richarddavies

Really interesting to see the different views on here

The proposal for a unilateral approach was Inspired by the new way that traditional rival supermarkets are operating in the UK i.e. sharing resources, making joint decisions and ensuring they can function in a way that best protects their teams and customers needs.

I believed there was an opportunity for our industry to do likewise. I knew there would be three types of response from our competitors to my proposal - Yes, No & "This is a good idea, but..." so I am not surprised at the wide range of responses on here and I welcome them all, because this is a huge learning period for retail as a whole

I felt it was better to do something, rather than sit and wait, and the calls I've instigated with others from the industry have been groundbreaking and actually quite enjoyable. I'm glad I tried,

We suggested suspending shipping because:

1. Government is covering the vast majority of wage & self-employed costs
2. It keeps our teams safer
3. We felt customers would understand our motivations were honest
4. Stopping using couriers reduces the possibility of them transmitting the virus
5. I wanted us to be an example to other industries - doing what we can for the situation 

This is a testing time for all of us

Best wishes

Richard

Managing Director, Hatton's

Hi

We hope to encourage the industry to "rise above" short term opportunities to capitalise on the situation

The Government will support PAYE workers and self-employed too.

We will help any model railway retailer who has short-term cash flow challenges, whilst the government rebate is pending

Giving couriers parcels, means you are expecting them to employ people across their network, and therefore spreading it unnecessarily

I understand that there are lots of viewpoints on this.

I agree it's a risk to raise our head above the parapet - we have always been that kind of company to be honest

Richard

Hatton's MD 

Hi 

I'm Managing Director and owner of Hatton's

I apologise for the wording of the email

When we closed the store, I instructed the manager responsible to leave the "Collect in hub" option open, and then offer postage to whichever ones arrived.  I'm sorry that the "or cancelled for a refund" element has appeared - we can easily leave the order unpicked for the time being.

We will be rewording that email accordingly. Sorry for the questions that arose because of this, and thank you for your custom

Rich

Hatton's

Thanks again for all the help.

We have made a number of changes, based on your feedback and suggestions

For anyone interested, the latest version is at https://staging.hattons.co.uk/collections/all/search/sources/New%2CPreowned

Best

Richard

MD, Hatton's

Thanks for all the ideas and feedback. 

We are working on the search - definitely an improvement on the previous version, but always room for improvement! 

Rich

Thanks a lot for the feedback, which has led to some further improvements to help produce our latest version

https://staging.hattons.co.uk/collections/all/search/sources/New%2CPreowned if that link doesn't work

Many thanks

Richard

Hi

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

We have spotted a few other areas we can improve too 

Will be in touch soon :-)

Rich

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Since I am sure you read the post at 16.06 on page 21, you already know that Hatton's MD is content for his developing staff to take on board what they can from this thread. 

Yes @Hattons Dave has a notepad next to his desk, with frequent notes being made to it, relative to this thread.  Had a busy week, so maybe an update from him next week, is more likely.

Richard 

MD, Hatton's

Thanks for the feedback Ian

We will check it out on IE11. It was working during our last set of tests - but maybe one of our late tweaks has caused something to go awry

I have deliberately made the filter font large - but maybe I've overdone it

Thanks again

18 minutes ago, Ian Abel said:

Richard,

  First problem - though likely I know the answer already - it doesn't work with IE11.

 

Works fine with Chrome and looks nice, seems to be VERY snappy and responsive when you start filtering and I like the overall layout. Possibly the filters section could be a little smaller (font) to allow more visible at one time - caveat, I AM on a laptop right now, but I'm sure many folks will be on smaller than my usual 27" monitor

 

Before I get a barrage of "why use that carp IE", my work requires me to use IE as the systems I install/develop for still have that as the PRIMARY certified browser so I have it open all day every day during business hours and prefer not to run two browsers...

Hi

Tomorrow at 11am we intend to email some of our most frequent customers, to officially launch a new product navigation system

I thought I'd give RMweb a preview - really interested to see what you think

It's at https://staging.hattons.co.uk/ and it's ready to accept orders, and do whatever you may currently do on our regular site

A direct route into the new functionality is from https://staging.hattons.co.uk/landing.aspx or https://staging.hattons.co.uk/collections/all/search/sources/New%2CPreowned

I'm really keen to hear any feedback you may have

Hope this is of interest

Richard Davies

MD, Hatton's

Some nice comments about us - thanks a lot for your feedback - was great to meet many of your at Great Electric Train Show this weekend gone

4 weeks ago we soft-launched a new version of our site - and having listened to your views, I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me if the modifications we've made are helping take it in the right direction?

https://hattonshobbies.com/

Looking forward to hearing any views - good or bad!

