UPDATE: Post your feedback and comments at the bottom of this post on at least two of our new page designs and enter to win one of two free $150 Pegasus Lighting gift certificates (you could also win one of ten battery operated LED puck lights). This contest ends March 31, 2010. Click here for additional details.
This year promises to be an exciting one for Pegasus Associates Lighting and our customers. In our constant effort to provide you with an excellent user experience and a website that is a “learning experience in lighting,” we are redesigning our website and adding many new features. The goal? A sleeker design that is easier to navigate and read, additional features to help you find the right lighting product for your project, and a smoother product purchasing process.
While we are still finalizing the details, we want your feedback. We’ve prepared a page on our website for you to visit to view all of our new pages and compare to the current site. Please share any comments you have by commenting below in this blog post. By telling us what you like (and don’t like) about the new site, we will be able to tailor it to provide the best possible user experience for you.
At this time our new pages are static representations of what the new website will look like. They are not fully functional web pages yet. However, once we do have a portion of our new website built we will make an announcement in our blog, our Facebook fan page, and our Twitter account, and you will be able to check out the beta version of the new site.
A New Design
Here are some of the design changes that you will see across the entire new website:
A slight name change – We are shortening our name from Pegasus Associates Lighting to just Pegasus Lighting. As a result, our domain name will change from PegasusAssociates.com to PegasusLighting.com and our logo will be updated. While our domain name is changing, any bookmarks that you currently have for our website will work. You will automatically be forwarded to the new website and page.- We are widening our pages, increasing our font size, and introducing a cleaner look to make our site easier to read.
- A new top navigation bar with simpler navigation categories. In addition, there will be a better focus on our professional discounts, project quotations process, and sale products.
- Our search box is becoming more visible by moving it to the top-center of every page.
New Website Features
Along with our new website design, we will be introducing a number of new features that many of our customers have asked us for in the past and some that will help with navigation, finding information, and speeding up the ordering process:
- Customer Account Registration – The ability to save your shipping and billing addresses, create a wish list of lighting products you are interested in but not yet ready to purchase, and view your order history are some of the benefits you will enjoy by creating a customer account with our new My Account feature.
A mini-shopping cart – When you add products to your online shopping cart you will no longer be taken off the page you are on. Moreover, you will always be able to view the items in your cart with our new mini-shopping cart located at the top-right of our website. In addition, you will be able to change the quantity of items in your cart, remove items if necessary, and determine your shipping costs all without leaving your current page.- Product Reviews – Tell us, and everyone else, what you thought of your Pegasus Lighting product. You will be able to submit star ratings (from 1 to 5) and written product reviews of every product on our website. Your product reviews will help us make sure we are offering our customers the very best unique lighting products and help others make decisions on their own lighting projects. For every product with a review, the top of that product’s page will show its star rating.
- More visible product images – Up to nine product images visible on each product page, one main image and up to eight thumbnail images. Moving your mouse over any of the smaller images will change the main image. Clicking on any of the images will open that image in its largest view and allow you to scroll through all of the images for that product, up to 15! In addition, many of our products will also have images that you can zoom into, rotate, and/or pivot.
- Multi-Add to Cart – This feature will be available on the Accessories tab on our product pages as well as those lighting products that are made up of components, like our Xenon Light Strip and mini-pendant lights. Our new Multi-Add to Cart will allow you to select quantities of multiple products and add them to your cart at one time all without leaving the page you are on.
- Advanced Filtering and Category-specific navigation – Our new category pages will have two ways that you can browse and find your lighting product. We will have a new top-left navigation with predefined filters specific to the type of lighting products you are viewing and a new advanced filtering system that will allow you to select multiple product attributes that are important to you, like price and finish, and view only those types of products.
- Wait, there’s even more! Related products will be suggested to help you find just the right lighting product for your project in our new Related Items and You Might Also Like sections; the five most recently viewed items are kept for you in case you want to go back and look at that product again; and when viewing a category page with multiple lighting products you can view all of those products within that category on one page or just a certain number at a time.
While A Lot is Changing A Lot is Staying the Same
But don’t worry, while a lot is changing, a lot is also staying the same. We will continue to provide the “unique lighting products for your special needs” that you have come to expect from us, present a website that is a “learning experience in lighting,” and provide fantastic customer service that won’t soon be forgotten. In fact our new website furthers our company mission to be friendly, helpful, efficient, and enlightening by blending state-of-the-art technology with the personal touch of outstanding customer service and an information-rich website.
We cannot wait to hear what you think of our new website. Please be absolutely frank and honest in your opinions. Check out our new design templates and let us know what you think!
For me that sounds interesting, who knows what the future will bring… Let´s wait for it…
I am unquestionably bookmarking this website and sharing it with my acquaintances.
