The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[Grumpy Gnome]

I love the look of that vehicle, just a shame that it is not in plastic.

[FramFramson]

Precisely.

it doesn't hold up to mechanical scrutiny

Well those ladders don't seem long for this world, certainly.

[Elbows]

I love the look of that vehicle, just a shame that it is not in plastic.

On the plus side you can always enjoy guessing what the astronomical price will be.  I can't judge the scale, but being Forgeworld, I'd give that a solid $160?

[Belligerentparrot]

Honestly wouldn't be surprised if it appears in plastic in the medium term, much like the weapons sets have been phased out of FW resin production and into GW plastic production.

[zemjw]

They've squished the two webstores together into one. The new site to rule them all is https://www.warhammer.com/

It looks like the other names redirect to this one already, so there's no getting away from it

Not sure I'm one with the new design yet. It seems more designed for mobile devices, rather than a desktop browser...

[boneio]

It's actively awful.
I build ecommerce sites for a living, for multi-million turnover companies and on down to only half a mil a year, so I see a good mix.
There's no way I would have approved my team to put that site live.

It's full of UX problems. It's a backward step on actual functionality for the customer. It's incredibly bland.
I could go on.

It's bad enough that I suspect either self-sabotage, or that the decision making is in the hands of non-subject matter experts.

[Belligerentparrot]

I dunno anything about designing good websites, but two things about it I thought were strikingly odd.

One, the big images that cycle through on the right hand side of the screen. Some of these were of painted miniatures and people playing wargames. But a lot were (I presume) snippets from computer games or WarhammerTV productions. I expected more emphasis on miniatures!

Two, Necromunda and so on are buried under a non-descript "Other Games" tab.

My general sense of the site is that to find anything easily you really need to know what you're looking for. That can't be good.

[boneio]

Good design and user experience is largely common sense and convention. Their new site breaks both of those in multiple ways.

Ultimately the users are the arbiters of what's good and you've hit one of the nails on the head:

My general sense of the site is that to find anything easily you really need to know what you're looking for. That can't be good.

The comments on the official channels on Facebook are full of normal users (i.e. non-experts) pointing out many ways in which it's poor.

A site can be bad in ways that only experts would identify (in other words, it could be better/room for improvement), or it can be bad enough that ordinary visitors can articulate how and why it doesn't work well for them.
For a company the size of GW to launch a site falling so solidly into the latter category, is extraordinary.

I can't really overstate this. They turn over nearly £500 million (not online, in total) and have done a worse job on their site than most companies making one hundreth of that.

Our beloved North Star have a very outdated, basic site (sorry if they read this, don't ban me  ) but as a selling tool it's so, so much better than the new GW site.

[zemjw]

My general sense of the site is that to find anything easily you really need to know what you're looking for. That can't be good.

I know GW insist on their new (tm)able names, but being able to search for old names, like Troll or Orge, and having it do the conversion would be really helpful.

I did check on the new site, but it still insists on new names, which means you have to up to date with the lore (which I am not)

[Tactalvanic]

It seems they have gone for all the modern bells/whistles and hip bits, and forgot the essentials

As already exampled - northstar is basic but it works.

I use sites for other things that are even more basic - they only recently made their order form an online one - barely in regards one of them - but for their product and range, it works perfectly for their business.

Several others have superbly functional modern websites, that tick all the boxes needed for their businesses plus all the modern extra bleuah you would rather was not there in some cases.

Guess you would expect that from a company like GW, but it does seem as suggested its not been done by people that have to use it..

Not somewhere I go often so not too.. bothered beyond the OCD of how bad it is in a modern way.

And because of that makes me not want to go there more, and even less likely to buy their stuff direct.

[Daeothar]

GW's websites have never been the pinnacle of intuitive design and use. far from it actually.

In the early 2000's, GW's site was just dire, probably handwritten in HTML and full of bugs, broken links, circular references etc. It also looked really meh, even for the time.

The same surprise as displayed here was felt by users and observers back in the day too by the way.

Inbetween they've updated their designs several times now, and all I can say is that the iteration around 2004 or about that time was at least acceptable. It was pretty navigatable and was generally stable. The ones before and after have always been either not great to look at or hard to search through (or both).

So this is not a unique occurence, but it is mind boggling (as said) that they turn over such amounts and still manage to consistently end up with websites apparently built by a couple of well meaning, but not very savvy, high schoolers...

[Mammoth miniatures]

The new website marks the official death of forgeworld as a unique entity. The FAQ (because websites need an FAQ) states that FW products will now be known as Expert or 15+ resin kits. AFAICT there is no forgeworld branding on anything.
Goodbye forgeworld.

(I do like the illuminated script at the start of each product description - tis a silly details but fun.)

[TWD]

Great to see many people who are not the target market explaining how the new GW website doesn't work for them.

[Belligerentparrot]

TWD - ha! Are you sure, though? I'm approaching middle age, if I am not there already, and of a fairly stable disposition to spaff my hard-earned money on the toys I wanted, or their modern equivalent, when I was a teen earning a pittance.

I was under the impression that GW thought man-children like me are very much a target market, which is why they put so much effort into nostalgia these days (as compared, say, to the early 2000s).

[boneio]

Great to see many people who are not the target market explaining how the new GW website doesn't work for them.

I'm not sure of your point here.
I am both the target market and an ecommerce expert and I can assure you, it's an objectively bad site launch.
Also see my previous post - most of the 'target audience' is vocally unhappy with it, too.