ThunderThighs wrote:No problem. Find a post by the person you want to contact and click on the envelope next to their name on that post. That'll let you send a PM.

To read them, click on the envelope in the upper right of the page to the right of the Everything But Woot tab.

It's nice that the staff has a quick reply for the easy questions and has no problem bragging about the small fixes like rewording things. But with the big issues, like the Plus deals scattered about and smothering the one item a day stuff, that a large number of people are complaining about, the staff is strangely quiet. That's alright Woot, the customers are listening as well. Our concerns are not being addressed, even if it's to say that they won't be addressed. It's obvious who's really running the site now. Just bring on the screaming monkey with the coat and tie instead of the mask and cape as a final nail in Woot's coffin. The Amazon Outlet is ready for business.

The woot write-up needs to be more front and center. Get rid of 50% of the cross promotional ads and links. The site looks like many other online retailers, which isn't a good thing. Amazon has the most cluttered product pages, which drive me crazy; don't follow their example.

Enjoy the Wootoff- I'm so disgusted with the new look I'm not participating. May your bags of crap be extra crappy, obnoxious colors, difficult to figure out, and filled with advertisements.

Caffeineismydrug wrote:Enjoy the Wootoff- I'm so disgusted with the new look I'm not participating. May your bags of crap be extra crappy, obnoxious colors, difficult to figure out, and filled with advertisements.

I must say I agree with this. Try as I might, I just cannot get interested in this Woot-Off. Farewell, Woot, we hardly knew ye!

It took me some time, but I think I'm getting used to the new setup. Good job woot. I'm proud of you.

halperez wrote:Just bring on the screaming monkey with the coat and tie instead of the mask and cape as a final nail in Woot's coffin. The Amazon Outlet is ready for business.

lol "What happened to you mannn? You used to be cool woot, what happened?."

conand19 wrote:I don't really care about the page design, etc., etc. What I care about is the items for sale. Now I see the same type of items every day for not wonderful prices. The variety and wonderful deals are gone, gone, gone. I just don't bother looking at Woot every day any more. It used to be my first stop of the day.

Ditto to that! I go days sometimes before I realize that I've failed to check in with woot. Since I usually use a cell phone app to check the products, it isn't the page redesign that does it - it's the lack of good products with good deals. Then when I go to the new page, YIKES my head starts to hurt and I want to run away.

Coupon codes are failing to apply on certain items like from moofi, and now on the Roku Streaming Media Players listed on Woot Plus.

From firebug console I see the POST request from my browser triggers an HTTP status code 500 (Internal Server Error) from the woot servers:

NetworkError: 500 Internal Server Error - https://wantone.woot.com/errors/500?aspxerrorpath=/applycoupon

conand19 and other have the basis of the problem for me--higher margins for you i am sure and your new corp sponsors/owners--but the deals just are not the same. oddball stuff that was wonderful mixed in with normal stuff--that was the old woot.

I might be a little trollish in this message, do try not to take it personally.

halperez wrote:It's nice that the staff has a quick reply for the easy questions and has no problem bragging about the small fixes like rewording things.

And sometimes the "hard" questions are rhetorical/self-serving/sarcastic and above their pay grade.

But with the big issues, like the Plus deals scattered about and smothering the one item a day stuff, that a large number of people are complaining about, the staff is strangely quiet.

Not really so strange - They're the face/voice of the company, so if they don't have a directive, there's really nothing they can say that won't get them in trouble. They're mods, they have to accept the kerfuffle and help everyone cope. If you're looking for them to agree with you when even the Newsletter said "It's not going back, everyone!" - then you're just not going to get what you want.

That's alright Woot, the customers are listening as well. Our concerns are not being addressed, even if it's to say that they won't be addressed.

Wasn't there a newsletter, blog post, and video wootcast that said that it wouldn't go back to the way it was, which everyone is clamoring for? I'm sure the ongoing suggestions for improvement on the current design are under review. They'll pick what they like out of the forum - and if enough people send it over to Beta Feedback (and it can be reasonably done with the "new" vision), I don't see why they have to tell anyone until they implement it, which could be months anyway.

