It's a shame woot... That Thinkpad on Woot looks tempting, but I'm not buying until this disaster is straightened out.

I didn't think Woot was hit by the tornado this spring, but the web site seems to indicate otherwise.

echelon3 wrote:OK, so they Woot! team isn't listening, and the change is permanent.
I wonder if they will hear the sound of users leaving.

Agree. Woot user and loyal daily visitor since 2006. Now sadly it is not only harder to use, but looks like every other shopping site on the net. And comparing to MSRP doesn't help the deals look better. I am less and less interested in visiting and will likely find a new favorite place to visit while drinking my morning coffee if things dont get better soon.

Also agree with those wondering where the WOOT staff are? No comments, no reassurance, no acknowledgement, just big corporate silence.

Your visitors MADE YOU WHO YOU ARE. WE CAN JUST AS QUICKLY UNMAKE YOU.

Loose sight of that at your peril.

Web design 101,..
Don't put MORE crap between the customer and the info/product/purchase they want.

Based on the discussion group the majority of people hate this change, what's interesting will be to see what you do about it.

Woot was the one deal, then it spawned all the other woot sites and there was only marginal dislike (because we get that you want to make money) and the new woot stuff was off to the side out of the way and was occasionally interesting, the main thing we came here for was the same. That formula worked.

But you had to go introduce this and I can only be reminded of McDonald's "Adult Taste" campaign where they tried to make it seem like a clown was anything but a mascott to get kids in the door.

You're woot, just be woot. If you go down this road soon you'll be just like any other online store, but I thought the whole point was to NOT be like all the other online stores.

*Sitting back and waiting to see if the overwhelming majority of your user base gets listened to.*

I get it. You want to stay up on the trends, and integrate with other branches of your company, and other revenue streams. Don't. That's not why we come here. I was telling my brother yesterday to check out woot, then caught myself and told him not to visit till this beta thing passed...

The re-design makes Woot look like the bastard child of Amazon.com - busy, cluttered and full of items I have no interest in.
Oh, wait! Woot IS the bastard child of Amazon.com - congratulations, now you look like it too.

Funny, I'm not one to leave feedback, but I stumbled across this when googling "Woot site redesign fail". I had to see if it bothered anyone else as badly as it bothers me....

Clearly, it does.

Woot, I can honestly say I will never buy from you guys while the site looks like this. Its a complete and total disaster. I have no idea where to look, I dont want to have to work to impulse shop, totally ruins the experience.

Been wootin since been wootin since been wootin, no more I suppose

I'd like to know whose bright idea was to take the ONE thing that separated woot from the thousands of other retail websites out there (simplicity) and to entirely throw that out the window in favor of yet more internet noise.

This reeks of a new regime wanting to put their own stamp on things for the sole reason to justify their having a job.

It would be like new Apple CEO Tim Cook adding a bunch of extra buttons and switches and logos and flame decals to the iPad...because 'more is better' now apparently.

Sometimes the best way of doing a job is staying out of the way of success and letting things thrive. In the words of Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross: "What you are hired for, is to help us. ... Not to F**K US UP!"

Digg V4. Google it.

Ugh! Did Woot go corporate or what? Why not place more adds and hide the content -- that's a good idea!

I totally agree!

nuclearscan wrote:It seems like every instinct and sensibility that went into making woot has been abandoned. Woot's success has been as much about creating a culture as it was about the actual products. It is now indistinguishable from any other mass reseller out there. When you demote your main (description) to a thin slice at the top, and even worse hide it behind a 'read more' button, it tells the reader you believe most people find the info useless, so we'll hide it here for those that want it. I'm not a web designer, but that's the perception I get as a customer.

I really dislike the new design, but I don't care about that so much as the annoying pop-up requesting I log in every single time I visit the site. Seriously, I only want to log in when I purchase something or need to flame you over a design change.

The new design sucks.

I suppose I should add more detail. Woot is supposed to be one day, one product. You've just crappified the interface.

Seriously. The worst.

So the comments all seem to agree that this is a disaster, yet the Woot staff is unusually silent. Matt? Thunder? Bueller?? Anyone?

