Even granting that the old store may have been a security nightmare, this one is almost like the old truism that the only secure system is one that isn’t online.
If you’re a company as big as DAZ appear to be - at least in this market - security is obviously an important consideration, both for your products and especially for your customers, and it shouldn’t be sacrificed. OTOH, you can’t sacrifice your customers, either, by implementing a system which clearly is not ready, which is not welcoming, which is not practical. There’s simply no excuse for the login issues, there’s no reasonable explanation for the failure to implement a useful search system, there’s no excuse for the ridiculous shortcomings of the store - any user should be able to search their purchase history in a manner that allows them to easily locate a previous purchase, not this cobbled mess that won’t allow sorting, that won’t link to the items even after you are forced to narrow your field down to the single purchase order.
On top of all that, minor things like the stupidity of the formatting ‘hints’ on the post composition page - if the code for italics is
[em][/em]
show it that way, not as the HTML code
<i>
That’s counterintuitive! Some people can and prefer to type the tags because it’s faster than going from keyboard to mouse to select the links, and you’re showing the wrong code to the users - there’s no rational excuse for that sort of sloppiness.
DAZ, please consider your customers. There are plenty of other e-commerce sites out there that have gotten it right - or at least, much more ‘right’ than this site; some may even use this Magento software, Clearly, a lot more effort needed to go into choosing and testing this package - this is not unsubstantiated speculation (thanks for deleting my previous post - sorry about the ‘suggestions of impropriety,’ but there were also a lot of relevant complaints in it; maybe you could contact users and ask them to modify their posts, instead - at least that part of this site still works ).
I am not sure what I am surprised, annoyed and mind-boggled by. All things considered it is, I think, the implementation of what is supposed to be an ‘off the shelf’ software solution. Having, in the past, been involved with customising such things I know very well that not all desired features will be available. The staggering thing, to me, is the amount of time this has been going on for. Just today I have had the forums unavailable, a few days back bits of the store were not showing products. Today I have in New Products (all in the same sessions):
15 (1-15 of 115) Compare products (2) Never Still, Dynamic Flirty Dress, Real Feel Pulled Sleeves 30 (1-30 of 110) Compare products (0) DMs Aramonk, Easy Environments Mountain Trail, Destroyed City 30 (1-30 of 115) Compare products (2) (after a Hard Refresh) Never Still, Dynamic Flirty Dress, Real Feel Pulled Sleeves 60 (1-60 of 108) Compare products (2) The Gorgon, Goregon X-treme, Flower Power 60 (1-60 of 115) Compare products (2) (after a Hard Refresh) Never Still, Dynamic Flirty Dress, Real Feel Pulled Sleeves
Comparison Items (retained even after clearing, and message that list has been cleared) Orca Killer Whale Boopsie G4
I now get:
15 (1-15 of 117) Compare products (2) Never Still, Dynamic Flirty Dress, Real Feel Pulled Sleeves
Whilst it ‘all works’ - I can buy stuff (though not done so today) it does raise concerns. If this is a well-known software implementation then it’s implementation and roll-out was ill-considered. I would hate to be involved in fire-fighting this and have nothign but sympathy for those involved in doing do.
I’m glad this thread is here and hasn’t been locked or buried. I love DAZ and DAZ Studio, but the current website is a nightmare, and 8 months is way too long to suffer through it. Constant logouts, unable to sort our items list, unable to seperate MAC from PC items in downloads, no galleries, etc… I was more then willing to cut DAZ some slack when the new website went live, but the situation is getting ridiculous. I see less and less longtimers posting. The lack of galleries is a joke. I didn’t post much into the galleries, but enjoyed what others posted, and often what I saw, made a sale for DAZ. This is a very visual medium, and while we do have the Art Studio forums threads, the galleries showed the personal bests for individuals. I haven’t stopped buying from DAZ, but I do find myself buying less, in part to save money, but in greater part simply because by the time I login 2-5 times, check my unsortable/unsearchable purchase history if it’s an older item, and futz around getting something into my cart, I lose interest.
If you’re a company as big as DAZ appear to be - at least in this market - security is obviously an important consideration, both for your products and especially for your customers, and it shouldn’t be sacrificed. OTOH, you can’t sacrifice your customers, either, by implementing a system which clearly is not ready, which is not welcoming, which is not practical. There’s simply no excuse for the login issues, there’s no reasonable explanation for the failure to implement a useful search system, there’s no excuse for the ridiculous shortcomings of the store - any user should be able to search their purchase history in a manner that allows them to easily locate a previous purchase, not this cobbled mess that won’t allow sorting, that won’t link to the items even after you are forced to narrow your field down to the single purchase order.
The whole lack of sort/features with the order history is something worth complaining about…because the promised replacement is vaporware.
