"Wargames Market: New Logo to Go-Go" Topic
23 Posts
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| Rebel Minis | 29 Jan 2008 4:53 p.m. PST |
I like the new logo, and I honestly would like to see this site take off. My only problem as been with the length or auction times. I look at alot of these and say, why bid now and then I forget… I am not trying to be a troll, just giving you my 2 cents. RebelMike |
| D6 Junkie | 29 Jan 2008 5:33 p.m. PST |
Hey Guys,
Your site was tempting enough but now
with ebay raising final value fees
you be seeing me put up some ads in the near future. |
| Terrement | 29 Jan 2008 6:16 p.m. PST |
My .02 (well, maybe .04) as well. A butcher store that advertises "Prime Rib only 22 cents a pound" is no bargain if they actually don't have any Prime Rib. I hope your site takes off also. To date, I have been disappointed by the long auction times, the lack of responses from sellers whose pics for painted minis are broken and from your overstating your case: "Crimean War Franco-Prussian War Old West spanish-American War
There are no items in this section More Info About Historical Miniatures > 19th Century:
The Wargames Market Historical Miniatures category is the premier destination on the web for you to find rare and popular goods. Find Historical miniatures by period within the Historical Miniatures category on Wargames Market." I think it is more than a stretch to claim you are "the premier destination" when you have categories with zero items, even without counting the numbers of same said items on your competing sites. If we can't believe what you advertise as the basis of your site, why should we believe anything else? What else have you overstated on your site? I am no fan of eBay, but if I have to go there, or Bartertown, or any of your competitor sites to get things, I will. I'll be happy to support your site when it actually has what I'm looking for. Till then… |
 Extra Crispy  | 29 Jan 2008 6:34 p.m. PST |
It took me 2 or 3 visits to realize you don't provide "counts" like E-bay that show how many items are in each category. This is a serious usability flaw. Instead of clicking on Historicals, seeing "0" in my chosen category, I have to keep drilling down only to be disappointed. Even if they are all 0 you should put the counts next to each category… |
| Rod Langway | 29 Jan 2008 9:07 p.m. PST |
Terrement, Definitely have to agree here, it is not just something you can put off to simple exaggeration, smacks of desperation, and I agree that it honestly makes me question the integrity of those making these claims (and further drives me away from WM)…. |
| kokigami | 29 Jan 2008 10:53 p.m. PST |
Well, I have purchased from the same person on both WGM and ebay. I believe I was sole bidder on both, If I recall. The items were very similar in subject. They cost me about 10% less on WGM, and I suspect this is due to lower fees. They do suffer from limited listings, which will always be the case for a niche market website. A lot of stuff on ebay, often the most interesting items IMHO, are being sold by people who have been out of the market for a while. Ebay offers value in size, but it comes at a cost. I will keep perusing Ebay and WGM, and Bartertown, but I will do my best to support the latter two. If I sell, I will probably use WGM. If I trade, I will use Bartertown. I just do much selling. |
| kokigami | 29 Jan 2008 10:57 p.m. PST |
oh, hope you didn't pay much for that logo… sorry, but I think it is weak, and has low impact and no iconic imagery. Logos need to be simple, icons. They should have limited color schemes that should be repeated in the site. The mini figs in the new logo would need to be printed in full color, and they are muddy, and lack distinction. Nothing about it really says wargames or market, and it doesn't have a recognition factor. |
| Supreme Dalek | 30 Jan 2008 1:40 a.m. PST |
It's a bit like Search Engines really… I only use Google. Why use a different auction site to ebay? I give Wargames Market another year… best of luck fellas :) |
| Supreme Dalek | 30 Jan 2008 1:41 a.m. PST |
…and btw, in my opinion the logo is terrible… sorry! |
| Cameron | 30 Jan 2008 2:35 a.m. PST |
The logo is very poor, even by 1970's standards. |
| Grizwald | 30 Jan 2008 3:53 a.m. PST |
"Logo to Go-Go" Go-GO? Wher are the dancing girls? And I don't think much of the logo either. Hope you didn't pay a lot of money for it. Can't see how changing the logo will improve business myself, but then I never understood marketing. |
| Terrement | 30 Jan 2008 7:17 a.m. PST |
