The Brand New SmokingPipes.com Website

[tedswearingen]

Just like it sounds. We're really excited about this; it's been in the work for months. The whole site is a lot cleaner looking, and the checkout feature is super efficient. Whaddaya think?
http://smokingpipes.com/

 

[admin]

Awesome. I love it!
It is a great improvement Ted.

 

[admin]

On a tech note regarding SEO, if any urls changed that you have good rankings for, make sure you do 301 re-directs in your .htaccess file.

 

[tedswearingen]

Sweet. I mean, I don't know what the heck that means but it sounds valuable so I'll make sure Sykes gets that!

 

[kcvet67]

I think the old format had a warmer feel to it and I'll kinda miss that, but this new format seems much easier to navigate, particularly for a new customer. Congratulations.

 

[menckenite]

I agree with kcvet67.
I would suggest one change: On your opening page, you have a section titled "New for ..." and the day and date is listed with all the new things for that day. However, you can not click on those items. Rather than make the user search, I'd suggest you make those items clickable. For example; It would be much more user/shopper friendly to click on those 8 IMP Meerschaums under "New For Thursday, October 21, 2010", rather than search.
Anyway, great site.
Regards,
William

 

[dd951]

The one thing I really like about the old site was the ease of navagation, that hasen't changed, it is still easy plus the home page is cleaner and fresher. Good job

 

[unclearthur]

Nice and simple to get around. I like it.

 

[ps27]

I just made my first order from you guys and appreciate your great service. Glad to see my bookmarks are still accurate. The old site had a warmth to it, give me a few visits and I'm sure I'll feel right at home again. So I'll go with "Like It", pending my settling back into it. Hey, I just painted a bathroom in my house and I feel the same way agout it.

 

[krgulick]

It looks great. Navigation is a breeze, will have to go through the process of an order to see if there is any difference there. At least one thumb up.

 

[bubbadreier]

Looks great! It is different but I will get used to it!

 

[abecox]

Looks nice! Good job!

 

[explodingpenguin]

I agree with the others that it lacks the warmth of the original site. Going from warm tones to so much white is a bit of a shock. Over all I like the layout of the new site though I do have a few nit picky things.
I greatly dislike the grey text on a grey background used on the bottom section of each page. I had to highlight the hours of operation and fresh pipes newsletter descriptions to be able to read them. Also the slide show at the top of the home page does not seem to be responding correctly. It appears as if you should have the ability to move forward or backward through the slide show but I am not able to do this. It seems to get to the savinelli add then decides to go from 4 slides to around 20 with slide 4 through 20 being the same savinelli add. refreshing the page clears this up for a little while but it always seems to come back. Lastly as menckenite said it would be nice if when clicking on one of the fresh pipe buttons or the slide-show/banner adds that it took you to the actual pipe shown and not just the section that pipe is in. This bothers me more with the slide-show then with the fresh pipe buttons.
... >.> well seems I am a picky bastard. Sorry about that. I do like the new site but change is hard ;.;

 

[greggors]

I like it and it seems the slide show is fixed now, didn't have a problem when I clicked through them. I haven't been on the old site so I can't comment about the comparison.

 

[admin]

menckenite and explodingpenguin said the new items and slide show aren't clickable, but I find that they are.

 

[greggors]

could it be a browser issue? im using mozilla firefox

 

[tedswearingen]

We knew there would be bugs to work out and are working out the issues as quickly as we can. We are noticing some site-to-site variability. Hope you'll bear with us!
As far as the links on the homepage not corresponding to a pipe and instead the pipe's homepage, this is how our newsletter has functioned for years. I think the idea is that if the brand new pipe we're featuring gets sold eight seconds after we post to the site the link still goes somewhere. I think that's why we do it.
Anyhow, thanks for all the positive feedback!

 

[cortezattic]

I like the new look and feel; but that's neither surprising nor terribly helpful to you. So here's something that might be:
I think the text is too small. I need to increase the window zoom to 125% just to read most of the text. PITA.
OK, so only the codgers, and soon-to-be codgers will be annoyed by this. But what percentage of your revenues come from this, the fastest growing demographic?

 

[hauntedmyst]

I agree with the others that it lacks the warmth of the original site. Going from warm tones to so much white is a bit of a shock.

That was my thought too. Its lacks the warmth of the previous site which really helped draw you in. The new site is too cold. You need to bring back some of the red on the outter boarder.

 

[surfmac211]

I just went to place an order a few minutes ago and was shocked to see the new site lol. I come over here and see a post about it. I think its pretty sweet looking. I do somewhat agree about the warmth but the new formate looks awesome and more current so it gets 2 thumbs up for me.