I've always preferred AmiAmi to other stores: it offers best prices with very nice customer service. The new 'Pre-owned items' section has sticked me to this shop even more: no worrying about Mandarake's additional fees, multiple shops, 5-day limit, large box shipping, translation from Japanese... Of course AmiAmi's used stock is smaller than Mandarake's and it has other drawbacks as well, but I am now more willing to get everything from one place I trust.
So as a glad customer, I decided to contribute some thoughts that could make shopping at AmiAmi even easier. I have written them down here and I may add your options later, so that once the subject is discussed, I can send AmiAmi a letter pointing here. Of course it will be up to them to decide on what to implement and whether to listen to us at all, but I still think it is a nice idea:) So, here is the list.
1. Product status accuracy (in stock/back-order/sold out) in list view.
One of the many annoying things of AmiAmi site is that product statuses in the item page and in the product list are not same. It's like the item page requests the important availability information from the database, but the lists use some really old cached information that rarely gets updated, so from time to time the lists statuses end up lying or just staying empty at all. It may be helping to lower the load on the server, but it is a pain to manually check the statuses of all the old items in a specific search, or when browsing the fast-to-go pre-owned items and sale items. At least decreasing cache intervals can partly solve the problem; however I believe that pre-owned items and sale items lists should always be real-time.
2. Color coding product statuses with tinted background/colored border of item cell/colored price in list view.
The feature I miss a lot from the former AmiAmi site is the gray item background for sold-out items. Imagine the following scenario: you have watched a great but not new show and would like to know if there's anything still left on it at AmiAmi; you search AmiAmi and get several pages of items that have different statuses printed in tiniest letters, which do not even correspond to the actual status (see point 1 above!).
Color coding has always been an important part of website usability, as well as of daily life. It's like, green is good, red is bad or not ready, yellow is something to wait for or just attention, blue is neutral functional (colors may differ slightly from country to country, but the main idea is still there). AmiAmi is trying to use color coding in item labels, but they are not always labels (e.g. 'sold out' is text) and are still really small.
So what I suggest is:
a) adding a light color tint to the backgrounds or
b) applying color borders to the table cells of the items or
c) coloring the price
in all product list views.
The first two options can make the site look too colorful but very informative, while the price option will be the most neutral yet less effective. This can make browsing and shopping really fast, as you will get the information intuitively and will not need to look for that small text somewhere between the title and the price. The possible color schemes are:
A (makes most sense to me):
* blue for pre-order
* green for in-stock
* yellow for back-order
* gray/red for sold out
B (almost follows the current AmiAmi label colors):
* red for pre-order
* blue for in-stock
* yellow/orange/green for back-order
* gray for sold out
C:
* red for pre-order
* green for in-stock
* blue for back-order
* gray for sold out
D (conflicts with current red price):
* yellow/orange for pre-order
* blue or green for in-stock
* gray for back-order
* red for sold out
Pre-owned, re-release, restock labels can be left intact as they are not product statuses. BTW, pre-owned could be yellow (if the color is not used elsewhere) instead of the current gray that associates with 'unavailable'.
Of course, if color coding is implemented, then solving problem in point 1 is a prerequisite, as otherwise explicitly displaying incorrect information will NOT be good.
3. More flexible product status filtering.
This feature is already partially implemented, but it is presented in a bizarre unintuitive way that is not flexible at all and that gives you everything in one huge list. In short what I suggest is several checkboxes that are added to the top of all list views. These checkboxes (and one dropdown list) may look as follows:
The checkboxes can be activated via Javascript or via a 'apply filter' button.
Imagine the following scenario: you have a single small item in you order for this month and you are willing to add something to it if it's something nice - as you would save a lot on shipping; or you may want it with a future pre-order for a specific month. Finding that item with such a filtering system would be a piece of cake - and all the required data is already in the database, it's just the UI that is changing.
4. Getting rid of sold out items in 'Sale' and 'Pre-owned' sections.
I've seen several times that sold out items pile up in these sections for a long time. If database management for these items is difficult, the user-side filtering system as suggested in point 3 can 'fix' it easily.
5. Wrong statuses and links in 'Pre-owned' section.
There are several bugs I currently see there:
* The status of the item in the main list represents the status of the brand-new item, not the pre-owned item. This is very, very confusing! The status for the actual catalog item should be displayed.
* If a brand new item is present in the database along with the used one, then the 'pre-owned' label is not displayed, and when clicked the link points to the brand new item and not to the used -R000N item. This is, again, very confusing (especially because many brand new items are already sold out when a used one pops up) to an extent that a not very attentive user will not see the offer and, of course, will not buy it at all.
