Astronomy retailers

[Ken82]

You know If one thing really annoys me about Most astronomy Retailers  It’s that the online presence of most of them is awful! 
 

Just trying to order a few simple things can be quite time consuming and painful. Most don’t even have mobile optimised websites ! 
 

I think a lot of them could learn a lot by investing in some media science and conversion rate optimisation. You may find sales increase massively ! 
 

I think it’s testimony to the great work Grant has done At FLO it’s almost as easy as amazon (for good or bad 😩)

If you want to sort out sales get in touch ! 😂I’m not expecting an influx of emails 

[RobertI]

I agree, FLO's website is light years ahead of other astro retailers - it's the only one I browse just for enjoyment (although I do look at the others if I'm looking for something specific), and I don't even attempt to look at the others if I am using my phone!

[Swoop1]

The thing with astro retailers is they tend to be small independant businesses.

I work in an independant bicycle shop with 5 full time employees (including me but not the boss) and a handful of part timers. I have a degree of responsibility managing the shops website and, despite it being on an allegedly user friendly platform (Wordpress) it can be a nightmare and very time consuming. Imagine trying to manage a website and run a retail outlet with the small number of staff that a lot of the astro retailers have.

[Tenor Viol]

I work in 'big' IT and we have a major online presence with both web sites and apps. I don't work on that side of it - but the maintenance of those is a major job with an enormous number of people involved. Whilst a 'typical' small retailer will not have some of the issues we have, the challenges are commensurate. Most small businesses do not have an IT department and will rely either on a third-party to do it for them, which costs, or will 'get along' with what they understand and some sort of package/template solution. They will lack skills in things like making a site platform agnostic, or database optimisation and query tuning, scripting and automation etc.

The trouble is various vendors of 'template' web sites give people the misleading impression that you just need to go through a web site creation wizard and a fully functioning, fully automated, and fully integrated web site pops out of the other end. It doesn't.       

Edited August 28, 2020 by Tenor Viol

[Highburymark]

18 minutes ago, Swoop1 said:

The thing with astro retailers is they tend to be small independant businesses.

I work in an independant bicycle shop with 5 full time employees (including me but not the boss) and a handful of part timers. I have a degree of responsibility managing the shops website and, despite it being on an allegedly user friendly platform (Wordpress) it can be a nightmare and very time consuming. Imagine trying to manage a website and run a retail outlet with the small number of staff that a lot of the astro retailers have.

I agree. They are predominantly small operations selling a very wide range of goods and mostly doing a good job. Plus many have upgraded their websites in the past couple of years. 

[Tenor Viol]

I have dealt with 5 or 6 astro retailers over the last few months, bar one, all have been fine. The odd one out seems to have issues with its e-mail handling system.

[Paz]

I don't want astronomy retailers improving their websites and making it easier to spend money, I spend enough as it is!

[Ken82]

I didn’t mean any of that as a criticism I just enjoy browsing and buying astronomy kit and would love it to be easier! 
 

A few observations that could easily be improved on most sites - 

Responsive website, clear menu and navigation, poor search functionality, busy banners, clear CTA (call to action), payment methods. 
 

Again I’m not meaning any criticism I have bought from at least all UK sites and haven’t had any really bad experiences. 
 

But this is 2020 people generally don’t want to phone up and order because they can’t find an item on the website 😬

It’s all about the customer experience !

now please let me sort out all the websites so I can happily browse away and buy more kit 😀😂