Ptrope - 31 December 2012 09:48 AM
DAZ, please consider your customers. There are plenty of other e-commerce sites out there that have gotten it right - or at least, much more ‘right’ than this site; some may even use this Magento software,
Finally…it’s not the software. There’s literally thousands of sites using it…many without the obvious customer animosity that is evident here. The major difference seems to be that many of those sites pay more attention to the ‘details’ of what the customer wants/experiences. Just because something looks good on paper or sounds good in the office, doesn’t mean it translates well to the ‘real world’.
Why do you label this as animosity? We are customers and forum members concerned and yea, annoyed by the the seemingly lack of putting things right. Not sure why you seemingly side with DAZ on this, since your affected as well and if your this tuned in to how it all works then by all means contact DAZ and help them fix it all…. I don’t care WHO fixes this mess but at 8 months it NEEDS to be fixed or DAZ’s business will continue to decline. Simple as that. It’s not animosity, it’s annoyance and concern.
...like updates to the Studio app, this appears to be something that was rushed into rather than carefully thought out.
Did Daz really take the time to review what software would work the best for their and their customers’ needs, or did they grasp at the first “shiny” that was presented hoping they could get it to work before the old site collapsed into a heap of PHP rubble? It feels more like the latter was the case. Daz knows what their customers want, so why go to a software that basically prohibits implementation of many features the customer base is used to having and wants to see continue?
It’s not a question of when a feature will be available. When I would ask about why certain functions no longer worked, the reply I received was not “give us more time” but that Magento flatly “could not do it”, period.
...to me that says it’s this is the wrong software for the job of serving the Daz customer base.
Bugger, It’s been seven bloody months and even many of the functions basic to website operation still are not working right.
——-
Update:
After leaving this thread I clicked on the next email link which was for the current “Complaint” thread, which instead routed me to a thread about the ZBrush GOZ plugin. I’m not even subscribed to that thread as I do not have ZBrush.
When went to the next eBot on the “Complaint” thread and clicked on the link, I got the “Site Is Down For Maintenance” page. Going to the next email down the list which was for the “Genesis Luke and Laura” discussion thread worked fine. I returned to the “Complaint” thread email clicked on the link, and it brought up the “Site is Down” page again (and on subsequent attempts) while links to other threads worked fine.
I thought clicking Shop > New Releases and getting a blank page with “There are no items matching” off and on for days was amusing. Bogo2 was shear hell though. Enough said.
Further, I no longer have to even go to the DAZ website for a “Huh, what…?” moment.
Not when from out of the blue I get emails titled:
: Serialnumbers required for Order #
With the following enclosed in its entirety. Mm-hmm, chock full of info, that one.
Well, since there is already a complaint thread, I may as well get off of my chest what annoys me the most regarding this “new” Daz. This past year (speaking of 2012) I had to let go of my platinum account due to each penny being placed elsewhere. I did this in June or July and had even went so far as to remove all payment information so that accidents couldn’t happen. Lo and behold, imagine my surprise when in October and November, we saw in our bank account that Daz had taken out for the platinum club those two months. Yet, no payment information was supposed to be on file. Yet, I didn’t benefit from this membership in any way. Now, when I called Daz regarding this matter, they did refund the money for both charges promptly. However, we felt we still had to watch Daz from that point on to make sure they didn’t charge us again for something I wasn’t gaining benefit from. Now comes the fun part. On another subject, this thing about newsletters sent out with products advertising 100% off (with me making sure it isn’t entitled to specific group), then when you go to the product page, it’s still at full price, half price or some other price other than free. Now, before you bash me for looking for something for nothing, I constantly am telling people about Daz and even talk good about them most of the times. I wouldn’t give it up even if someone were to offer me a trade off of the latest Poser edition. So I’m pulling my weight even if I’m not a platinum member any longer. Just, if the item isn’t going to be free, don’t advertise it as so. There. I don’t feel any better after my rant but at least it’s off of my chest so that maybe someone with Daz will see this and get to work on fixing the things that are apparently broke.
...like updates to the Studio app, this appears to be something that was rushed into rather than carefully thought out.
Did Daz really take the time to review what software would work the best for their and their customers’ needs, or did they grasp at the first “shiny” that was presented hoping they could get it to work before the old site collapsed into a heap of PHP rubble? It feels more like the latter was the case. Daz knows what their customers want, so why go to a software that basically prohibits implementation of many features the customer base is used to having and wants to see continue?
It’s not a question of when a feature will be available. When I would ask about why certain functions no longer worked, the reply I received was not “give us more time” but that Magento flatly “could not do it”, period.
...to me that says it’s this is the wrong software for the job of serving the Daz customer base.
Bugger, It’s been seven bloody months and even many of the functions basic to website operation still are not working right.
All it takes to get a well functioning website with the features one needs is money, and DAZ obviously didn’t spend enough up front…
On a couple other threads they say the DAZ folks have been informed of the two not free glitches so I’d expect that to be seen to. Maybe not on New Year’s Day, but s…at some near point.