* Some items do have a 'pre-owned' label, and some do not. Yet all of them are pre-owned, but the label is only displayed for the items that exist solely as pre-owned and do not have a brand new 'parent' in the database. However, the label is also always displayed on the main page of the section.
* What about item sorting? I can't see any particular logic in it. Alphabetical sorting is so much more logical.
6. Confusing main page in 'Pre-owned' section / some categories missing (partially fixed).
* My belief is that the main page of any section should contain all its items in a list with page navigation, and not just some semi-randomly chosen (say, featured) items to display. In 'Pre-owned items' this is confusing to an extent that I have already caught myself treating it as a complete uncategorized list and missing an item as a result (can't tell for sure if the same is happening at 'Sale items'). If there is a specific marketing reason the items should be there in the way they are, it must be explicitly stated that these are featured items and not a full list - like that 'Newly added items' headline says in the 'Bishoujo' category.
* Some items in this section exist only at the main page and do not exist in any other category, resulting in a need to watch both the main page and a category, which is extremely weird. This is primarily happening to game prizes, as far as I can see. Pure logic says that any item should belong to at least one category; if it's only the game-prizes that are missing, then a corresponding category should be added next to the 'Bishoujo figures', 'Character figures' etc.
7. 'Pre-owned item available' note for items in catalog.
It happens that an item you look for is stated in the list as sold out and you go past it, while there is actually a pre-owned item like it available. Showing it in the catalog list and not only on the item page would be nice.
8. Maximum price error ('-1% - -1% OFF 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 - -1 JPY' price). (UPDATE: And zero price error.)
Items with an error price appear in the database from time to time. The item then becomes unavailable, and its page only gives an error.
9. Option to cancel automatic conversion to SAL Parcel when products do not fit a single SAL box.
I've calculated that shipping 2 separate SAL Reg boxes is cheaper than shipping a single SAL Parcel, but I have to manually write to customer service and ask them to separate the order into 2 boxes. Though customer service at AmiAmi is always very polite and nice to talk to, I do not like to bother them with an additional letter:)
All that is required is a simple checkbox in the order management form under the SAL radio button, like this:
10. 'Notes' field in order placement page.
It may be an alternative to point 8 or a separate feature. It may be useful for passing useful information on the order directly with the order and not through e-mail.
11. Item dimensions database for automatic shipping calculation / AmiAmi boxes and packaging information.
As the total figure cost for a customer includes shipping, it sometimes happens that a decision on buying the so called 'padding' is made upon a fact that the extra item will or will not fit into the box. I agree this is a rare case and people who really want a specific figure will buy it anyway, so the whole implementation might not be worth it, but this is kind of user comfort feature. It works at Plamoya and I think it has been added to HLJ recently as well (not sure). As filling the database with dimensions (especially for old rare used items) can be really time and money consuming, at least some information on what sizes AmiAmi boxes are and how much space is reserved for packaging might help - you can always look up the dimensions at HobbySearch and calculate it all manually.
A specific case such information will also be useful in is if you combine pre-order items and several in-stock items in a way that will generate multiple boxes anyway: you could get an already filled box shipped straight away, and not surprising the customs people out there with your loot:)
12. Splitting orders through the user account page.
As in the scenario in point 11, you may want to split your monthly order and ship the already in-stock items straight away. Of course you can contact customer service and ask for that, but why bother people if it can be done directly through the web?
So, these are the ideas I've come up with. You can add your own options or comment on them if there's something you would like AmiAmi to change. Or you can correct me if you think I got something wrong:)
Once again, this is not an official poll, and it will be up to AmiAmi to decide on whether to listen to our opinions at all, but I still think it is worth a try.
P.S. If there already is a suggestion list like this that I do not know of, I will be grateful if you post a link (can't read Japanese though, sorry).
====================23.08.12 UPDATE:====================
After having browsed the pre-owned section for a while, I came up with another missing feature:
13. Displaying all items on a single page or subsearch for 'Pre-owned' and 'Sale' sections.
As there is no simple way to find a specific item in 'Pre-owned' (and 'Sale' as well) section only, and the section is updated regularly, it would be nice to have
a) either a subsearch function for these sections only, or
b) 'display all items on one page' function link, like this: '[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Next>> [All]'. Once displayed, people can use internal browser search to look for the item. This feature is easily implemented, as the &pagemax=100 parameter in the link can be changed to some &pagemax=9999, and it will do the trick.
=======================================================
Some more suggestions, aggregated from user comments:
- Displaying 'sold out' status for pre-orders in list view.