Best

Richard

MD, Hatton's

I for one really like it, it's a fantastic improvement over the last version especially the new faceted search. I expect that once you've ironed out the few implementation/hosting issues that are influencing page load/refresh speeds then folk will appreciate the speed at which the product view panels update without reloading the whole page.

 

Nicely implemented as a responsive website too - a big thumbs up.

 

I think the design is nice and clear and a definite improvement too... good use of white-space to ventilate what will always be busy pages.

 

One thing I don't like is the main navigation menu in full desktop viewport widths - the drop-down menus look rubbish, half-finished. And making the menu items jump around in font size is not a good idea in terms of usability and instilling user confidence. Furthermore, the drop-down menus seem to be inaccessible to keyboard-only users. Conversely, the drop down dynamically built menu driven by the search form field is rather nice.

 

One other thing - the "Text size +/-" control... it doesn't really work well in Firefox (I haven't tested in other browsers) as the increase in size creates overlapping text. This type of control was in existence on the previous website but is really an outdated concept nowadays. Users can simply use the 'Ctrl' plus '+/-' keystrokes to the same effect. I don't use the general browser 'zoom' function but using 'zoom text only' works very nicely on your new website using the keystrokes previously mentioned.

 

All the best,

Nick

Thank you Nick

We will definitely be going through your points tomorrow - I really appreciate you taking the time to give us such clear feedback

Best

Rich

Looks like it's not actually listed on the new site at all. I'm sure it's an oversight as it's still on the normal www.hattons.co.uk website.

 

Wonder if that means the current site and the 'new' site are running from two different stock databases, otherwise congratulations - you've found a bug! (I used to do bits of software testing and always enjoyed finding bugs).

Thanks for reporting that - we will get onto that in the morning

In the meantime DJ Models Class 58xx 5802 in GWR unlined green is still on www.hattons.co.uk

Best

Rich

Hello, Richard Davies, MD (& now an owner of) of Hatton's here

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has given feedback on the new site. We agree with practically everything that has been suggested and are working on lots of different modifications, in view of what's been said. We may see these features added to the site from early next week

We would like to eventually run the new site from www.hattons.co.uk but we won't do that until we have consensus that the new site provides a considerably better experience (toall) than the existing one

I'm a "If it's not broken, don't fix it..." kind of person - but we need a site that usable by those who are new to the hobby and don't necessarily have the same level of understanding, as many of the more experienced customers and users of the previous sites "nuances"/failings 

I'll be on our stand at Great Electric Train Show and Warley, if anyone would like to chat in person (about anything whatsover model-railways related!)

Thanks again

R

When attempting to access Hattons I've had a warning from Norton anti virus strongly advising me not to visit the site. I don't have any immediate shopping needs but was prompted to take a look by a friend of mine who told me yesterday that he was being warned away. We both use Firefox and Norton, I wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same warnings or can suggest why we are? Is some lurking virus there?

Hi Neil

Would you mind posting some more information (screenshots, error messages etc) onto the thread, to help us take a look at this please? 

More data about your setup would help us. 

Thanks for taking the time to post this

Best wishes

Richard

MD, Hatton's

Hi Guido

Thanks for your orders and feedback.

To be honest, we have only just recently changed our "stance" on expedited delivery to be focused on "Same day despatch", rather than "Next day delivery".

We made the switch when we realised that "Next day delivery" relied on trusting couriers, and, when, on occasions where the courier didn't get the order to the customer that day, we were in an awkward position of not being "in control" of the circumstances that led to the dissatisfaction. I intend to reshape the terminology we use to be "Guaranteed same day despatch" - but another constraint is that DHL pickup from us at 4pm in order to get the consignments onto planes in East Midlands airport that night

Our overall objective is to be so well-organised, that an even higher (than current) number of orders are despatched same-day. This will mean a rise in customer satisfaction, without the operational complications of having to fast-track some orders through

Hope this helps

Best 

R

Hi and sorry it's been a while since I posted

Yes there has been some disruption to normal service whilst we refine the despatch operation and train new staff, ready for autumn and winter seasons (it's not just about the Christmas rush nowadays) and I apologise if some have had to wait a little longer for deliveries than normal - we do set very high "Busy as usual" standards so when we deviate from them, we understand regular customers may notice. We intend to maintain and improve upon the high standards we set in the industry.

