Viable Solution for Peak Website

Like many of you, I have never been more frustrated by a company's website than I am with Peak's. I'm quite sure that it has been a turn-off for many people and would speculate that potential sales have been lost as a result.

I finished my MBA in the spring of 2009 and can tell you that Peak's business model would be picked apart (particularly the marketing aspect) by marketing and business development professionals. There are several areas that I would love to address, however, for the sake of time and space, the website is probably the most feasible place to start.

The suggested solution is extremely simplistic and I hope that Robin and the rest of the folks at Peak will at least take it into consideration.

Here it is: There are thousands of IT and Web Design students attending universities all across the nation (and many of them are incredibly talented). To secure employment somewhere down the road, students must build a solid portfolio of designs and projects that showcase their talent. Therefore, it becomes advantageous to generate as much clientele as possible. Many of these students will design a site for free (some may even obtain course credits) in exchange of receiving professional recommendations and the ability to point a potential employer to some of the sites they've designed.

In essence, simply contact the IT department at a local university and see if you can generate interest in having a student(s) take the challenge of re-designing Peak's site (pro bono). Naturally, you may hit a few walls, but as I stated, there are a lot of students attending college out there.

Peak has incredible products, it's time the website caught up!

Good luck..............

I own several Peak lights and would have purchased more if the web site stayed current. Perhaps the company has limited staffing and resources available.

Don't forget that a commercial web site needs updating from time to time, too -- long after a student volunteer has completed his class.

Farming out web site construction to Peak's dealers was a reasonable, but temporary move for the time being.

Guys check my website which is updated anytime Peak gives me the information. Think
of it as their website also since we work together all the time. If you need other information just ask and I will try to get it from Peak and put it on the site. I have all the current products
on the site and also some that are pending.
Thanks
Bob

Hi DumDum.

Your website is great, but unfortunately for us here is Australia, you don't deliver to here.

I know we can always send an email to Robyn at Peak, but Robyn must be very busy and doesn't always get a chance to respond to all the email she must get.

Saying that, I have a few Peak lights and my all time favorite is the Rainier.

DarthLumen: I think you might be onto something. I've looked at Peak lights a few times in the past and been turned away entirely by their website.

With respect, Dumdum, I didn't find your site substantially easier to navigate than Peak's own. It's got good information, but is organized unintuitively and cluttered with unneccessary design elements and slow-loading Flash. As a fan of tabbed browsing, any website which relies on Flash to present text and images is nearly useless to me even if I want to use it.

Online shopping has been around for a long time now, and the standard model of a retail site is very established. A website which ignores these conventions looks and feels dated and leads me to wonder if a company is even still around, or how they are about customer service if they're so bad at presenting information.

For an idea of a simple but usable site for a small company with limited product lines, take a look at 4Sevens and Lighthound. Quite a few other companies use similar sites, I know, but those were the two I could remember off the top of my head. Now, these sites still aren't perfect, because they still don't have a way to sort, categorize, and compare items (Newegg is the master of this, and Garmin is a good example with a smaller product line), but they do the job well enough anyway. A layout like 4Sevens uses is well within the abilities of any half-competent design student.

It's an interesting idea, though I'd be surprised if anyone chooses to act on it.

Both of the above mentioned sites can be frustrating, and my impression is that one must already have a very good idea of which light to purchase.

Peak's products are top-notch, but none of the product info is easily available. The lights need to be organized differently; if I didn't know what the mountain series, or ocean series was, for example, it could take a very long time to order (and then, to find that Paypal wasn't an option!)

I don't know what the business arrangements are with the web hosting sites, but the Peak site needs a revamp ASAP, if only to keep up with current production lights.

Please.

DarthLumen said:

The suggested solution is extremely simplistic and I hope that Robin and the rest of the folks at Peak will at least take it into consideration.

Click to expand...

I hate to say it, but you are wasting your time trying to get Peak to "see the light" as far as changing their website or marketing. The website issue has been brought to Peak's attention for YEARS. Nothing has been done; they just don't care.

The same response keeps coming up: Just call Peak.

DUMDUM said:

Guys check my website which is updated anytime Peak gives me the information.... I have all the current products
on the site and also some that are pending.

Click to expand...

I think your website is actually worse than Peak's website, as hard as that is to believe. There are no options for odd-numbered power levels. I don't see any lug option for HA. There are a lot of options missing.

In my opinion, ordering from Peak is just an exercise in frustration. I hope that one day those at Peak will realize we have entered the 21st century and will evolve accordingly.

Sadly I must agree about the website. Peaks own website just hasnt been updated, but the the site where you actually buy stuff needs a major overhaul.