It's obvious who's really running the site now. Just bring on the screaming monkey with the coat and tie instead of the mask and cape as a final nail in Woot's coffin.

That would actually be the PERFECT addition to my Secret Agent Cthulhu. AiAi B'O'C'thulhu F'thagan!

kalee11 wrote:The biggest thing I have a problem with on the front page is that I can't see all of the write-up at one time. I don't want to click "read more." The write-up is my favorite thing about Woot, and I want instant gratification when I get to the front page.

That's the one thing I hate, too.

awemaker wrote:That's the one thing I hate, too.

I sent the same thing to beta feedback. The more voices sending it in a logical manner, the better chance to be heard and/or for them to come to a equitable way of showing the write-up. During the woot-off, I took to reading the write-ups from the woot forum blogroll.

Moueska

I'm less concerned with the layout and more concerned with the general change in business practice.

inkycatz wrote:
We do hear from people who want us to just "bring it all back" but honestly, that's not going to happen. We're constantly wanting and needing to experiment in new areas and try new stuff out. There are things people will like, there are things people won't like - this happens every time a major change is made, and yeah, there were lots of changes all at once. I do know that a lot of eyes are watching though, we appreciate the feedback and hope it can stay constructive and civil.

Sorry to say it but you most certainly CAN change it back. Any company looking to make the most money does what its customer base wants. Yes companies have to move on to keep up with the ever-changing digital world but that does not mean you throw your company in the trash. Your customer base is saying largely to bring it back to the way it was before amazon took a crap in the tank and left it for us to deal with. I know that not everyone can be pleased, I would never expect that, but as a company do you want a large percentage of your "customers" unhappy? No....why is that? BECAUSE THEY LEAVE.

I hope it goes back but I won't hold my breath, the days when woot was the site to go is gone. Best of luck to you....you will need it.

Well, I'm no rocket scientist (ok, actually I am, but that's beside the point, and it ruins the literary foreplay...ok, let me start over)

Well, I'm no brain surgeon but you could very easily psuedomatically go back to the old design and have a portal.woot.com. It would be very simple to let the traffic tell you what we want since you won't listen to a bunch of petulant little shoppers who have dumped millions of dollars on your doorstep.

P.S. as a brain surgeon, I can make up words like pseudomatically and other words too, like updation and proration, and yes, I did stay at a Holiday Inn once, still got the soap too!

zoinks wrote:Well, I'm no rocket scientist (ok, actually I am, but that's beside the point, and it ruins the literary foreplay...ok, let me start over)

Well, I'm no brain surgeon but you could very easily psuedomatically go back to the old design and have a portal.woot.com. It would be very simple to let the traffic tell you what we want since you won't listen to a bunch of petulant little shoppers who have dumped millions of dollars on your doorstep.

P.S. as a brain surgeon, I can make up words like pseudomatically and other words too, like updation and proration, and yes, I did stay at a Holiday Inn once, still got the soap too!

The posts on this forum are the only reason i come to woot.com these days. This one is a classic.

Can someone from woot explain what customer-driven issues this redesign was created to address?

Maybe if there was some explanation of how this redesign solves problems other wooters were having it would be easier for everyone to understand the motivation and underlying architecture. Right now it just seems like a redesign that was executed to solve some unknown goals, and valid points from the community seem like they are being ignored.

slpieper wrote:Sorry to say it but you most certainly CAN change it back. Any company looking to make the most money does what its customer base wants.

With all of the woot-plus events that are sold out and the amount of product that their satellites are pushing out I highly doubt that they are seeing a drop in sales.

Any company looking to make the most money does not do what its customer base wants. It applies analysis to things like gross revenues and gross margin to figure out where their supply should meet the demand.

