Ian Allan 'Plus' Website

[BlythPower]

Has anyone tried using the 'search' facility on the revamped Ian Allan mailorder website? They'll not not be making much money with that heap of s****.

 

[Dai.]

I don't see anything wrong with the search feature, might be on the wrong website though,
what one are you on?
(I've never used the website but may be able to give you or him some tips!)

 

[BlythPower]

http://www.ianallanpublishing.com/
(http://www.ianallanplus.com/ also goes to it.)

It appears that the search terms you enter are used to search in both title and description with no way to specify any form of advanced search. I wanted to get a copy of the Track Atlas. Searching for that brought up literally hundreds of titles. I lost the will to live (well, the will to shop at least) after clicking through a couple of pages...

 

[rail-britain]

I wanted to get a copy of the Track Atlas

I did a search and was given NIL results

 

[Donny Dave]

This atlas?

Took me about 30 seconds of searching to find it ....

 

[BlythPower]

Sadly not! Incidentally the current Baker is way cheaper on Amazon and with free P&P.

I was after this one. Well, get it from MotorBooks you may say. I've got a (destined to be unused) 25% off voucher for Ian Allan...

 

[BeckHornby]

Hi Blyth, yup Amzon is way cheaper - but then again it is way cheaper for just about everything isn't it. I think Ian Allan a re probably on a tiny fraction of their size so actually I think it is better that the previous which was really a pile of total sxxxe but I guess they cannot afford the Amazon budgets with just us supporting them?

 

[Martin Faulks]

Dear BlythPower

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Martin Faulks I am the Digital Marketing Manager of Ian Allan Publishing. We have made our best efforts to improve the search function on our website. I was wondering if you had found it was working better now?

Are there any more improvements you would like to suggest?


Martin Faulks

Digital Marketing Manager
Ian Allan Publishing
Riverdene Business Park
Molesey Road
Hersham
Surrey
KT12 4RG

 

[Denzil1976]

Dear BlythPower

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Martin Faulks I am the Digital Marketing Manager of Ian Allan Publishing. We have made our best efforts to improve the search function on our website. I was wondering if you had found it was working better now?

Are there any more improvements you would like to suggest?


Martin Faulks

Digital Marketing Manager
Ian Allan Publishing
Riverdene Business Park
Molesey Road
Hersham
Surrey
KT12 4RG

Dear Martin,

I'm not the original poster, but I too am exasperated about the redesigned Ian Allan Publishing website.

The site itself is very slow to load. Images take sometime to appear and then organise themselves. I also find it difficult to find things. One of the advantages of the old site was that you could easily and quickly find which new titles were in preparation. This is no longer possible with the new site. As I now refuse to pay the charge levvied for your catalogue (see also below) then it would be nice to have this functionality reinstated.

It seems to me that the site has become something that is too complicated and muddled. It should be something that is simple. Are the blogs and forums really necessary? People can surely go elsewhere for that?

Going back to the catalogue, why has a charge been implemented, when I can get an even more detailed booklet from certain retailers listing books from other publishers (as well as yours) for free?

I generally think that Ian Allan has lost it's way in recent years. Sure, there is still the odd book that is of high quality (e.g. the 'Baker' atlases) but others have been published that appear to have been simply rushed out without any quality control. You should look at what other publishers are doing (e.g. Capital Transport, Irwell Press) for similar money to see what is possible.

Kind regards
Darryl

 

[Martin Faulks]

Dear Darryl

First and foremost let me apologise for any difficulties you may have experienced with our new website. With the launch of such an information rich website, teething troubles were to be expected but I can assure you we are using every effort to solve any arising issues.

I would like to note some of the wonderful changes that we have made to the new website to benefit our customers. We are using a product called Nextopia which is an award winning website search function that learns our customer’s search patterns in order to improve its accuracy. It makes searching easier for the customer to find the products they are looking for by employing a variety of strategies ranging from merchandising to fuzzy matching to analysis of customer search and purchase behaviour. I urge you to please try again with the search function and inform our technical support if you do experience any difficulties.

In response to your question regarding our new blogs and forums. We decided that this would be a valuable added service to offer our customers. Forums and blogs give customers the opportunity to interact with authors, magazine editors and other Ian Allan customers. We saw this as an opportunity for others to discuss topics of interest and a place to make comments and suggestions on the website, publications and any other queries you may have. We believe that these new services also benefit the company on receiving feedback from our customers so we have a better understanding of what our customers wants and needs therefore we can use this information to ensure we are meeting our customers’ expectations.

In regards to your query about the catalogue we needed to be more careful with the distribution of our trade catalogue as it is aimed at the book trade and unfortunately we had to introduce a small fee for non trade customers. We understand that the catalogue is much loved by our customers therefore you can view it and download a pdf version for free on our website and you are still eligible for our Ian Allan Plus catalogues which are packed with the same information and more


Please be rest assured that the same passion that drove Ian Allan to start publishing books in 1942 still thrives in the company today and any comments and suggestions that our customers have are always greatly welcomed and taken on board.

Yours sincerely

Martin Faulks

Digital Marketing Manager
Ian Allan Publishing
Riverdene Business Park
Molesey Road
Hersham
Surrey
KT12 4RG

 

[Old Timer]

Dear Martin,

Some suggestions based upon a quick look.

1) Firstly can you darken the green font ? It is very difficult to read on my screen.

2) May I suggest that you open out the description of "Foreign" in books. This is too simplistic bearing in mind that there are some 2252 titles in there.

May I suggest the following sub-categories ?

North America
South America
Europe
Former Soviet Union
Asia and Pacific
Australia/New Zealand

3) DVD - Please do same as in (2) above

4) Clearance books, again please do as in (2) above as there are over 1000 railway titles on clearance which is an awful lot to look through, and I would imagine people do not have the time to trawl through that number.

5) Based on a quick back of the hand calculation and using a fast cable connection, to view that 1068 books shown would take 72 minutes continuous browsing. You can easily double that DVDs, full price books, etc

6) Turning now to Aviation, again similar comments apply in that section. My particular interest is in WW2 but this is not categorised and to search through everything would take something like 4 hours if my back of hand calculations are correct.

7) Aviation - May I suggest you look at some categorisation, maybe along the following lines ? :-

Historic aircraft
WW1
WW2
Post War
Modern

Sub categories I would suggest should be :-

UK
European
Former Soviet Union
USA
Middle East
Asia & Pacific

8) History - To avoid repeating myself you need to definitely categorise and sub-categorise this.

That is all I have time for but I think you get the central theme ?

PS nearly forgot. As someone has already pointed out, your basic search is way to simplistic and is in effect unusuable unless you come for a specific title (not checked up on that search by the way). You need to create a more detailed version I feel.

Hope this has not come across as too negative bearing in mind the hard work I am sure that many have put into this.

 

[Denzil1976]

Thank you Martin for your reply. I also echo everything that 'Old Timer' has said.

My principal problem with the new site is finding new books that are planned over the coming months. I like to see what is due so I can plan my expenditure accordingly. Surely it must be easy to include this on the homepage?

Darryl

 

[kentuckytony]

I had similar problems with the 225 Studios "new and improved" web site recently.
Looked like it was rolled out piece-meal.

What ever happened to user-testing of computer programs?
I mean - just look at the valuable insight that Old Timer has provided with just a little effort.
Maybe companies hope folks will do their testing for them without giving up on them?
They may think it is cheaper - but in the long run, they lose customers.

Hey, BTW, I really liked this RailUK site over the holidays when my old eyes could read the top menu nice light blue snowflakey background - now back to the dark blue on black. Bummer!