Entry for the contest:
**Multi-add-to-cart page**
Having just purchased a raftload of Xenon undercabinet lighting, including spare lamps (I’m in it for the long haul) and connector cables, this is an overdue improvement. I needed different quantities of each length, plus the lamp bulbs, plus the cables. That meant a separate trip to the shopping cart for each model, changing the quantity for each model, and then back to the product page. (It was helpful to have a link to that back from the shopping cart in the current page.) The new multi-add page is more like the “Bill of Goods” list that I constructed (using Circus Ponies’ “Notebook”—an awesome Mac application) prior to shopping.
**Category page**
The biggest improvement here is visual. The current page has text blocks that appear to be the same size as the graphics—very hard to navigate. The new page features the graphics, allowing for a “visual encyclopedia” method of browsing what is available. Much easier on the eye and easier to navigate.
Looking forward to the improvements!
I appreciate what it took for the great photos on the website. This helps me show customers what to expect.
And the ease of doing a live chat or requesting a call me is great customer service.
I love how your website groups lighting both by type (I can find an energy efficient pendant) and also by function: display lighting, indirect lighting, etc. I like the central location of the search box on the new homepage, but I find the homepage a bit graphically cluttered. Maybe it’s the big red box that says “undercounter lighting.” You have good quality products, but this presentation looks a bit like Walmart to me.
The new home page has a much bigger visual impact than the current one. It is clear, simple, and direct. The new look is sleek and efficient.
All of the new features make the searching/shopping experience very streamlined and a breeze- whether it is for a new customer or a regular. I already preferred your site above all of the other lighting websites I have seen in this market…the new website will put Pegasus that much more above all of it’s competitors.
Pegasus has a very comprehensive supply of lighting- the new changes will make it much simpler to navigate through the product selection and will definitely provide the best experience for the customer.
Job well done! 🙂
As was noted in Pegasus’s earlier post, there was a need for a less confusing way to purchase multiple items that were needed for assembly of a complete working product. Your new page design (Multi-Add to Cart) should eliminate much of the confusion.
Your description of the process and page design is good. However, people sometimes don’t read, make mistakes, or just plain forget to acquire all the necessary components.
My only suggestion (this may take a bit of programing) is to check each Multi-Add to Cart order and *boldly* ask the customer if he/she forgot X in his order (X is what is missing from the order that would normally permit the main component to function). If the customer indicates that he/she did forget, have the page provide the customer a link to the page where he/she could purchase the missing component.
I hope this suggestion is useful.
Sawhorse – your suggestion about boldly asking the customer if he/she forgot anything in the order is a good one. In fact, we have been tossing that idea around but are a little unsure of how exactly we could do it from both a product perspective (how to handle all of the permutations of some of the component products) and a programming perspective. We will continue to explore this and see what we can do about it in the future. Thanks for the feedback!
Nicolette – We agree with you that the new home page shown in these examples looks a little cluttered. I think that our main “under cabinet lighting” image shows too many products and that really competes with all of the other stuff on the new home page design. With our new website, we will be rotating our two main home page images on a regular basis…like we do now. In fact our current home page images rotate on a monthly basis based upon the topics of our monthly email newsletter. So, the kind of “busy” home page you see now should be cleaned up when the new site goes live this summer. Thanks for your feedback!
Ok.
The behind-the-scenes modifications read like the correct and overdue changes, that’s for sure.
Everyone agrees about the visual clutter. But, perhaps, the need may be to clarify the THINKING:
What do customers want?
Are more customers finding and using the site to shop by FUNCTION, by LIGHTING TYPE, or by LOCATION? Or something else?
Do different front pages display, depending upon what keywords shoppers click?
As for what customers want to see on the front page, imagine, for example:
(1) a picture of a house, with flags highlighting what Pegasus has to offer for specific rooms.
And next,
(2) a ‘parts bin,’ with Fluorescent, Halogen, Xenon and LED bins.
And so on.
Very 90’s, right? And not something anyone really wants to maintain, these days.
But, if customers saw that first, what would they do next?
re: product page changes.
Mostly ok. By the bottom third of the page, I was ready to move away. You want customers to see and recognize all the cool stuff you offer and the social-networking aspects of your coolness, but I was ready to ignore it. Having the pictures in the sidebar on the right works pretty well, but I would caution you to consider mobile users, who will need to see very different versions of all this, and much abbreviated at that, of course.