They need to add the tracking link back in the order shipped email. So much simpler.

PS too many posts to read so if someone else said this sorry.......

anyone else getting redirected when they use a android device? i keep getting redirected to chances to win an ipad?

Well said!
Also where the hell did my monkeys in my email go......

needlnerdz wrote:Wow - perhaps there are those who love chaos, but I find the new website a complete loss of navigation, focus, and most of all- that great personality and sense of humor that was easy to find and read. I know woot was bought x years ago and this is obviously the streamlining of the website and branching it out beyond belief to sell overstock in every category one can think of.. but the brand was been completely washed out. I used to check the site on a daily basis both for the products and funny descriptions.. but I think those days are over as the new page is simply too loud/busy and trying to do too many things all at once. Sorry for the lack of love - but I think a good thing has just been lost.

Bring back the old site (or at least part of it...)! It's a pain having to click through to get details on the item. That REALLY needs to be fixed. The Read More information needs to be on the same page as the product. If you fix that, I'll still love you.

Still haven't fixed the screen size. Bye woot, nice knowing ya.

Woot, may I make a suggestion? Along the lines of Coke Classic, how about a classic.woot.com page? It wouldn't be hard to build - you have all the original elements in the new format, just a lot of extra junk. Let the users choose.

cliffpeterson wrote:Woot, may I make a suggestion? Along the lines of Coke Classic, how about a classic.woot.com page? It wouldn't be hard to build - you have all the original elements in the new format, just a lot of extra junk. Let the users choose.

Yes! This is the only way I can see myself continuing to come to the Woot pages at all.

This may have already been mentioned but you can use www.woot.com/today to see the current woot similar to the old format.

nuclearscan wrote:It seems like every instinct and sensibility that went into making woot has been abandoned. Woot's success has been as much about creating a culture as it was about the actual products. It is now indistinguishable from any other mass reseller out there. When you demote your main (description) to a thin slice at the top, and even worse hide it behind a 'read more' button, it tells the reader you believe most people find the info useless, so we'll hide it here for those that want it. I'm not a web designer, but that's the perception I get as a customer.

this is right on the money...i can understand a little polishing or slight changes...but the site is COMPLETELY redesigned...NOT good...im going to miss going to woot on my bookmark menu with ONE CLICK and being able to see the product write-up right there...on the front page. i don't recall there being any problems with the old site. were there problems? only 'problems' i ever noticed was a server issue, and that wasn't even a problem!, that was just bottleneck bandwidth...so as i see it, there was no problem with the previous design, so this was all done for no reason. why change just to change? that makes no sense to me, woot is now just like everything else...and that really bites, this site was my getaway from the sensory overload of other online retailers...not anymore i guess.

make it right, put it back the way it was, do your customers and loyal supporters right and fix this nonsense.

Please go back to the old site design. This one is awful. Too much text density. Less is more.

Pleeeeeeeese go back.

You had it all – the full, clever story, product specs, pics that didn’t take you to another page, a sampling of comments that just whetted the whistle for more, and attractive ads to help pay the bills … ALL ON THE SAME PAGE!!! Why mess with that??? KISS - Keep it simple, stupid.

That's all I've got to say about that.

grumb wrote:So the comments all seem to agree that this is a disaster, yet the Woot staff is unusually silent. Matt? Thunder? Bueller?? Anyone?

What are they gonna say? The truth? You don't want to hear it, trust me. Here's a taste:

"We regret that our beloved regulars hate the recent changes. Nevertheless, we're really less interested in maintaining a cult following than we are in catering to the masses, so we're not that sorry to see you go. Plus we think you'll probably end up ordering stuff anyway, even though you won't have as much fun here as you used to."

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to listen to our feedback. Personally CHANGE is good. Too much change is bad. I came back from a 8 day vacation and I didn't even recognize the site. I do like the tabs at the top of the page that makes it easy to switch between pages.

I very much dislike the ads. There is way too much confusion below. I realize you (the coders) worked very hard to make the new design. I would really like the simplicity back. I will continue to woot with this new design but I would like a little bit of the old design back. Bring back the description please. I always enjoyed reading those and I hate to read. Again thank you for taking the time to read my feedback.