If one person buys a product that produces $100 of margin, then woot just made the same profit as selling 100 products with $1 of margin. In other words if they have increased their applicable margin after half of their customers leave, then they have been successful. I don't know their internal numbers, but the empirical evidence suggests that they are being successful.

TheRooter wrote:Coupon codes are failing to apply on certain items like from moofi, and now on the Roku Streaming Media Players listed on Woot Plus.

From firebug console I see the POST request from my browser triggers an HTTP status code 500 (Internal Server Error) from the woot servers:

NetworkError: 500 Internal Server Error - https://wantone.woot.com/errors/500?aspxerrorpath=/applycoupon

If you are having a problem with a coupon, please contact service@woot.com - they will not only verify the coupon's status, but are best equipped to help you out.

Quitting Woot after so many years. DO NOT LIKE THE NEW INTERFACE WITH ITS POPUP CRAP. Get me the woot outta here.

Moueska wrote:Wasn't there a newsletter, blog post, and video wootcast that said that it wouldn't go back to the way it was, which everyone is clamoring for? I'm sure the ongoing suggestions for improvement on the current design are under review. They'll pick what they like out of the forum - and if enough people send it over to Beta Feedback (and it can be reasonably done with the "new" vision), I don't see why they have to tell anyone until they implement it, which could be months anyway.

They said the site was not going back to the way it was but not everyone is clamoring for the site to go back to the way it was. A number of people, myself included, have presented ideas and suggestions on how to make the current version better and more tolerable. Having customers who want to go to your website increases traffic to the website. That translates to profits for the company. And they don't have to tell us anything. They can implement or not implement the suggestions without any word from the staff. But to address the small issues and talk about them in the forums as if to show they are listening to our input while ignoring the big issues as if they were never even suggested says a lot about the company.

after 5 years wooting i haven't been back since the redesign. i see this place still looks like total salt water. i'm gone for good.

adios woot. thanks for being so cool for so long. sorry to see it end.

The redesign has taken the main draw of Woot away from me. I have been buying off woot for years, and haven't bought a thing since the redesign happened.

I can no longer just hit my favorites toolbar link for woot, scan the other woot pages from the shirt site. I have to scroll down to see, or hover over the clutter bar at the top. I came to woot every night at 10pm while watching a show or playing a game. In between deaths I would glance through. If anything intrigued me I would load the page too look a little closer. You've kill the ability to do this.

I truly do not know if other people used the site in this sort of glance-and-go fashion, but its just sad to see one of my favorite sites go from such simplicity to a giant cluttered mess of ads and other offers.

I had ill feelings when I heard about the amazon buyout. I didn't think it would lead to me no longer shopping with Woot though.

Having done a few website relaunches myself I have come to the conclusion that people will always be unhappy and threaten to leave no matter what you do, but without redesign things get stale.

Stay strong, Woot. The redesign is fine, and most users will get used to it.

halperez wrote:It's nice that the staff has a quick reply for the easy questions and has no problem bragging about the small fixes like rewording things. But with the big issues, like the Plus deals scattered about and smothering the one item a day stuff, that a large number of people are complaining about, the staff is strangely quiet. That's alright Woot, the customers are listening as well. Our concerns are not being addressed, even if it's to say that they won't be addressed. It's obvious who's really running the site now. Just bring on the screaming monkey with the coat and tie instead of the mask and cape as a final nail in Woot's coffin. The Amazon Outlet is ready for business.

+1

I will just add that since the change I haven't fully read one of your ingeniously hilarious product descriptions...rarely do I click to 'read more'....and I also find it an annoying homepage...so annoying that I don't even know what the changes fully are....'busy' bores me.

Where or where is the woot I fell in love with. Sometimes change is bad.

