New Bachmann Web Site

[brushman47544]

According to http://news.Bachmann.co.uk/2018/03/863/, the new website will be coming "later in the summer" (but it's still winter!) and in the meantime they hope we enjoy their "intermediary site".

 

I blame the schools...

[gwrrob]

 

I blame the schools...

 

Do they still do one....

[cs233]

Very unusual method of doing business, why not just leave the old site up until the new systems are ready! All they had to do was add the newer releases to the old system, seems a real mess what is going on.

[faa77]

So now instead of one page for all OO Branchline wagons, showing availability/release dates/era, I now have to click through 16 sub-pages and the previous information doesn't exist at all?

 

Genius

[sandwich station]

Not a fan of the Bachmann site (or Hornby's for that matter). I hope this is the temporary one.

 

But I did notice that there is a Western Pullman in Grey and Blue for £949.95. I assume this is an 8 car version?

Edited March 12, 2018 by sandwich station

[Legend]

Not a fan of the Bachmann site (or Hornby's for that matter). I hope this is the temporary one.

 

But I did notice that there is a Western Pullman in Grey and Blue for £949.95. I assume this is an 8 car version?

No but I think you get a DCC controller with it. Its a DCC trainset .

[Steamport Southport]

It's also sound fitted and has the revised front with jumper cables.

 

http://www.hattons.co.uk/337557/Bachmann_Branchline_30_420_Western_Pullman_train_set_with_Class_251_Blue_Pullman_in_revised_livery_with_DCC/StockDetail.aspx

 

 

 

Jason

[Dunsignalling]

Not a fan of the Bachmann site (or Hornby's for that matter). I hope this is the temporary one.

 

But I did notice that there is a Western Pullman in Grey and Blue for £949.95. I assume this is an 8 car version?

No . It's the Midland Pullman unit finished as it was after transfer to the Western Region.

 

John

[Andy Hayter]

Someone needs to explain to Bachmann, that for many of us "availability" does not mean rrp, it means when the model is likely to be available

[sandwich station]

No . It's the Midland Pullman unit finished as it was after transfer to the Western Region.

 

John

6 cars for £949.95 Makes the APT seem cheap.

[tractionman]

I hadn't spotted before the function to select all products by era, eg

 

http://www.Bachmann.co.uk/product-tag/era-3/

 

Useful to see all rolling stock grouped this way.

 

Cheers,

 

Keith

[brushman47544]

I hadn't spotted before the function to select all products by era, eg

 

http://www.Bachmann.co.uk/product-tag/era-3/

 

Useful to see all rolling stock grouped this way.

 

Cheers,

 

Keith

 

Yes it is, but what slightly irks me is that if you filter by era, or category, you cannot then sort by either catalogue number or type. And every description starting with "Branchline" doesn't help either.

 

Perhaps its because it's what we're used to, but I would much prefer to select by scale/gauge, type (steam locos, D&E locos, coaches, wagons, accessories) and then filter by catalogue number, type (e.g. tank wagon, box van), availability (in stock, coming soon (i.e. in next quarter, or on a ship), future releases). Popularity, "rating" and price as filters don't really interest me.

Edited March 14, 2018 by brushman47544

[Butler Henderson]

Perhaps its because it's what we're used to, but I would much prefer to select by scale/gauge,

Eh? Its not as if all their products are intermingled.

[Andy Hayter]

Eh? Its not as if all their products are intermingled.

 

They are a bit if you filter by era.  You will get both Branchlines and Farrish items turn up.  The one search I did had B first and F second but I guess other searches might mix them up more.

[sharkman]

Not a fan of the Bachmann site (or Hornby's for that matter). I hope this is the temporary one.

 

But I did notice that there is a Western Pullman in Grey and Blue for £949.95. I assume this is an 8 car version?

Although I support Bachmann more I always thought the Hornby site was far more colourfull and dynamic then the pinchy thumbnail images on the Bachmann one hopefully their new site might address this!

[No Decorum]

I’ve stopped grumbling, about Bachmann’s website anyhow. It seems to be coming along nicely. So far I still prefer the old site but the new one has become useable. Heck, next thing, I’ll be congratulating someone. I shan’t enjoy that.

[The Stationmaster]

From a quick try out what doesn't seem to work (with a safari browser) is the enlargement facility on individual product items.  Occasionally it works, for a brief instant, but usually it hasn't.