(Long comment, but meant to be instructive, not nasty. Hope you take it that way)
TMP Gents,
I agree that they'll have to prove themselves over time. Much of the stuff on WM is "BUY IT NOW" Only hence, more of a store than an auction. eBay may charge more, but also gets more looks and more bidding. So If I'm selling something where I want "bidding fever" to kick in, WM isn't the place to list my item. On the other hand, as they at WM are starting off and trying to BECOME the premier place for wargaming internet sales / auctions, they have the chance in starting up to do it right, and take advantage of suggestions and comments from us, the folks who will be their market. For the Wargames Market folks – are you interested in suggestions on site improvement? How set are you in the design / layout / search capabilities? Simple suggestion like the "counts" one above, as well as many others that I suspect may be out there might make your site more familiar. It seems like a good comparison is Windows. Folks are familiar with the layout, how it works, how you do things within that framework. So if you have a competing product, the question becomes how do you make it your own (with as much of the functionality and familiarity as the leader in the field) and improve on it without driving folks away because it is "different" from what they are familiar / comfortable with using? My standard ebay session begins with my opening into my choice of screes (summary, favorites, etc). Yours is similar but slightly different in appearance. Once on my ebay page, I can easily see all that I watching, or ones where I have placed bids. OK, fine, I can accept the difference in appearance – how does the functionality compare? On ebay I have "Favorite Searches" that I can tailor to what it is I am after. It takes the * wildcard. The results, unless the seller is doing keyword spamming, will give me listings of what it finds. So "gunslinger*" will return results with either the word "gunslinger" or "gunslingers" Your site, advanced search. Keyword "gunslinger" in historical miniatures returns a listing of ALL of your categories, not just historical miniatures, and gives no indication of where the gunslingers would be (there are none, so a "no items found" might be a better result). So I find a product that is listed – I go to advanced search in Warhammer Fantasy miniatures and I search on el* to give me both elf and elves as returnable items. Guess what? It doesn't. I go to the full historical miniatures listing and see all of the 100 DJD painted armies. To simplify the view, I do an exclusionary search (essentially a boolean "NOT") as I can on ebay and try to search the collection using "-10mm" which on ebay will return the same initial result set, but with any item that has "10mm" in it removed. Yours returns a page with zero items. Your "help" page link has some good advice, but no information on how to make the searches work. Am I doing something wrong? Am I doing it right, but the software is malfunctioning? Does your search accept wildcards like "*"? Does it permit "-(1omm, napoleonic)" delimiters? Does it use "and" , "or", and "not" statements? I could go on trouble shooting your site for you, but I would have thought you would have done so before your big public push – this kinda shortfall may be fine for a pre-release Beta build to get comments from users before going "smooth", but based on what I've seen so far, there is a lot of plussing up to do. We are your market, your customers, your future. You need to talk to us and let us know how things are coming, what is fixed, what you want to hear form us, what you can't fix, but provide examples on your help page for "how it works here". I'd far rather NOT give ebay my business. I'd far rather pay less for items I buy. But you've got to help us out here, 'cause if you don't this forum will not only not flock to your site it will actively avoid it. Marketing studies show that one satisfied customer will normally tell 3-5 others about their experience. Unsatisfied customers will typically tell 20-25. Which do you want us to be? What can we do to help you get on track? Best of luck, John |
PigmentedMiniatures  | 30 Jan 2008 9:35 a.m. PST |
I've used Ebay and WGM to sell stuff. With Ebay I know that there will be lots of viewers so I'll start the bidding low. WGM has very low trafic so the chances of getting a bid are pretty terrible so I start the biding high or just use buy it now. |
| BravoX | 30 Jan 2008 8:25 p.m. PST |
so I start the biding high I can totally understand your logic but it is yet another reason why buyers would prefer ebay.