Since the site seems so screwed for me now that I can't even SUBMIT FEEDBACK, I'll just leave what I was going to say here:

I'll start by saying the redesign LOOKS good. The cleaner interface, the polished buttons - it's a nice look and feel. However, actually using it just feels clunky - I liked my old woot where pages loaded lightning fast, the descriptions of the products were available on their page, as well as the close-ups of the item. I'm not sure if this is an attempt to get more page views, or squeeze more stuff on the home page, but I'm not a fan. Also, I've had more issues trying to share woot stuff with friends/viewing things myself since the change. I wasn't able to access the site at all most of the morning yesterday, and I received an error when I tried to order shirts today. After going back to click the big yellow button, I was told they were ordered, but on clicking "shirt woot" at the top, the page just hung. I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but between the old site and the new one, I'll pick the old one every single time - it told me what I was buying and let me do it fast.

Interesting to see so much backlash over the site redesign. Here's my two cents (not that anyone asked):

For starters, I like the fact that there are more items to browse through and that some items are available for longer than one day. It's especially nice that I can get an overview of much of what is available without having to click through pages. I spend more time at the home page than I used to, and I find that I'm buying more stuff because there is more stuff that I'm potentially interested in. (Having said that, I think the amount of things that Woot currently offers is just about right, in that if you offer too many things, then it becomes too difficult to browse through the deals and I might as well just be shopping at an online store.)

I don't much care about the descriptions, as I rarely ever read them completely anyway, but for me, the humor is part of the character of the site, so it's less important that I read them and more important that they're there at all. I want Woot to feel like Woot, so I'm fine with having to click through to read the descriptions on the occasions that I want to.

People have mentioned that the site is cluttered and filled with ads... I wouldn't know, because I don't see them. Sorry Woot, nothing personal, but I enjoy my web experience ad-free; besides, you clearly have loads of other people generating plenty of ad revenue for you. As for the layout itself, minus the ads, it looks fine to me. I like it for the reasons I've already mentioned.

I don't want to make assumptions about others, but it does sound like maybe at least a few of the people complaining about the site are upset simply because it's different. While I lament the loss of things I like, I realize that things rarely stay the same and it's much easier to just accept that and learn to live with it than staying angry about something ultimately insignificant... provided that the changes don't completely ruin the site, of course. I certainly don't think that is the case.

Of course, I don't mean to insinuate that there isn't any deserved criticism, or that the comments have been completely nonconstructive, which is probably more than I can say about my own. I guess I just felt I should project some positivity towards the redesign because I don't think it's nearly that bad.

FritoBandito wrote:Can someone from woot explain what customer-driven issues this redesign was created to address?

Maybe if there was some explanation of how this redesign solves problems other wooters were having it would be easier for everyone to understand the motivation and underlying architecture. Right now it just seems like a redesign that was executed to solve some unknown goals, and valid points from the community seem like they are being ignored.

I'm almost positive that the redesign had nothing to do with any kind of customer issues. Surely they did it to expand their business. Do people honestly expect Woot not to grow?

TomAE wrote:Having done a few website relaunches myself I have come to the conclusion that people will always be unhappy and threaten to leave no matter what you do, but without redesign things get stale.

Stay strong, Woot. The redesign is fine, and most users will get used to it.

I agree 100%. It's rather bizarre how attached people get to web site designs.

rarson wrote:I'm almost positive that the redesign had nothing to do with any kind of customer issues. Surely they did it to expand their business. Do people honestly expect Woot not to grow?

I expect woot to grow. I like the idea of woot plus. I just feel that the plus deals were implemented in the wrong way. They are scattered throughout the 6-7 "portal" pages. This pushes the "one item a day" down a level where the customer has to 'continue reading' to get to it. When I go to sport.woot, I want to see the sport.woot deal. When I scroll to the bottom of the page or look at the daily deals in the email and an item in sport.woot doesn't interest me, I don't go there. The plus deals spread out over 7 pages are not enticing enough to visit all of the pages if the main deal isn't interesting to me. But creating a "Plus" tab at the top would increase traffic to the woot plus deals because I would check it out. I would see all of the plus deals I missed in the individual pages I didn't visit. I don't think I'm alone in my visiting habits.

