You may have noticed some changes when you came to the website today. Over the past few weeks Jake and I have been overhauling the templates, navigation and coding of the site to produce a layout which is cleaner, more modern and easier for you to use. We’ve also taken the opportunity to expand your options for contacting us and for providing feedback on your experiences.
Template Redesign
The current version of the website has been active since 2004 and has served us well for those five years. That said it was hard for us to maintain and had some substantial usability issues. With that in mind we decided that rather than try to spruce up a rather old-fashioned layout we’d start almost from scratch and try to ensure that we kept the same feel but with a more up-to-date design.
We initially experimented with a variable width design but in the end settled on the 968px width version you can see live now. In doing this we hope to offer the maximum consistency and usability for our users.
New Functionality
The new template has allowed us to introduce loads of new functionality to the site, principally in terms of our navigation. The new flyout menu system is far less buggy and is simpler for us to maintain and we’ve also brought in filtering and sorting in our product categories. These filters will be improved and expanded in the coming weeks and should make finding the products you want much easier. Still to come are improvements to our search system, checkout and loads of new content.
Stepping boldly into the Social Web
We’ve been running this blog for three years now as a way to keep you informed about what we’re up to here at Facewest and to keep you up-to-date with our latest offers and new stock. As Stu noted in a previous post, you’re now able to comment on these articles and give us feedback about stock you’d like to see, discussions about products and even comments on the events we participate in.
We’ve also launched our new Facebook page, giving you yet another way to keep in touch with us. The page will be kept bang-up-to-date with product news, offers and sales as well as reflecting what we’re up to. So if you want to be first in line to pick up a bargain then keep an eye on to our Facebook feed.
Hello. Good work.