 

As I don't need to sort by Era (which is misleading in some respects anyway) I'm happy to sort by range buta sort by company/Region could save time in specific searches.

[Butler Henderson]

They are a bit if you filter by era.

Apologies, I had never scrolled down the first page far enough to see the era options before!

[GreenGiraffe22]

The mobile version of the site is looking good =)

[Joseph_Pestell]

I wonder if the lack of a proper Bachmann website is losing them money? It seems extraordinary in this day and age for a company to be without a fully functioning website for several months. Their old website was better then Hornby's - I wonder why they felt the need to tinker with something that was already fit for purpose?

 

That's what IT people do.

 

I use airline websites several times a year. Every time I go back to one, they have changed it - a lot.

 

What happened to the old adage about not fixing things that are not broken?

[cs233]

I work in IT management for a large company 110,000 staff and one of my accountable areas is the corporate website, if this did occur on my watch I would be kicked out the door to be frank, it would never be considered acceptable.

[YesTor]

I work in IT management for a large company 110,000 staff and one of my accountable areas is the corporate website, if this did occur on my watch I would be kicked out the door to be frank, it would never be considered acceptable.

 

I'm afraid that's where your analogy fails, as Bachmann clearly isn't "a large organisation of 110,000 staff", which presumably has an IT budget to match.  I doubt that Bachmann's, or indeed any small company's IT budget is anywhere near the same league.  I'm afraid you are doing what many people seem to do these days, which is akin to comparing Amazon with your local corner shop.  It's an argument that simply holds no water.  "Apples and oranges" etc...

 

Agreed the current Bachmann 'temporary' website is rubbish, but hopefully they will sort it out into something a lot better.

Edited March 17, 2018 by YesTor

[Ozexpatriate]

Apologies, I had never scrolled down the first page far enough to see the era options before!

It's not however a filter for the current page - which would have been useful.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

The "Latest Website Update" page includes this:

 

Has no one clicked it in the week it has been up? Telling I think.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

OK, I should take a deep breath. Different doesn't mean bad, just different.

 

The truth is that I liked the old website, not because it was familiar, but because it was useful. (I will say that I didn't like that expanded pictures open in a new pop-up window.)

 

The new product listing formats are not convenient for me.  Worst of all is this sort menu:

 

What I'd like to do is filter a list by scale, rolling stock category, era and company - for example: show me all 00 GWR locomotives in era 3. 

 

The generic sort list is not helpful. It is understandable output from some software guys who want to use the same widget to sort on every page throughout the whole website, but it's not useful for an enthusiast page.

 

Sort by 'rating'? As rated by whom? Does that mean some products are great and some are crud? (That's an odd marketing concept.) Before I rant over this I will stipulate that this is an "intermediary" [sic] website.

 

My issues:

• Too much white space. I'd rather see a compact list with more items on the page at once. I don't want to keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling through hundreds of items (the three biggest Branchline categories all had between 100-200 items)
• I'd like to see relevant sorting or filtering.
• It is very slow - it was around 2:00am GMT on a Saturday morning when I tried it - perhaps there was maintenance going on.
• Search is pretty sucky: try this and more perversely, this or this

I had none of these issues on the old website. (I will stipulate that I never used the search function on the old website.)

 

So I hope the final website is much better than this one. I really don't like this one at all.

 

A meaningful question is whether this is better or worse than the Hornby website. My assessment is that it is equally poor and has many of the same problems that the Hornby website has with one exception, it doesn't seem to break lists of products onto separate pages. As much as I don't much like scrolling having to go page to page to find what you want is really tedious.

 

EDIT: I take it back. The search results make you go page by page.

 

Plus the search only seems to do string matching from the item names. So adding "00" finds part numbers that include "00" (like 33-300G) and "OO" finds words that include "oo" (like "goods"). There's no keyword metadata beyond the item name description. Searching for "branchline gwr" starts to get somewhere useful except you can't change the view from tiles to list and you have to deal with the page by page problem. Partial strings work, so that's good, but there's no "did you mean?" heuristics so if you misspell the search won't help you. (If you were looking for a steam crane, "cran" will get you there, but "steam crane" won't.)

 

Yeah, it's really not a 21^st century implementation of an online catalogue website. I respect that this is a difficult problem for a small company. But the user experience for the old website was soooo much better.

Edited March 17, 2018 by Ozexpatriate