Terrement good comments.
|
| Gearhead | 31 Jan 2008 9:10 a.m. PST |
Well I, for one, am going to give it a try. I am sick to death of eBay constantly shifting the rules and jacking up the fees, and trying to tell us all that they're doing us an enormous favor. In the next week or two, I'll be posting some of my materials there, advertising the fact on various boards (as well as telling my old eBay buyers,) and encouraging friends to do likewise. Nothing sucks worse than finding an alternate site only to have nothing there available for sale, so the only thing for it is to try to remedy the situation. |
| Gearhead | 31 Jan 2008 9:12 a.m. PST |
In addition, I love Bartertown, but part of my hobby is to sell the stuff I paint, and you just can't get anything close to a decent price there…most of the time. |
| Terrement | 31 Jan 2008 10:36 a.m. PST |
Gearhead, Agree that B'town is not the best place to sell well painted minis. I've done well there buying / trading / posting wants lists that I couldn't do on ebay or anywhere else. I also think it can only help the WM folks if we do what we can as you suggested that we let others know via TMP, our Yahoo groups, our email lists etc. about things we may be posting for sale. I'm more than happy to list / buy / sell there. i have bids in on a few things. Having said that, the fundamental problems of the sort I addressed above need to be addressed by the page owner if they expect to be successful in any meaningful sense of the word. I deal with software testing as a part of my profession. I may be more upset than other folks about this, but their site as it stands right now does not do several basic functions correctly. I don't know if the webpage was badly designed, or well designed but poorly implemented, or what. It appears that little or no testing of the site was done, given the very basic problems I described above. I do think that if you are trying to take over a major niche in the hobby business (or any other business), particularly from a well established and successful (if unliked) firm you need to provide a better product that is easy to use otherwise, the folks will stay with the familiar despite its shortcomings. Their pricing structure is better than ebay and that's a big plus to draw folks in to try the website. But if the website does not function well, how many will keep coming back to shop? For "stores" who aren't looking to auction their items, but just list it as a "buy it now" and a six month clock it might work fine. As a potential buyer, I need to find things that I want to buy. If sellers aren't listing enough, is it really worth it for me to keep coming back? If sellers are listing items but the searches don't work and I have to manually drill through everything to try to find my item, that also will turn folks away. We can help with the listing problem. We can shop there and encourage others to do so as well. The folks at WM need to do their part to make the page functional. If they don't, there isn't much point in us bothering. I've tried very hard to keep the comments factual and not attack anyone personally. I hope I've done that successfully but if not I apologize. I don't expect a personal response from them, but since they post here, one would assume they read these comments. They can tell me to sod off, they can take the comments as constructive observations, they can do both or neither. But if they are coming to us as a community for our support of their site, I don't think it is unreasonable for them to post a note saying "We'll look into it" or "Please send us your suggestions for consideration" or "The web page is a work in progress and we'll tweak it as we can with things you find, but we can't do anything for a few months because we don't have a budget to do it" or anything along those lines. Are they upset that we didn't love their new logo and found faults with their operation? You betcha! The point is, it doesn't matter one way or the other if they are upset or not. What is yet to be seen is whether they value us enough as a customer base to answer the mail, address the problems and keep working to be a real competitor for ebay. So far I've been underwhelmed with their response, and hope they give us some idea of what they see as the way forward. |
| twfigurines | 01 Feb 2008 4:42 a.m. PST |
I've spend the last 20 minutes looking through the site and try some features and find it very badly arranged. First you usually place a link to the main page from the logo, this should be easy to add. The frontpage is a mess with featured auction, new auctions, popular auctions, ending soon auctions to name just a few. As a new user I find is difficult to find my way through this. I also agree on the critics that the categorie listings should show auction numbers.
Some links to navigate the site are several time on one page, if you are logged in you have "member area" on the left and "member" on the top, why twice and why different names for the same subject?
The cost of "buy it now items" is also shown twice.
