The New Rock + Run Website

The new Rock + Run website has gone live this morning.

Our design principals are centred around simplicity and usability and we were keen to retain an uncluttered, clean, functional design.

There are a lot of new users features on the site which are listed below however, the majority of our work has been concentrated on integrating the public site with our back office stock/order processing system. In practical terms this means that if a product is available to buy on-line it will be in stock in our warehouse. Although this may sound like an obvious thing to do it is actually fairly difficult to achieve for a small company. The benefits to our customers will be less time wasted ordering out of stock products, faster delivery times and ultimately better prices on a greater range of products as we increase our efficiency and reduce the cost of order processing.

Here are some of the new features on the public site:

In Stock/Out of Stock Buy Buttons
These buttons directly reflect stock availability. This simple feature addresses a host of issues relating to the efficiency of our whole operation and ultimately means that will be able offer a better service to our customers.



Improved Search Facility
Shopping web sites are essentially a big database of products and a good 'Search' facility is essential for quick navigation. Our new search is fast and allows searches by product name, product code, brand or product category.



Quick Sorting of Product Lists
Refine any search results or any other product page you navigate to by a number of most used list sorts.



Improved Newsletter Sign-Up and Management
You can now select activities that interest you most when you sign up for our newsletter e.g. mountaineering or walking. Old email address that Bounce are automatically removed from the list. Unsubscribing is quick an easy too.




Product reviews
Write your own review of any product. Reviews are moderated but that doesn't mean we wont be publishing negative reviews as well as positive.



Live Help
This is similar the MS Instant Messeneger, Skype or Apple iChat. Clicking the 'Live Help' button on the left tool bar brings up a chat window that connects direct to our office in Cumbria. For those of you who are used to using similar systems you will know that this is a really efficient method of communication which, unlike a phone call, allows you to chat in real time while doing other things and not distracting others around you. From our side we can point you to product pages, offer advice, transfer files and deal with order queries.



RSS Feed to the Latest Articles on the R+R Blog
There is a permanent RSS feed on the left tool bar to the latest 4 articles on the Rock + Run Blog. This simple feature gives us the flexibility to publish pretty much anything we feel is relevant without cluttering (and slowing,)the shopping part of the site.




Order History
View your previous order history. This is useful if you want re-order items or check orders against card statements.



Improved Card Acceptance
We had some problems on our old site with Solo and Maestro. The new site is fully compatible.



Embedded Video Clips
We will be embedding short video clips on some products.



800 x 800 Image Option
We've opted for large format images when you click to view a large image. The advantage is that we can we can show products in much greater detail than possible previously. Example

Multiple Product Images
Some products have multiple product images which is useful to highlight detail. Example.

Bugs
Hopefully there won't be many bugs but there will be some. Please report bugs to andy@rockrun.com