the BMB

Be honest with me, it wasn't your idea to make the new Burton super flash intensive right? It was upper management's decision wasn't it? Nobody likes to wait for pages to load.

I think there should be a rule that only movie promo sites are allowed to use flash.

Don't worry, even when it does load, you still can't find anything.

McBain:

Be honest with me, it wasn't your idea to make the new Burton super flash intensive right? It was upper management's decision wasn't it? Nobody likes to wait for pages to load.

I think there should be a rule that only movie promo sites are allowed to use flash.

Right?

Rule #1 of online RETAIL sites where you want to make money and have customers happy = little to no flash and keep page loads to a minimum

I'm already pretty stoked to know that we'll be "competing" against what they've got this winter!!

Way too slow. 

it's not slow, it's new and improved.
(Burton told me)

TahoeChappy:

McBain:

Be honest with me, it wasn't your idea to make the new Burton super flash intensive right? It was upper management's decision wasn't it? Nobody likes to wait for pages to load.

I think there should be a rule that only movie promo sites are allowed to use flash.

Right?

Rule #1 of online RETAIL sites where you want to make money and have customers happy = little to no flash and keep page loads to a minimum

I'm already pretty stoked to know that we'll be "competing" against what they've got this winter!!

Burton's excuse for selling direct, "Don't worry, our site will suck."

at least it has less flash than last year.

i agree that flash should be used sparingly.

but...how do i say this nicely?  there are a variety of views internally about what constitutes "sparingly."  i'm going to have to leave it at that.

In all seriousness jb, how many internally view the snails pace as "good."

blutters:

In all seriousness jb, how many internally view the snails pace as "good."

i don't have a number.  i think the general feeling is that it's ok and will get better as we work on it.  getting it running with the featureset we want for launch is the first milestone.  making it faster, fixing bugs and putting in more extra goodies will take up the next couple of months.

Also in all seriousness, it's cool that you stop by. 

In all honesty i don't even bother with the new site, Im forever getting error messages and the load time is too painful. All i get is retail rhetoric which i can read from any of the main online retailers at a fraction of the download time. The main draw card for the (old) burton website was always this community board and your upper management choked badly on that front. It's a shame but there you go. Overall the design is cluttered, Im all about clean functional stylish and minimal - like your Analog site wrapped up in Idiom design. Having said that I can fully appreciate all the hard work you guys put into it and no doubt having to please layers and layers of management in the process!

well, if you get error messages, we have a much better system in place for tracking them this year so it's easier for us to figure the bugs out (this is stuff that happens behind the scenes when you get the "gosh dang!" page).

if something errors out often, please let us know in this forum so we can take care of it.

also, if the design is too cluttered, let us know ideas you have about elements or features that you think are unnecessary...

Hi Jb

cool I'll feedback on the errors etc. I won't bore anyone with my gripes so check your PM with regards to site feedback.

thanks for listening to us.

davide:

Hi Jb cool I'll feedback on the errors etc. I won't bore anyone with my gripes so check your PM with regards to site feedback. thanks for listening to us.

i think a public discussion would perhaps be more fruitful so all can participate, but feel free to hit me up via PM if you want.

yeah i guess you're right
I'll paste the PM below:

Ok heres my take on things:

The thing that bugs me the most about the design is the overuse of flash in general (like the light effects behind the selected products). It's clunky and chews bandwidth, I hate scrolling on any website unless it's an online newspaper which is full of content and not pictures. The product information for any product is situated below the hero images, i think you could have made this fit to the left with the same tab based layout.

When selecting a product range ( like bindings or boards for example ) ALL of them load up which takes way too long, It just seems unecessary for the users initial entry level to be bombarded with so many choices. An idea could have been to have the 4(in the bindings case) main categories on the first page, people could then move through whichever strand they were interested in. quicker loading/cleaner design. One could still incorporate the option of a "view all" but the main thing to take from this is that as it stands no one can view all of them at the same time anyway due to the size of them thus having to scroll.

The main niggle is that there is waaaay too much scrolling required. navigation is generally very well laid out except for the fact that you've wasted so much space with having the unused area to the right of where your main two tabs site (next to the community tab), by using this real estate everything else on the page below it moves up a notch. if you look at an entry level product page almost HALF of the screen is devoted to navigation ( below filter gear and compare selected - unselect all ) - this is madness!!! half a page for rudimentary navigation.

On the positive side of things, i do like the sub navigation for choosing colours/collections/syles. The random highlighting of products on each page "whoa check this" is a fantastic idea and it's worked once on me already by highlighting a product i ordinarilly wouldn't have searched or payed any attention to.

I won't get started on the "Kommunity" side of things as im sure you've heard enough!

Thanks for hearing me out, obviously it's only my opinion and i respect the hard work you guys have put into the site in general. I appreciate the fact that you're open to feedback. At the end of the day this is not going to stop me buying Burton products but I find little joy in surfing through this years site due to clunky downloads and having to scroll the whole time.