That's Life
Cleaf Metro Product Setup...cont'd
On Sunday, I wrote about the setup of the new product we were hoping to launch this weekend. It didn't happen. What did happen is we realized that one of the product options, 'cabinet height', wouldn't work as we planned. The issue is really a technical one on the part of our ecommerce host. We offer 5 choices for casework material and 3 part numbers for width, so say you choose a 15" cabinet in x material, y width, the price would be z -no problem. The next choice would be height, and there is the problem is created. Using this setup would require us to show each width and height option, in each casework material option -as an option. This would make the option list massive, too massive. The alternative would be to use dropdown menus for each option. The image below is our current option setup for this cabinet.
Hate is a pretty strong word, so I'll just say, as online shoppers ourselves, we are not fans of dropdown menus. Our setup takes 2 mouse clicks to get from the first page, or category page for this item, to the option configuration. 6 mouse clicks to configure the options and add to a cart. Dropdown menus double the clicks required to configure a product: 1 click to open the menu and 1 to select the option. That's a total of 12 clicks to configure the same options and 16 total to get to it, configure it, and put it in a cart. Another issue with dropdowns: you can't see the available options until you click the dropdown. Not very user friendly. So stuck between a rock and a hard place, we chose to do the extra work in creating individual part numbers for each width and height and preserve our clean 8 click ordering process, actually, taking height out of the options drops our click number to 7.
There was never really a choice. We had to do the work up front necessary to make it as easy as possible for our customers to shop with us. It's a little disappointing that we missed another self-made deadline, but at the end of the day we know we are doing the right thing.
I talked about a new Cleaf kitchen we began work on Friday. The picture below is a Lakeshore Oak Shaker wall cabinet. These are being readied for installation on Thursday, actually they will be ready today, but the customer isn't ready for them until Thursday. We started work manufacturing these cabinets on Friday, and they are ready to install after only 2 and a half days! I'll have more pics of these cabinets at the end of the day.
Thanks for watching!
Mike
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