Most websites are navigated from the left site of the page, the most important features (the categorie listing) at WM are on the right site and sometimes even elsewhere. This doesn't help to keep and overview. Actualy if you visit the main page the categorie listings are so far at the bottom of the monitor they are hardly to see, and I use a big monitor. When a new user visits a website he should be able to understand the site within seconds or he will move away. This is surely the most important thing to remember when running an internet business. On several occasions you get brocken images, be it listings or shops. I miss the possibility to get listing sorted by scale. Some people don't mention scale in the listings topic and it has happened quite a few times to me that look at an item just to find 15mm whilst looking for 28mm. Right now this isn't much of a problem but when you have several thousand listings it will be. Finally the site is still very slow, it might be faster if you clean it up a bit and make it simpler and easier to navigate. |
| wargamersmarket | 01 Feb 2008 11:18 a.m. PST |
Bartertown – why use it? You can list a free wanted ad on wargamesmarket including a direct contact email address, and you get the benefits of seeing the potential buyers feedback either from WM or ebay if they imported it – its safer so why risk it on a forum instead??? To generally address your points. An auction site contains over 1500 pages of code etc and there are two of us with a developer. We have a small budget. To suddenly have a better site than ebay is cloud cuckoo – it will take time to evolve and tweak things as money and time allows. I dont mean to be rude as a lot of your points are taken onbaord (and to be fair are on the dev list already) but some of it is nitpicking. Consider this, from a tech point of view the TMP forum we are using is an inferior piece of kit. Try vbulletin and you will know what I mean – its like a spaceship against a car. (Sorry Ed but its a fair point!). But despite this flaw you are all still here using it every day. So why is that? Because it is a dedicated gaming place that may not be the best to look at or use, but it has the hobby at heart. We are working with a skinner to make the site quicker to load etc, but it takes time and money – money we are currently losing each month along with dozens of hours of evening work after pinning down normal jobs. So try remembering that before having a shot because a picture does not link etc – please keep a perspective. The Wargames Market is there as a low cost option for the gaming hobby, we cannot compete with the bells and whistles but we can do the bloody best we can with the time and money we have. You all support TMP – so please try and see us in the same way and give us the same courtesy. The hobby sellers need you to support an ebay alternative – try a few forums and see how many are panicky about the latest ebay fee hike – its a potential KILLER for the low volume painted miniature sellers for example. The WM site is about more than simple economics or being spoilt for choice – so please try to get around the ebay comparison in terms of functionality and support us and the hobby sellers. |
| Terrement | 01 Feb 2008 12:44 p.m. PST |
Wargamers Market Thanks for your reply. I'll try to answer a number of your points: >Bartertown – why use it? You can list a free wanted ad on >wargamesmarket including a direct contact email address, >and you get the benefits of seeing the potential buyers >feedback either from WM or ebay if they imported it – its >safer so why risk it on a forum instead??? Because Bartertown is FREE, and handles feedback via the Internet Trading List or ITL which has a link on its home page. Many of us are also ebayers, so in our transactions we typically provide our ITL status as well as our ebay feedback, so we get the same results as we would from you, but at no cost.
>To suddenly have a better site than ebay is cloud cuckoo – >it will take time to evolve and tweak things as money and >time allows.
I don't think anyone expects a perfect site. I was just making the point that if you intend to compete with an established goliath, it is ideal to have something more or better to offer. To expect folks to come flocking to a site that is in many ways non-functional is also cuckoo. To parallel your argument against Bartertown – Wargamers Market – Why use it? other than a slight difference in price it is harder to use, doesn't function properly and has next to no selection. >I dont mean to be rude as a lot of your points are taken >onbaord (and to be fair are on the dev list already) but >some of it is nitpicking. I'm not sure what you consider nit picking and what is on the dev list. I appreciate as do I'm sure many others at this site that launching something like this is no small undertaking. But as many of us gamers have been soured by the over-hype and early release of computer games and the latest and greatest rules set for our minis only to find a disappointing incomplete effort. I know in my case and suspect for others who either commented or who have looked at but not joined your site it is the same sort of thing. Rather than doing an official launch before the basic functions are functional, I would have preferred and thought you might have done a beta release or more thorough testing. If you already know these problems, why would