I heard about woot from a friend and I've told a number of people about woot when its theme was one item a day. With the exception of CNet's Cheapskate, I've never seen Woot promoted. It seems that Woot's promotion is primarily by word of mouth from its customers. So it really surprises me how much the feedback from its customers has simply been ignored.

I decided to wait until I had a chance to get used to the new design. For the most part I don't mind the new design. Things I like include:

• $5 shipping - would like Prime shipping even more
• the added deals...mostly (see below)
• being able to preview the items from the top bar

• the product description - the thing that is uniquely Woot - is now hidden. This should be prominent on the front page. I find I rarely click through to read them anymore. I am primarily on my tablet - and clicking the link is not as simple as just clicking with a mouse. It completely disrupts the flow. When I have clicked through, I have to start reading over again to get the flow back. This has taken the fun/magic/enjoyment out of the best art of Woot.
  
• the new design is too busy. It is distracting and confusing. Over time I have learned where things are - but I have not adjusted to the over all busy feeling. I find myself spending less and less time on Woot...somedays forgetting to drop by at all.
  
• lack of diversity in products. It may not be factually true, but it feels like there is less variety these days. It also seems to have less of the quirky items that you pretty much did not know exist (Leak Frog) let alone wanted until you Wooted.
  

Pixel wrote:I decided to wait until I had a chance to get used to the new design. For the most part I don't mind the new design. Things I like include:

• $5 shipping - would like Prime shipping even more
• the added deals...mostly (see below)
• being able to preview the items from the top bar

There are three main things I think are wrong with the New Woot:

• the product description - the thing that is uniquely Woot - is now hidden. This should be prominent on the front page. I find I rarely click through to read them anymore. I am primarily on my tablet - and clicking the link is not as simple as just clicking with a mouse. It completely disrupts the flow. When I have clicked through, I have to start reading over again to get the flow back. This has taken the fun/magic/enjoyment out of the best art of Woot.
  
• the new design is too busy. It is distracting and confusing. Over time I have learned where things are - but I have not adjusted to the over all busy feeling. I find myself spending less and less time on Woot...somedays forgetting to drop by at all.
  
• lack of diversity in products. It may not be factually true, but it feels like there is less variety these days. It also seems to have less of the quirky items that you pretty much did not know exist (Leak Frog) let alone wanted until you Wooted.
  

Overall, while I still like to check the deals, I find less reasons to visit daily and when I do visit less reasons to hang around.

Well said!

Adapting, but not liking it.
Visiting less the main site, but still reading the forums on WW.
Couldn't give a R@t's A$$ about tweets; waste of pixels.

Bring back true time stamps, so I can pick up where I was; "hours ago" is worthless, to me.

"stuff you bought" is nearly totally worthless. Used to all be on a single page and I could do a 'page find' to locate a previous purchase; quickly, easily. I feel my now 24 pages of cr@p I have to page through to find an earlier purchase will expand much more slowly, as I visit and purchase less.

Tracking numbers; really have to dig for them now. Used to be easy to find, not now.

Woot Order Tracking Number, Yeah, that's useful email, a tracking number right in the email, not clicks away.

Your *%#&@! Red Rhone Blend (Random) order from Woot has shipped - #40064352 not so much.

halperez wrote:When I go to sport.woot, I want to see the sport.woot deal.

I still personally feel that having extra deals is worth the trade-off of having to click a few times.

halperez wrote:So it really surprises me how much the feedback from its customers has simply been ignored.

Everyone seems to be assuming that Woot is ignoring them. I very much doubt this is the case, considering Woot is bothering to reply to anyone at all. If all someone says is "I hate the new page, you should change it back!" then OF COURSE they're going to ignore you because they already told you that it's not coming back, and your "feedback" is entirely useless. Responding to those type of comments does nothing.

Now if you're offering actual constructive feedback, like your Plus tab idea, then that's great, but I still don't think that just because Woot doesn't comment on it means that they haven't read or considered your suggestion. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Woot is attempting to improve the site and is carefully considering the constructive feedback it's receiving.