September 2016 has been been another record setting month - we are receiving 15-20% more orders than this time last year, so we are making improvements to handle this.

Keen to help keep things in context on this thread and my offer to anyone who wants to come and have a look at the hub in-person, remains open - always good to meet RMweb users in the flesh

Rich

Richard Davies

MD, Hatton's

Yes the rise in quality and value of models of UK-based prototypes (and probably other factors) seems to have had an impact on demand for stuff from Continental manufacturers. I think Arcadia in Shaw have some good brand new RTR Continental stuff, and Gaugemaster stock and distribute quite a lot too

Please excuse excessive use of the term "stuff"!

Richard

MD, Hatton's

Interested in your views on how easy you found it to get back into the hobby Railsquid - I think there are a number of hurdles to get over when contemplating getting into the hobby, and the job of the collective group I'd like to be part of, is helping eliminate or simplify (lower?) the hurdles.

Ref the Browser issues, it's likely to be some sort of cookie-related matter. I will have the IT people create a "Cookie diagnosis" page on the website, where we direct people who are having problems to, in order to try and identify the problem. At the moment we send people to a "How to clear your cookies" page but something a bit more intuitive may help. I will speak to the IT team on Tuesday, once they have recovered from moving all the IT systems around the warehouse as part of Project MacGyver

R

MD, Hattons

Yes, we plan to take a good look at the courier options once we have optimised our internal Despatch/Logistics processes. We have a fair few couriers vying for our traffic but we need to have a firm grasp of our own capacity before talking volumes and agreements. The Yodel "Collect from Hattons Sunday, deliver Monday" deal stemmed from us needing to work Sundays to keep up with the orders we came into on a Monday. Now we've made the pick/pack system slicker, we aren't too sure how many days Mon-Sun we will run. I think Yodel get a harder time than they deserve, but that was their own fault after rebranding too early when HDNL and DHL UK were merged. 

Yes Gwiwer you are right - I have been a long time lurker on here (and have discussed your browser issues on several occasions with several eminently knowledgeable IT people). Am coming out of the woodwork now as we are getting to the stage at Hattons where we think we are on top of all the projects that were required to get the business under control after moving from a high street shop to being an omni-channel ecommerce store (as the marketing people say).  I'm interested in where the market is going, with particular focus in the segment of customers who we call "Entrants", which is typically a 45+ year old guy who is either returning to the hobby or just getting into it.  Personally I don't think that segment is getting enough attention. I'm intending to talk to the manufacturers and magazines about this, to see what their strategy for acquiring new customers is. Just to pre-empt the question, we can see growth in both segments (we call the other one "Established"), but would like to be part of a more considered, progressive and collaborative strategy. You can find out more about me at https://uk.linkedin.com/in/richard-davies-065a7b1b

Steve thanks for your order - it will be with you soon. Project MacGyver is just being completed so the team will probably be despatching 1600+ orders a day for the next few days. BTW - the Roco loco you bought came to us from an interesting chap based in Munich who I think has more stuff coming in soon - if I see it in the "Goods in" or "For photoing" area I will let you know

R

Richard Davies

MD, Hattons

Hi it's Richard Davies, MD of Hatton's here

The team are still working hard spinning the warehouse, in what we have called Project MacGyver (all our projects have the names of characters from films & TV and are chosen by the person in charge of the project).

Latest pic below, where you can just about see John Beswick (normally in the Store but helping out in Logistics today) and Operations Manager Lesley Bryan in the bottom right - sorry, having problems with the image upload, will try again later (RD)

The packing machine "Little David" shown in Dave Martins post #1025 is gaining a companion (Victoria) on Tuesday and she will help us massively with getting orders out of the door, hopefully faster than ever before

On the topic of "Behind the scenes" our Store staff often give impromptu tours of the site to customers, particularly if they've come a long way or specifically ask for a look around. We've been careful with these recently as the warehouse has been under so much pressure but when MacGyver is over we will probably resume. 

Thanks for all the feedback - it's much appreciated

Richard