One of the things I liked about woot was it was so simple. Additional pages were added for shirt.woot, kid.woot, home.woot. All of that was cool cause you could simply go to that page. But now, everything on the website is so crowded and busy that I am beginning to hate looking at it. I thought it would get better with time but NO. I think it is getting worse. PLEASE go back to something simple.

jeffl777 wrote:This may have already been mentioned but you can use www.woot.com/today to see the current woot similar to the old format.

I guess I hadn't seen this. Yep, woot.com/today is pretty close. It'll be my new bookmark!

DaveD1420 wrote:Too much on the page. It looks like AOL threw up.

Actuàlly, it's Amazon throwing up.

It's the end of the Woot, as we know it.

It's apparent that a majority of the people posting, other than the "certified user interace engineer," don't care for the site design. "Loving the hate." (Really, that's the goal with designing a user 'interace?')

Anyhoo, that's the majority of people posting. Posts don't matter, they don't care about what people say.

At the end of the day, how do the sales numbers look? That is the only thing that is important.

Posts are theory, sales numbers are quantifiable and can be measured.

Stop expanding the Woot. You're corrupting the Woot. The beauty of the Woot is one product, one day and you can click on it and make a 10 second decision on whether or not you want to buy it. With all these other websites you guys are coming up with, I'm halfway expecting to come in one morning and see an entire Sears catalog of stuff.

Normally I would count myself as one of the huddled masses who gripe, complain, and moan at the slightest of changes. I mean seriously, we like the warmth and safety our little cacoons of familiarity. It makes us feel all warm and cozy for things to stay exactly the same and never change or progress. Besides that, it takes real effort to learn something new and lets face it - as a whole - the huddled masses are really just a bunch of lazy fat asses. We don't want to actually have to work at anything. Why the heck do you think we spend all day surfing Woot while we are at our "jobs"?

With that being said though, I have to admit that you guys did a great job on this redesign. I'm really impressed! The overall flow and design so intuitive that even a member of management could probably figure it out (or at least that's what we let them think). The Woot Plus items are a nice touch too. Keep up the good work!

5 years customer, $2,300 spent...and you can lose them with terrible web design and no response to negative feedback from (what appears to be) the majority of the community.

I never won a Bandolier of Carrots, but I did get to witness your Bulimia of Creativity.

Call me when you get cleaned up...

equazcion wrote:What are they gonna say? The truth? You don't want to hear it, trust me. Here's a taste:

"We regret that our beloved regulars hate the recent changes. Nevertheless, we're really less interested in maintaining a cult following than we are in catering to the masses, so we're not that sorry to see you go. Plus we think you'll probably end up ordering stuff anyway, even though you won't have as much fun here as you used to."

Now that's a quality post right there and probably as close to the truth as we're going to get in regards to the feelings of the staffers (at least until they speak out for themselves).

I HATE it.
Why make it MORE complex and tedious to use.
The old Woot, simple, whoosh ... scroll wheel ... see what I want.
New Woot, constantly throws login in my face, makes me click extra I Want One button when I don't know if I want one because I haven't seen the freaking description yet.
Why screw up a good thing with this POS.

"Ok design team, we NEED more ads on the front page, how can we go about that but still appear to be 'bettering the user experience'".

I feel like this is what the design folks were tasked with, and this crap is what you got.

Fill up the front page with crap and ads, hide the actual content behind "read more".

Really? Very transparent. People here are clearly not foolish fools and see through that.

The new design is terrible. I can't believe that it made it to beta testing. It strikes me as odd that no one at Woot! said, "hey, we might have too much crap on the front page. Do you think we should trim it down?"

I'll just stick with using Woot! Watcher for now.

This site is a bad move. It is way too cumbersome to use now. Plus I do not like the log in immediately coming up when I go to the main page.

Why are you trying to drive me away Woot? Why :-(

After giving this a few days before casting judgment, I don't see any real improvement. Things seem cluttered, and I'm afraid that it will really be awkward trying to view this on my netbook (purchased from Woot) that I use to monitor the Wootoff at work. How about adding a minimalist way to view Woot for smaller devices like my netbook, phones and tablets?