Quick Revamp Update, Thoughts on Beckett’s New Site
August 20th, 2008No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet.
I’ve been diligently using my free time to work on revamping SportsLizard. This whole Beckett fiasco (the site sucking, not the fixed box breaks) has only made me put more emphasis on providing a product that’s free, easy to use, and helpful to collectors and to sellers. While the existing SportsLizard is certainly a solid site, the planned revamp with a new look will certainly be ten-fold upgrade in my opinion. With that, I’m pushing back the planned re-launch until mid/late September to give me time to significantly overhaul the price guide (soon to be called “pricing tool”) and to upgrade/improve everything else SportsLizard offers.
While I’m on the topic of Beckett’s new site: I see what they are trying to do. In theory, their approach isn’t a bad one. But in completely changing things around and making the site not very intuitive to it’s masses they pissed a lot of people off. You should never ever ever alienate your existing audience with an upgrade. Telling people to “give it time” or to “watch the tutorials” is retarded - a sports collectibles site shouldn’t need to a tutorial to navigate. If your customers are pushing back as much as the collecting community is, your best bet is to scratch the whole thing, call this “beta” a failure, and go back to the way it used to be. Clean up some of the mess but keep the core functionality the same. The longer you go on with this, the more you will piss people off. Trust me, it won’t get better.
Then again, maybe Beckett screwing up like this is just what the hobby needs to break away from them.
Oh, and if you’re craving a fresh perspective and more frequent updates, swing over to Sports Cards Uncensored - quickly becoming a “must read” for me.
August 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for the vote of confidence, its appreciated!
As for beckett, they destroyed the one thing that made them relevant at all these days when they got rid of the centralized message board. Good job, idiots.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:18 am
The whole thing reminds me of the great Fark brouhaha of 2007. Fark.com sprung a revamp of their site unannounced and freaked out a lot of their paying customers. The changes were mostly cosmetic, and the few bugs in the system were minor and would be dealt with very easily. Unfortunately, one of the chief mods on the site told everyone “You’ll get over it” when the complaining started, which triggered a full blown uprising, then the banhammers started falling and everything went completely to hell. A large chunk of their customer base bolted and never came back.
Reddit.com did something similar earlier this year but they kept their users updated and involved throughout the process and took constructive criticism during the Beta and everything went smooth as silk.
I didn’t use Beckett.com for much other than occasional news items and maybe a peek into the forums from time to time, but it looks like Beckett used the Drew Curtis model of forcing changes down paying customer’s throats.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Seems they are still in denial, I struck a nerve - I posted a straight-talk reply in the new Beckett forums, and they deleted my post and locked the “Why I hate the new site” thread. They are going down in a ball of flames.
By the way, nice site! Give ‘em hell!
September 16th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Thanks Jim!
May 10th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I’m thinking that their new site is going to become a training exercise for my students on site design. I’m always on the lookout for bad websites and bad documentation for them to use as live-ammo drills. This is one of the worst.
I am sorry to say that Beckett.com has gone into the category of “A company with a great future behind them.” Their blissful denial about how many gpm of canal water they’re sucking is fascinating. It makes me wonder who really designed the new website and (consequently) has their ego wrapped around defending it. Were it one of MY employees who’d done this, they’d not just be history, they’d become geography.