not just name and price.

The "other" item tab is too broad, and the selection it pulls up is too long. I would like more tabs across the top. I think kitchen tools, and JKI Gear and Other Clothing should have their own tab.

Agree with Dennis, the all black is a bit depressing/dark.

Off topic - love the new shirts!! Can't wait to see them in other colors besides black (see above). I get that black is a popular color for tee shirts, but I always thought that was funny because I wear tee shirts when it's hot out, so black is not my go to color.

I think each knife name shoudl be a hyperlink to its description, so one can quickly get to that

Lots of great knives on your site, but I have not been a customer yet. I do have some feedback for you though:

When a list of knives is displayed, get the out of stock ones to the back of the line. I have always found that frustrating when looking around on your site. Just show the in stock knives (first) when someone clicks on say, Gyutos. I don't want to see a bunch of beautiful knives I can't have.

Lay out the comparison of your different Gesshin lines in an easy to understand overview page without too much clicking. What is an ittetsu vs a kagekiyo? I can't figure it out until I look at each separate page and read about the composition of each line of knives, and I am still not sure.

Yes, the mouseover is annoying and obscures the view of the knife you are interested in.

Agree with others, not really a fan of all the black on the site.

Looking forward to being a customer one of these days, once I build up my knife purchasing fund back up.

There seems to be a time limit when hitting, say, Products --> Kitchen Knives -->Brand. If not fast enough, the screen changes. I always start to panic a little!

I second mobile functionality as a top priority. I don't know if others have experienced this, but when using the site on my phone (Samsung s5, using Google chrome), I run into weird little bugs. Like if I "click" on a link like kitchen knives > by brand, it brings up a box of multiple brands - but if I don't select one in time, say gengetsu or kochi, (couple seconds) it automatically reverts to loading a bunch of thumbnails of I think every knife in the store.

I don't run into this issue on my laptop, only my phone.

A new site may be completely redesigned so may not implicate this specific issue at all, but I mention it just as an example of the sort of mobile optimization that could be considered.

Edit: I see brianh has posted the same thing

I actually like the dark color palette, myself.

Agree with the comments on search criteria, I've run into that myself before.

so, a lot of the issues you guys are describing will be fixed the second we move to a new platform. We currently use magento, and will be switching to something like a shopify system, which is less powerful overall, but much easier to work with and has more customer friendly functionality. The search feature and sort features will work better out of the box though.

Anyways, the new platform will automatically make our site mobile friendly, improve search functionality, improve the checkout process, improve the shipping calculator, fix our menu dropdown issue (when it submenu disappears), get rid of the mouseover feature, etc.

Not sure if i want to change the dark theme, but we have considered creating two options-light and dark- for customers to choose from when they load the site.

I don't mind the dark theme.

My only complaint (already being addressed) is the difficulty navigating/searching while mobile.

I think the dark is bad*ss

Maybe instead of so much black use some greys? A big more modern and inviting to most.

so, part of the reason we have a hard time changing from black is the photos. We've shot thousands of photos for the website with black backgrounds. They really dont look as good on white or lighter grey in my experience. That being said, i'm exploring the concept of different colored theme options.

My user issues have all seem to have been addressed. Most of the time I thought it was just me and not being able to surf like the cool kids...

1 suggestion, more of a store function (probably) than a host function, but what are chances of adding a gift certificate product to the store? I would much rather receive a few Jon bucks than a new tie.:cool2:

Gift certificates should be possible, but it will come down to how well this integrates with our bookkeeping software.

List of thing i dont like for your consideration

black theme ( too much contrast for me. study said business site better with white theme )
Hover menu (sometime work, sometime doesn't)
Hover product details ( waste to much time hover to see what it is)
Product feature photo. (too flat from top down view. It doesn't show dimension, so sometime i have hard time recognize the knife. petty vs sujihiki blah blah)
Search function (eh)

best luck on revamp it.

hien said:

List of thing i dont like for your consideration

black theme ( too much contrast for me. study said business site better with white theme )
Hover menu (sometime work, sometime doesn't)
Hover product details ( waste to much time hover to see what it is)
Product feature photo. (too flat from top down view. It doesn't show dimension, so sometime i have hard time recognize the knife. petty vs sujihiki blah blah)
Search function (eh)

best luck on revamp it.

Click to expand...

so, while we're at it, what kind of product feature photo would you like to see? Can you show me an example?

brianh said:

There seems to be a time limit when hitting, say, Products --> Kitchen Knives -->Brand. If not fast enough, the screen changes. I always start to panic a little!

Click to expand...

YES YES YES!!!!!!! I feel your pain !!!!

well, i think i might word that wrong.. it's not the feature product photo on the front page, but the photos that listed when you browsing. you hover it, details show up.

because you have the picture horizontal, and you have to zoom out to take picture on longer knife, it end up look almost same as small knife that you zoom in.

J, Do you feel like you're wearing a "kick me" sign?

Jon,
i do have some experience with both bigcommerce and magento. I think the current difficulty that you are facing is more to do with the particular template you are using rather than the whole magento backend.

I am playing with another project using magento and feels that it is so powerful for what I need, some advanced functions are just not possible to achieve using shopify/bigcommerce. Downside of magento is that it does require some experience to be able to deal with it effectively (I use to work as a system administrator for a mid size tech company when I was in college, guess that helps).

Hey Jon, the only thing that really confused me when you switched your website the last time, was that when I hovered over the picture (and all the info came up) it took me a while to figure out that I had to click on the actual title of the product before it would take me to it. I felt like an idiot days later when I figured out what I was doing wrong, but the clicking on things and not having them work because I didn't know the system, was a bit frustrating to figure out. Needless to say, I think you've enjoyed a big chunk of my profits just on sharpening stones, and I'm happy to be a return customer. Otherwise, I love the gallery feel of your site, and all the info you give. Would always love to see more videos from you as well.

Ditto, please make the product photo icons clickable.

My thoughts:

- Too many actions before I get to actual products. Too see all the Gyutos, I need to hover on product, then hover on knives, then hover on type, then find gyuto, then click on gyuto. That's 5 actions before I get to see what I want to see, in the best case scenario. (More if I miss one of the hovering, which many people seem to do.)
- Can't filter out out of stock items
- No text until I hover over an item
- Even though the entire item is highlighted, you can only click on the text which is counter intuitive
- Not really sure what "Position" means in Sort By
- Could use some social proof like best selling, etc.
- Would be nice to have recently viewed items to help navigate between things as I am choosing what to buy, also serve as a reminder when I visit the site subsequently

best thing to me would be notifications on the site when items are back in stock or something new as well?

I usually browse on my phone as well, on iphone 6 plus. One thing I couldn't figure out was compare function.
I do like the black theme though. If there's any way oos items can be known before clicking the product, it be great.

Also it would be nice to have search function on the home page.

I actually like your website. In my business we have fiddled around with web site design and had a couple of full on redesigns, and there comes a point where you are just changing stuff without any real commercial gain. For efficient shopping the Amazon design is hard to beat: lots of info and very few clicks to order. But I see your site as different: much more of a destination site for enthusiasts. Hence I would expect people to look around more than on most sites. For me, the key thing is really clear and easy "calls to action" (click to buy) which is what Amazon does really well.