Mark – thanks for all of your great comments. Allow me to answer some of the questions that you asked…
Are more customers finding and using the site to shop by Function, Lighting Type or by Location? Or something else? The truth…I don’t know for 100% sure. I do know that many of our customers do not use our site search box to find what they are looking for. Instead everyone uses our left-hand navigation. Based upon what I see I think that most people use our site to search by lighting type, or lighting fixture. One of the things that we wanted to do with our new top-navigation was to use the term “Light Fixtures” instead of just “Fixture Type.” This added the important term “Lighting” so that people knew they were going to find lighting products and not plumbing fixtures 🙂 Also, we are trying to create new navigation paths for the two types of customers that come to our website. While many of our customers are looking for lighting for their home, we have a large number that are looking for lighting for their commercial spaces (restaurants, museums, offices, etc.) So, we created our new navigation categories of “Residential Lighting” and “Commercial Lighting” to help with those people who are browsing by application instead of just a particular lighting product.
Will customers see different front pages depending upon what keywords shoppers click? Not at this time. However, that is a good idea. I will keep that in the back of mind for future enhancements to the website.
I also like your idea about a picture of a house with flags highlighting what Pegasus Lighting has to offer for specific rooms. While I don’t think this should be on our home page (since many website visitors are also looking for commercial lighting) it is a good concept to use once we know that a website visitor is looking for residential lighting. I will keep this one in the back of mind for future enhancements to the website as well.
The “parts bin” idea is a good one too…thanks so much for sharing this idea and your others. They have definitely given me “food for thought” for later versions of the site.
Mark – You mention mobile users…you are right. I am finding that more and more people are browsing our site from their iPhones, iPod Touches, Blackberries, Android phones, etc. It is true that our new website really does not have the mobile user in mind. In fact, we are expanding the page width of our new website…clearly not a good idea for mobile users.
After our new website goes live we will begin exploring ways that we can have a mobile version of our website. At this time we don’t know how we will do it. We are not even sure if the first iteration of a mobile website will allow people to shop from it…having a shopping cart that is also ready for a mobile device is key. We will need to figure out how visitors would use a mobile version of our site. First, do they want to shop from their phone? Are they comfortable with this “idea?” Or, are they looking for lighting information (our Glossary, FAQs, Lighting Tips) or comparing product information while they are in a store? I don’t know these answers yet.
While our new website design is not really built for the mobile device, we have started to do some things for our mobile users:
1 – Our blog now has a mobile version.
2 – We are currently developing a “Lighting Library” iPhone app. Users would be able to look up lighting terms from our glossary and review lighting tips and lighting FAQs. Once we see how many people actually use this app on an iPhone, we might build ones for Blackberry and Android phones. If the app is used, we would then add more capabilities like RSS feeds from our blog sent directly to the app. It is my hope that our new iPhone app will be ready by mid-April.
I like the wider format and the pictures on the home page, make it seem warmer and more inviting to browse. On the other hand, for someone who knows exactly what they want, the elimination of the navigation list on the left, means that those users will have to search a bit more for what they’re looking for.
I also like the focus on Commercial vs. Residential customers. That could allow additional features for customers, for example, commercial accounts that buy in volume could have their own special offers after they login, or could promote different products than residential, etc. The new My Account feature is a great idea.
I like the way the new product page takes advantage of the extra width by allowing more info to be displayed without navigating to another page. The drop down menus for ordering separate the ordering process from the information gathering process, which is a good idea. I noticed that you added some new info on product reviews. What will be presented there vs. customer comments?
I think the new category page looks like it will be easier to navigate.
Overall, the new site is a great improvement over the present site and the features like multi-add cart and mini-shopping cart will make the purchase experience easier.
Dave – Removing the left-hand navigation is definitely a big change and one that we are, to be honest, a little anxious about. However, we do believe the new navigation categories and regaining the real estate on the page that the left-hand navigation took up is definitely worth the switch.
You asked, “what is the difference between Customer Comments and Product Reviews?” Well, product reviews are those reviews that we will receive directly through the new product review program on every product page on the new website. Customer comments are those comments we receive through different channels. A lot of our customers provide us product comments using our Contact Us page on our website, our online customer survey, comments in their orders, etc. These are the type of comments that will be presented on the Customer Comments tab.
Thanks so much for your feedback.
I like the shorter name and clean look. I especially like that you can open 9 products on one page. Great for comparison
I like the new layout and look of the website. Having a my account section will definately aide in ordering the same item bought previously.
In the checkout it would be nice to have a section to enter a Purchase Order number, instead of placing it in the comments section. This could then be carried over to the billing invoice.
Susan:
Hello and welcome to our blog! Thanks for the feedback on the new website design.
Your Purchase Order section in the checkout is a good idea. We will look for ways to try to incorporate this concept after the new site goes live.
I spend most of my time looking at websites and looking for ways to improve them and their overall functionality. It looks like there is an excellent project manager keeping the wheels spinning here.