C&L Finescale

[blueeighties]

So who is this new supplier of track components that keeps getting mentioned?

[3 link]

So who is this new supplier of track components that keeps getting mentioned?

I've just had a good surf around and I can't find anything : )

 

Martyn.

[3 link]

I've just had a good surf around and I can't find anything : )

Martyn.

Ha ! Should of guessed :-https://exactoscale.com/

 

Martyn.

[polybear]

It's clear that his best option would be to adopt the Markits system which is also used by several other small cottage traders. Put up a online catalogue only, and a printable order form to be sent in by post.

 

 

Agreed - chances are Phil would get the order form in a couple of days, which to me is a very small price to pay.  If Phil is so inclined he could always sort the website ordering in slower time.

[hayfield]

Ha ! Should of guessed :-https://exactoscale.com/

 

Martyn.

 

But these parts are not available to the vast majority, a website is available but nothing to buy as of yet. As I said I am a member of the EMGS, many items out of stock, apologies for slow deliveries and prices higher than those advertised by Exactoscale. 

[Miss Prism]

I think some patience is required for Exactoscale to re-establish itself.

[hayfield]

I think some patience is required for Exactoscale to re-establish itself.

 

 

Agree as I topped up at Scaleforum, just illustrating the issues of obtaining alternative parts as suggested in the posting

[Guy Rixon]

With all due respect to Phil, whom I know to be a very decent bloke, this IT saga has gone on for much too long.  As others have said, it isn't rocket science to build a working commercial website with a shopping cart system using PayPal.  I know - I've done it and I'm not an IT professional.  I really cannot understand the continuing delay, particularly as I understood that someone had been commissioned to upgrade the website some time ago - if that's the case, perhaps he should be encouraged to proceed with greater urgency or be replaced.  Certainly it will cost money, but surely any such expenditure at this stage will be more than offset by increased business and customer satisfaction?  Phil should also perhaps be mindful of the fact that his biggest potential competitor is likely to have a working website with a shopping system up and running within a matter of weeks.

 

DT

 

 

*ahem*. I'm a software developer who sometimes builds dynamic web-sites and I do actual rocket science for a living: I'm involved with a number of ESA missions. The two fields are more alike than most people care to admit: both are likely to fail badly if not done carefully, both are expensive if done properly, and both need careful support and maintenance to keep going.

 

Yes, a software contractor could put together a sales site for C&L quite quickly, adapting COTS or open-source components. That's not the end of the story. The site may need to be refined, after launch, to suit the customer's emerging needs, and that's extra money. It may be buggy on first launch and need fixing: that's probably included in the first cost but the site won't be working properly until the contractor gets round to it. Bugs may surface later: did the customer pay for a support contract that gets these fixed, or is he going to pay a one-off fee for each fix? Maintenance won't be free after the warranty period.

 

The fact that C&L currently has a part-broken sales site shows that you won't automatically get a working site first time and it isn't automagically fixed when it goes wrong.

 

If I were in Phil's position, and if I didn't like working with computers, I'd think carefully whether I wanted to continue with a full, e-sales site. If I didn't think it was necessary, I'd get it replaced with a simple site consisting of a PDF catalogue and contact details for telephone or email orders. I'd accept credit cards (by 'phone only, not by email) and Paypal. For the latter, I'd pay somebody to set up a gizmo that sends Paypal invoices by email.

Edited October 20, 2018 by Guy Rixon

[johnarcher]

*ahem*. I'm a software developer who sometimes builds dynamic web-sites and I do actual rocket science for a living: I'm involved with a number of ESA missions. The two fields are more alike than most people care to admit: both are likely to fail badly if not done carefully, both are expensive if done properly, and both need careful support and maintenance to keep going.

 

Yes, a software contractor could put together a sales site for C&L quite quickly, adapting COTS or open-source components. That's not the end of the story. The site may need to be refined, after launch, to suit the customer's emerging needs, and that's extra money. It may be buggy on first launch and need fixing: that's probably included in the first cost but the site won't be working properly until the contractor gets round to it. Bugs may surface later: did the customer pay for a support contract that gets these fixed, or is he going to pay a one-off fee for each fix? Maintenance won't be free after the warranty period.