- Cancellations for pre-orders and released items
- Private warehouse like HLJ (or at least holding the order till the end of the month, like it happens with pre-orders anyway?)
- Wider credit card support
So as a glad customer, I decided to contribute some thoughts that could make shopping at AmiAmi even easier. I have written them down here and I may add your options later, so that once the subject is discussed, I can send AmiAmi a letter pointing here. Of course it will be up to them to decide on what to implement and whether to listen to us at all, but I still think it is a nice idea:) So, here is the list.
1. Product status accuracy (in stock/back-order/sold out) in list view.
One of the many annoying things of AmiAmi site is that product statuses in the item page and in the product list are not same. It's like the item page requests the important availability information from the database, but the lists use some really old cached information that rarely gets updated, so from time to time the lists statuses end up lying or just staying empty at all. It may be helping to lower the load on the server, but it is a pain to manually check the statuses of all the old items in a specific search, or when browsing the fast-to-go pre-owned items and sale items. At least decreasing cache intervals can partly solve the problem; however I believe that pre-owned items and sale items lists should always be real-time.
2. Color coding product statuses with tinted background/colored border of item cell/colored price in list view.
The feature I miss a lot from the former AmiAmi site is the gray item background for sold-out items. Imagine the following scenario: you have watched a great but not new show and would like to know if there's anything still left on it at AmiAmi; you search AmiAmi and get several pages of items that have different statuses printed in tiniest letters, which do not even correspond to the actual status (see point 1 above!).
Color coding has always been an important part of website usability, as well as of daily life. It's like, green is good, red is bad or not ready, yellow is something to wait for or just attention, blue is neutral functional (colors may differ slightly from country to country, but the main idea is still there). AmiAmi is trying to use color coding in item labels, but they are not always labels (e.g. 'sold out' is text) and are still really small.
So what I suggest is:
a) adding a light color tint to the backgrounds or
b) applying color borders to the table cells of the items or
c) coloring the price
in all product list views.
The first two options can make the site look too colorful but very informative, while the price option will be the most neutral yet less effective. This can make browsing and shopping really fast, as you will get the information intuitively and will not need to look for that small text somewhere between the title and the price. The possible color schemes are:
A (makes most sense to me):
* blue for pre-order
* green for in-stock
* yellow for back-order
* gray/red for sold out
B (almost follows the current AmiAmi label colors):
* red for pre-order
* blue for in-stock
* yellow/orange/green for back-order
* gray for sold out
C:
* red for pre-order
* green for in-stock
* blue for back-order
* gray for sold out
D (conflicts with current red price):
* yellow/orange for pre-order
* blue or green for in-stock
* gray for back-order
* red for sold out
Pre-owned, re-release, restock labels can be left intact as they are not product statuses. BTW, pre-owned could be yellow (if the color is not used elsewhere) instead of the current gray that associates with 'unavailable'.
Of course, if color coding is implemented, then solving problem in point 1 is a prerequisite, as otherwise explicitly displaying incorrect information will NOT be good.
3. More flexible product status filtering.
This feature is already partially implemented, but it is presented in a bizarre unintuitive way that is not flexible at all and that gives you everything in one huge list. In short what I suggest is several checkboxes that are added to the top of all list views. These checkboxes (and one dropdown list) may look as follows:
The checkboxes can be activated via Javascript or via a 'apply filter' button.
Imagine the following scenario: you have a single small item in you order for this month and you are willing to add something to it if it's something nice - as you would save a lot on shipping; or you may want it with a future pre-order for a specific month. Finding that item with such a filtering system would be a piece of cake - and all the required data is already in the database, it's just the UI that is changing.
4. Getting rid of sold out items in 'Sale' and 'Pre-owned' sections.
I've seen several times that sold out items pile up in these sections for a long time. If database management for these items is difficult, the user-side filtering system as suggested in point 3 can 'fix' it easily.
5. Wrong statuses and links in 'Pre-owned' section.
There are several bugs I currently see there:
* The status of the item in the main list represents the status of the brand-new item, not the pre-owned item. This is very, very confusing! The status for the actual catalog item should be displayed.
* If a brand new item is present in the database along with the used one, then the 'pre-owned' label is not displayed, and when clicked the link points to the brand new item and not to the used -R000N item. This is, again, very confusing (especially because many brand new items are already sold out when a used one pops up) to an extent that a not very attentive user will not see the offer and, of course, will not buy it at all.
* Some items do have a 'pre-owned' label, and some do not. Yet all of them are pre-owned, but the label is only displayed for the items that exist solely as pre-owned and do not have a brand new 'parent' in the database. However, the label is also always displayed on the main page of the section.