For starters get rid of the talking faces. Even though they dont talk unless you click on them they are still data that has to be loaded and slows down viewing stuff.
I would change the background to white or something light, black is not easy on the eyes I think.

The descriptions are decent but the pictures leave a lot to be desired. Put a few pictures of each light, not jsut a side angle. How about a lens angle, maybe even a general beamshot to show beam pattern.
Sometimes I cannot tell whether a light has a reflector or the plastic optic.

There are also not pictures of the various tubes available for the bodies with lengths. Since you can get 4 different size bodies for the night patrol I think their should be photos, or at least lengths.

The only reason I suffered through the pain of ordering my eigers was because of the information on CPF. The sites are hopeless for actually finding out info about their products and god help you if you are overseas.

I admit, the product is good, but customer service still leaves a lot to be desired. And yes, I have called. Multiple times. I shouldn't have to badger people to get what I paid for in July. I'm still waiting over a month on a replacement for a defective light!

Maybe they shouldn't update their site. If they did, more people would buy from them and it would be even more difficult for those who suffered through the pain of deciphering what the heck they actually sell to get their lights.

It is an exercise in frustration sometimes. There have been several lights I've been interested in and eventually just gave up on. I ordered one by phone last year and never did hear anthing back on it.

But, I still love their lights. And if you can get your hands on them they are worth it.

Maybe these guys could help:
http://www.peakwebmarketing.com/



eala

aramid said:

Online shopping has been around for a long time now, and the standard model of a retail site is very established. A website which ignores these conventions looks and feels dated and leads me to wonder if a company is even still around, or how they are about customer service if they're so bad at presenting information.

For an idea of a simple but usable site for a small company with limited product lines, take a look at 4Sevens and Lighthound. Quite a few other companies use similar sites, I know, but those were the two I could remember off the top of my head. Now, these sites still aren't perfect, because they still don't have a way to sort, categorize, and compare items (Newegg is the master of this, and Garmin is a good example with a smaller product line), but they do the job well enough anyway. A layout like 4Sevens uses is well within the abilities of any half-competent design student.

Click to expand...

I would have to agree wholeheartedly with this. I think it should become increasingly easy in the future for online retailers to buy software or web templates to make it easy to market their products, but there are still so many that haven't caught onto good web design.

While it has it's frustrating faults (the back button, and inability to open links in new tabs), the most impressive website selling products I've seen is definitely Mcmaster. Especially if you've ever had to flip through a 10,000 page catalog or go back and forth getting getting quotes from a supply company, the ability to pinpoint an exact tool bit or specific piece of stock out of half a million items in just a few clicks is phenomenal. The only way I can imagine it being faster is how mcmaster was before they put the space-wasting icons on the homepage.

I have to admit I'd been curious and looked before but a company that can't be bothered to have an informative and useful site can't be bothered to expect my money.

One of the easiest (relatively) solutions is to make use of the many open source ecommerce softwares available on the web, using php to generate the pages, and myqsl for databases.. the software takes roughly 5 minutes to install, and adding products is mostly a breeze...

combinatorix said:

While it has it's frustrating faults (the back button, and inability to open links in new tabs), the most impressive website selling products I've seen is definitely Mcmaster.

Click to expand...

I had forgotten about McMaster. Their search/sort capabilities are so impressive that I barely even get mad about the tabs and lack of direct item links.

I don't think it'd be a good model for a site with a small number of products, because the search power would be overkill and the handicaps would be more obvious and irritating, but for such a large catalog it's an incredibly elegant, refined interface.

As Csshih notes, it really shouldn't be difficult to download and install a modern retail interface, even from a trusted, reputable company. There's Google Store, Yahoo eCommerce, and Prostores. I regularly shop at sites based on each of these offerings, and they're all a thousand times better than what's currently used by Peak.

McMaster has a truly unique site as far as I've ever seen. Some of the other big supply companies could do well to learn a thing or two from it (DigiKey perhaps? ).

I have had enough interest to go to peaks website as well as dumdums site and finally just gave up. Also flash will not work on the iPhone, which I use for most of my browsing.

ironhorse said:

I have had enough interest to go to peaks website as well as dumdums site and finally just gave up. Also flash will not work on the iPhone, which I use for most of my browsing.

Click to expand...

Yup, looked at both sites, never could tell if I was ordering what I really wanted. Gave up many many times = several lost sales.

Perhaps someday ....


Brian

ironhorse said:

Also flash will not work on the iPhone, which I use for most of my browsing.

Click to expand...

Well theres ur problem