 

The fact that C&L currently has a part-broken sales site shows that you won't automatically get a working site first time and it isn't automagically fixed when it goes wrong.

 

If I were in Phil's position, and if I didn't like working with computers, I'd think carefully whether I wanted to continue with a full, e-sales site. If I didn't think it was necessary, I'd get it replaced with a simple site consisting of a PDF catalogue and contact details for telephone or email orders. I'd accept credit cards (by 'phone only, not by email) and Paypal. For the latter, I'd pay somebody to set up a gizmo that sends Paypal invoices by email.

I agree, I don't have your IT knowledge (though I was a programmer back in mainframe days), so I can see Phil's position. A few years ago I was making and selling things, sales partly via Ebay and partly via a very simple website (thanks to my software engineer stepson) which was hardly more complex than the pdf idea - just pictures and brief description, and details to make contact and order by email, payment via paypal - which worked OK, and made few demands on my limited IT understanding.

[Porcy Mane]

*ahem*. I'm a software developer who sometimes builds dynamic web-sites and I do actual rocket science for a living: 

 

Funny how there are a large amount of cottage industries out there (I'm not just talking model railways)  that seem to run successful e commerce sites. They may not be perfect but I doubt they cost the earth (and moon?) to run and maintain and they certainly don't resort to employing rocket scientists to keep them up to date.

 

P

[martin_wynne]

Funny how there are a large amount of cottage industries out there (I'm not just talking model railways)  that seem to run successful e commerce sites. They may not be perfect but I doubt they cost the earth (and moon?) to run and maintain and they certainly don't resort to employing rocket scientists to keep them up to date.

 

Agreed. There are dozens of ready-made online store packages. A popular one is Shopify, which includes credit-card processing and costs around £5 per week for a basic plan. There is even a 14-day free trial: https://www.shopify.co.uk/online

 

(link for information only, not a recommendation)

 

Martin.

[Joseph_Pestell]

There are many quite cheap sales sites available that are workable for someone with limited IT skills such as myself. At least one model railway artisan managed to set one up about 15 years ago when he was already at usual retirement age.

 

We use Woo Commerce.

[Guy Rixon]

Funny how there are a large amount of cottage industries out there (I'm not just talking model railways)  that seem to run successful e commerce sites. They may not be perfect but I doubt they cost the earth (and moon?) to run and maintain and they certainly don't resort to employing rocket scientists to keep them up to date.

 

P

 

I wonder how many of those sites are specially written for each business?

 

There are, roughly, three ways one might get an e-commerce site.

 

1. Write the software yourself (or paid to have it written, or get existing software and customise the code), then make your own arrangement to have it hosted. You own the code and all the maintenance.

 

2. Use existing software, with the code unchanged, where you "just" have to put in your own content (product descriptions etc.). Make your own arrangements to have it hosted, and therefore also take responsibility for maintenance when problems, or new versions of the code, appear.

 

3. Find an e-commerce provider that both provides and hosts the software and add your products as content. The provider does all the technical maintenance.

 

Option 3 is, IIUC, the sort of deal offered by Amazon marketplace, Shopify and Etsy (please correct me if I've misunderstood these). It's certainly the model for selling things at Shapeways.

 

My guess is that most of the successful sites that Porcy M. has in mind are in the second and third categories.

 

I suspect that C&L's site may be custom (or customised) code with custom hosting (i.e. option 1), and I think this is not a comfortable position for a non-technical owner of a small business.  He needs option 2 or 3, or something altogether simpler.

 

And no, I wouldn't employ rocket scientists to fix my web site either. 