you expect users to want to use it when it isn't ready? >Consider this, from a tech point >of view the TMP forum we >are using is an inferior piece of >kit. Try vbulletin and >you will know what I mean – its like >a spaceship against a >car. (Sorry Ed but its a fair >point!). But despite this >flaw you are all still here using >it every day. So why is >that? Because it is a dedicated >gaming place that may not >be the best to look at or use, >but it has the hobby at >heart. We aren't using it because it has the hobby at heart, we are using it because it serves us well for what we do. It is better than any of the individual Yahoo groups, is easy to navigate and although the site may lack bells and whistles it works. Links connect. Searches find what we are looking for. I would rather use a dated piece of kit that works than a newer one that doesn't. >We are working with a skinner to make the site quicker to >load etc, but it takes time and money – money we are >currently losing each month along with dozens of hours of >evening work after pinning down normal jobs. So try >remembering that before having a shot because a picture >does not link etc – please keep a perspective. I have no problem with having a perspective. How were we to know any of that? One can't get a perspective if there is no material to provide any framework. All I know is what you posted on your home page (I was a member long before you posted here on TMP) Your newsletters (for perhaps obvious reasons) don't provide any insight to your difficulties. So how could we have had the perspective you suggest? >The Wargames Market is there as a low cost option for the >gaming hobby, we cannot compete with the bells and whistles >but we can do the bloody best we can with the time and >money we have. Again, as shown by our use of TMP, bells and whistles doesn't matter – functionality does. >You all support TMP – so please try and see us in the same >way and give us the same courtesy. The hobby sellers need >you to support an ebay alternative – try a few forums and >see how many are panicky about the latest ebay fee hike – >its a potential KILLER for the low volume painted miniature >sellers for example. >The WM site is about more than simple economics or being >spoilt for choice – so please try to get around the ebay >comparison in terms of functionality and support us and the >hobby sellers. I think we are all willing to support your efforts. I don't believe there is any love for ebay here. Part of the problem is to bring in the people, you need a site that works, and to afford a site that works you need to bring in people. I don't dispute anything you say about the fees being something that may well drive sellers away. In some cases, I suspect they'll see a marked increase in sales directly from their own sites. I suspect they will get more commission work. I don't expect a timetable for corrections, nor a list of valid complaints vs "nitpicks". I don't think it is unreasonable for you to ask us to give you time, push the "I Believe" button and watch for corrections. At the same time, I think it would be beneficial to let us know what you are up to in terms of corrections both here & in your news. One of your newsletters asked: "All we would love to know now is why the sellers are still not here in numbers" I suspect the issue is that price is not their only concern. You are a relatively new site with no established customer base. So if I'm looking to get my item exposure, ebay wins. If I navigate around the page and see it has the problems it does, ebay wins. BUT I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is – I have bids in already from before you posted here and I'll post things to sell there as well. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and see if the site improves, and until then, I wish you all the best. John |
 Schmitt  | 02 Feb 2008 11:23 a.m. PST |
"Bartertown – why use it?" Don't you all advetise on Bartertown?? |
| Terrement | 02 Feb 2008 7:10 p.m. PST |
My apologies to those who may be members of my yahoo groups, as you will see my note and link to the PDF that WM has put out encouraging folks to consider using their site. If you are a member of several similar groups, it may look like I'm spamming everyone. As you should know from my comments above in previous posts, that's not my intent. |
| Gearhead | 15 Feb 2008 1:24 p.m. PST |
Hi everyone, For anyone who cares to read it, here's a post I put in at DakkaDakka, after being told about the thread and joining so I could post there. In it, I try to address the main concerns about using a site like WGM, and why it's not such a bad idea after all. *ahem* By way of introduction, I'm the guy whose post (presumably on Bartertown) Rle68 read and decided to mention here. I've been a member of Bartertown, LordsotheBattlefield, CoolMiniOrNot, ClassicBattletech.com and eBay (the latter two under the name "the_knave") for many years. Morlock Bloodletter and Nuwisha asked me about this thread (ie "Gearhead, is that you?") so I thought I'd best come try to help out with the discussion. First of all, Bartertown friggin' rocks, and I do not endorse anything negative Rle68 has said about it. It doesn't even fit into this conversation. Second of all, I do not work for WargamesMarket.com. I do, however, desire very strongly for it to succeed because I'm sick of eBay putting the screws to its sellers. Some