It's going to take time to implement changes. People seem to be barraging them with a ton of comments and then complaining when they're not immediately implemented. I'm sure when they've got something ready, they'll tell us. We'll just have to wait and see.

rarson wrote:I'm almost positive that the redesign had nothing to do with any kind of customer issues. Surely they did it to expand their business. Do people honestly expect Woot not to grow?

As I understand it Woot was already one of the fastest growing businesses up until the time Amazon bought it. They had (past tense) a formula that worked.

rarson wrote:I still personally feel that having extra deals is worth the trade-off of having to click a few times.

Everyone seems to be assuming that Woot is ignoring them. I very much doubt this is the case, considering Woot is bothering to reply to anyone at all. If all someone says is "I hate the new page, you should change it back!" then OF COURSE they're going to ignore you because they already told you that it's not coming back, and your "feedback" is entirely useless. Responding to those type of comments does nothing.

Now if you're offering actual constructive feedback, like your Plus tab idea, then that's great, but I still don't think that just because Woot doesn't comment on it means that they haven't read or considered your suggestion. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Woot is attempting to improve the site and is carefully considering the constructive feedback it's receiving.

It's going to take time to implement changes. People seem to be barraging them with a ton of comments and then complaining when they're not immediately implemented. I'm sure when they've got something ready, they'll tell us. We'll just have to wait and see.

The "value" of the plus deals are where we have a difference of opinion. And there's nothing wrong with that. None of the "main" woot deals today interested me so I did not go beyond the woot.com/today page. I did not see any plus deal. The plus deals, being impulse buys, aren't worth going searching around the site for. I suspect you went through all of the pages and looked at all of the deals. The format of the page as a portal instead of a deal has turned off a lot of people and they are saying that they check the sites with less and less frequency because of that. Now my background is in computers, explosives, and law enforcement. A strange combination, I know. But even though I do not have a business or a marketing background, I'm pretty sure that the goal of woot would be to increase traffic to their site. I don't know the internal numbers but the majority of the people who are vocal seem to indicate that the opposite effect has been achieved. If the vocal majority is to be believed, reversing the trend should be a priority in my opinion.

I have no choice but to assume that woot is ignoring the complaints because woot has not given me any other option. In the interest of transparency and appreciation for the requested feedback, woot has not stated what they are working on. Why is that important? Again, if the customers are to be taken at their word, some of them are leaving. The new 'beta' site is too much of a turnoff. If they know that some changes are coming that address their concerns, they might not be so quick to leave.

And woot doesn't seem to mention all of their 'fixes' either. If you click on the word "sport!" at the top of the page, you are taken to the woot sport portal. (I hate that word, portal. It comes across as a last minute explanation to avoid having to fix things.) But if you click on the picture in the popup, you go straight to the /today page, allowing you to instantly see what the vocal majority comes to see, the one item a day in that category. The downside to woot is that the shopper misses the plus deals. Another reason for a dedicated plus tab.

Man, I got bitten by a site bug today.

I ordered the KitchenAid 12-piece set with expedited shipping. The page tried to load for a minute or so, then I got a 404 page. I clicked back and tried again - another 404 page.

I submitted a form to contact support, then got two emails congratulating me on my two new sets of cookware. I immediately tried to cancel one of the orders, and was told "Sorry, we ship faster now, so can't change anything".

So I'm out an additional $200 until the package arrives, I mail back for a return sticker, and hopefully a full refund including shipping cost. Hopefully won't take more than a couple of weeks, because I could really use that $200 for buying other things.

It stinks a bit, since the Woot philosophy is "hurry and get it, because it might sell out!". I guess I'll have to keep that in mind in the future, that if some glitch pops up, I had better wait, check my email a few times, (or my account page, in hindsight), then think about trying again.

I guess all good things must die eventually, Woot I miss you but I won't cry...gone way of the ebay!