[Torper]

I built my own small business website using Dreamweaver - quite a steep learning curve (I hadn't built a website before) but by no means impossible.  It contains quite a large number of products, sometimes with variations and all with pictures, and I am perfectly able to update and/or add to it as required.  It has a shoppoing cart system which seems to work perfectly well - I used to take credit and debit cards but due to increasing red tape requirements I now rely solely on PayPal to deal with financial transactions. The site needed a bit of debugging and fixing after launch, but not much and nothing I couldn't handle.  I own my own domain names and hosting costs about £40 a year.

 

Now I'm not saying that Phil should do this. It took me quite a long time (although measure that in weeks rather than months) and I had plenty of time to do it,   But if I, totally inexperienced, could do it, I don't see why a professional, even a cottage industry one, even one using one of the ready made packages, couldn't get something workable up and running in a short time.  One suggestion, which worked for me on another website I required rather urgently - see if a student at a local university or college studying website design could do it.  The guy I asked did a really good job (he wanted to show the website as part of his portfolio) and his fee was extremely reasonable (and yes, I could update and change that one without having to bother him again).

 

DT

Edited October 20, 2018 by Torper

[Hal Nail]

I wish there was a way to make money out of this thread as I dip in and out every few months and it seems to be in an endless loop of repetition!

Edited October 20, 2018 by Hal Nail

[martin_wynne]

I wish there was a way to make money out of this threat

 

Easy -- don't pay the ransom money.

[sharris]

I wouldn't buy an e-commerce system from a rocket scientist.

 

They're the sort of people who think it's perfectly normal to send a request to a space-probe and have to wait ages for a response.

 

(maybe the old C&L site *was* written by a rocket scientist).

[chris p bacon]

This thread is so much like my work days at the moment.

 

As people pass by the site and see some progress some are very keen on telling me how they think it could be done differently or better, and yet none of them are willing to put their hand in their pocket and pay for it, or hang around to see if their idea is actually any good or workable.

[AndyID]

I wouldn't buy an e-commerce system from a rocket scientist.

 

 

Rocket science is easy. Newton figured it all out a long time ago.

 

Rocket engineering is the difficult part.

[Guy Rixon]

Rocket science is easy. Newton figured it all out a long time ago.

 

Rocket engineering is the difficult part.

 

Rocket science, in the sense of science done with instruments carried on spacecraft, is not especially easy. Among other things, Newtonian gravitation is not sufficient to analyze all the observations, some of them need general relativity.

 

IMO, there are many parallel between what's hard in space science and what's hard in railway modelling (and in software too). But you probably don't want to hear about that.

[martin_wynne]

"Sorry about the delay to your order, caused by issues with our Newtonian gravitation and general relativity."

[Vistisen]

"Sorry about the delay to your order, caused by issues with our Newtonian gravitation and general relativity."

The current situation is a bit like quantum mechanics, Orders can be both processed and not processed at the same time it's only when you ring up you find out which state is real at the given moment you get through 

[chris p bacon]

The current situation is a bit like quantum mechanics, Orders can be both processed and not processed at the same time it's only when you ring up you find out which state is real at the given moment you get through 

 

But is the cat in the box or not ? and if it's not, is it on a fag break.

[Guy Rixon]

"Sorry about the delay to your order, caused by issues with our Newtonian gravitation and general relativity."

 

Ha ha ... but don't you see the analogy here? If you treat a problem as simple when it's actually complex and subtle then you have setbacks and delays later while you stop to get your head around the complexity. A web-site can be a simple thing. An e-commerce site is not that simple. The extra complexity of a site that properly handles customer's money, your money, order-dispatch, and inventory is at least as great as general relativity compared to Newtonian physics.  Even when it's packaged up so that you don't see the complex bits,  somebody has to do them and get them right. Better hope that you never need to open the box and fix it. Much better to lease the black box from somebody who knows how to fix it.

[martin_wynne]

Much better to lease the black box from somebody who knows how to fix it.

 

That's why I suggested an off-the shelf option such as Shopify. No IT knowledge needed beyond an ability to read what's on the screen and click a few buttons.

 

Martin.