people over at CMON accused me of being a mole because I've taken the time to do some math and construct my arguments, but I started doing the math since eBay announced its latest fee changes and came up with some pretty compelling reasons to leave, which is why I went LOOKING for someplace else. Plus I have the day off and time to write. Hopefully, I'll be able to at least present a case that will make you take a look. -eBay's getting more expensive for the little guys. I'm basing everything on a hypothetical item that is given a basic listing at and sells for $9.99 USD (happens all the time.) With eBay's new fee schedule, you save $.05 USD in listing it, but then pay an extra $.35 USD in increased Final Value Fees. I'll leave it to you to decide whether "free gallery" is worth it. Wargames Market's fees are listed here: link That same $9.99 USD item would cost you absolutely NOTHING, given the same basic listing. -Ease of use: My personal experience has been that WGM is much faster and simpler to use than eBay. You can set up a lot of standard settings to be automatically entered in each listing (like terms and conditions, etc,) Once you get the hang of it (didn't take me long,) it's like falling off a log. Again, for me. What's more, there are some real fire-and-forget options. Listings can last from 3 days to 2 months, with the option of automatically relisting it for up to 10 times, FOR FREE, if it doesn't sell (or even if it does and you have more of the same.) This means that you can list a $9.99 USD item with Buy-it-now and have it run up to 20 MONTHS, and all it will cost you is the $.02 USD BIN fee. -eBay's policies are getting VERY dracoinian. I almost left when they implemented the "If you accept Paypal, you must accept ALL forms of it." That meant upgrading to a business/premier account. Last I recall, that's a 2.9% + $.35 USD fee for every payment received. That's an additional $.64 USD on your 9.99 item, which means that eBay has now bled a bit over 13% of your GROSS sales. Some people, like me, simply stopped taking PayPal. Unfortunately, new and less-than-100-feedback sellers are now being FORCED to take it. Furthermore, only power sellers are getting any kind of breaks. They get a 3% FVF rebate (oddly enough, the same amount by which FVFs have just been increased) for good performance on Detailed Feedback Ratings. Noone else gets this "break". Not only that, but this reduction in listing fees, which eBay hailed as a landmark acheivement in their original announcement of all this, is only of any benefit to the big guys. $.05 USD per item? You have to list 200 items just to save $10! -Now, the main arguments against using WGM seem to be few sellers and few buyers. The thing is not to get people to jump ship completely and immediately (though if everyone did at once, wouldn't that be effective?) but rather coax people away. If you're a seller, it takes VERY little effort to start a side operation at WGM while continuing to sell on eBay, but you can refer your eBay clients to WGM as you go along, building up the buyer base over there. It would even be possible to offer them discounts for buying at WGM and still make more: remember that 13% cut eBay and PayPal took out of your $9.99 USD sale? As for buyers who complain that there's nothing for sale- that's not an insurmountable obstacle! After all, what does it cost you to stop by and look now and then anyway? Not only that, you can ask your favorite sellers to start posting there, and tell them about how they can benefit IF everyone's willing to give it a try. There is practically no risk or effort required from ANYONE involved. Remember too that even eBay was small and relatively unknown at one time. But people gave it a chance, stuck with it, told other people, and it grew. Why not give another site the same consideration? -Some criticize WGM or its proponents of trying to get business. Even if that were the case, and they were just spamming for bucks, why should that be a problem if they are actually offering a viable service? Everyone's out to make a buck or two, and WGM's offering a way for you to pay them LESS for a service you're already using elsewhere. -Last of all (and this is why I'm taking the time and effort to write all this,) is that I honestly believe that WE, the wargamers, hobby painters, terrain makers, roleplayers, book readers, PC/console gamers, card collectors, and mini sculptors (and anyone else I failed to mention) can only gain from supporting an alternate site like WGM. They're gamers themselves, and they started the site as a place where hobbyists can sell their wares in a place friendly to their interests and which doesn't squeeze like a python every time you breathe out. I see this as a chance for gamers and hobbyists to do something for OURSELVES. And that's the whole point! eBay probably couldn't care less whether we live or die as a whole, so we're the ones that need to look out for us. And even if they did care, a healthy competing site simply means that both sites need to make sure to treat us right. Bottom line: give it a try; it doesn't have to be an immediate and complete move-over. Get your friends, associates, and favourite sellers to come with you. STICK WITH IT for a while, and see if it doesn't grow! And if you're still reading this, my heartfelt thanks for taking the time! |
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