* What about item sorting? I can't see any particular logic in it. Alphabetical sorting is so much more logical.
6. Confusing main page in 'Pre-owned' section / some categories missing (partially fixed).
* My belief is that the main page of any section should contain all its items in a list with page navigation, and not just some semi-randomly chosen (say, featured) items to display. In 'Pre-owned items' this is confusing to an extent that I have already caught myself treating it as a complete uncategorized list and missing an item as a result (can't tell for sure if the same is happening at 'Sale items'). If there is a specific marketing reason the items should be there in the way they are, it must be explicitly stated that these are featured items and not a full list - like that 'Newly added items' headline says in the 'Bishoujo' category.
* Some items in this section exist only at the main page and do not exist in any other category, resulting in a need to watch both the main page and a category, which is extremely weird. This is primarily happening to game prizes, as far as I can see. Pure logic says that any item should belong to at least one category; if it's only the game-prizes that are missing, then a corresponding category should be added next to the 'Bishoujo figures', 'Character figures' etc.
7. 'Pre-owned item available' note for items in catalog.
It happens that an item you look for is stated in the list as sold out and you go past it, while there is actually a pre-owned item like it available. Showing it in the catalog list and not only on the item page would be nice.
8. Maximum price error ('-1% - -1% OFF 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 - -1 JPY' price). (UPDATE: And zero price error.)
Items with an error price appear in the database from time to time. The item then becomes unavailable, and its page only gives an error.
9. Option to cancel automatic conversion to SAL Parcel when products do not fit a single SAL box.
I've calculated that shipping 2 separate SAL Reg boxes is cheaper than shipping a single SAL Parcel, but I have to manually write to customer service and ask them to separate the order into 2 boxes. Though customer service at AmiAmi is always very polite and nice to talk to, I do not like to bother them with an additional letter:)
All that is required is a simple checkbox in the order management form under the SAL radio button, like this:
10. 'Notes' field in order placement page.
It may be an alternative to point 8 or a separate feature. It may be useful for passing useful information on the order directly with the order and not through e-mail.
11. Item dimensions database for automatic shipping calculation / AmiAmi boxes and packaging information.
As the total figure cost for a customer includes shipping, it sometimes happens that a decision on buying the so called 'padding' is made upon a fact that the extra item will or will not fit into the box. I agree this is a rare case and people who really want a specific figure will buy it anyway, so the whole implementation might not be worth it, but this is kind of user comfort feature. It works at Plamoya and I think it has been added to HLJ recently as well (not sure). As filling the database with dimensions (especially for old rare used items) can be really time and money consuming, at least some information on what sizes AmiAmi boxes are and how much space is reserved for packaging might help - you can always look up the dimensions at HobbySearch and calculate it all manually.
A specific case such information will also be useful in is if you combine pre-order items and several in-stock items in a way that will generate multiple boxes anyway: you could get an already filled box shipped straight away, and not surprising the customs people out there with your loot:)
12. Splitting orders through the user account page.
As in the scenario in point 11, you may want to split your monthly order and ship the already in-stock items straight away. Of course you can contact customer service and ask for that, but why bother people if it can be done directly through the web?
So, these are the ideas I've come up with. You can add your own options or comment on them if there's something you would like AmiAmi to change. Or you can correct me if you think I got something wrong:)
Once again, this is not an official poll, and it will be up to AmiAmi to decide on whether to listen to our opinions at all, but I still think it is worth a try.
P.S. If there already is a suggestion list like this that I do not know of, I will be grateful if you post a link (can't read Japanese though, sorry).
====================23.08.12 UPDATE:====================
After having browsed the pre-owned section for a while, I came up with another missing feature:
13. Displaying all items on a single page or subsearch for 'Pre-owned' and 'Sale' sections.
As there is no simple way to find a specific item in 'Pre-owned' (and 'Sale' as well) section only, and the section is updated regularly, it would be nice to have
a) either a subsearch function for these sections only, or
b) 'display all items on one page' function link, like this: '[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Next>> [All]'. Once displayed, people can use internal browser search to look for the item. This feature is easily implemented, as the &pagemax=100 parameter in the link can be changed to some &pagemax=9999, and it will do the trick.
=======================================================
Some more suggestions, aggregated from user comments:
- Displaying 'sold out' status for pre-orders in list view.
- Cancellations for pre-orders and released items
- Private warehouse like HLJ (or at least holding the order till the end of the month, like it happens with pre-orders anyway?)
- Wider credit card support
Lishtenbird
