Oh brother!        Someone please tell us this is a Beta test that will be rolled back for many needed fixes!  
 
Any Trekkies among us?  In assessing the new shopping tool and in reading the posts here, I keep thinking the famous Dr. McCoy quote from Voyage Home .... "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!"
 
Thankfully, the nice people here have weighed in before me.  I've actually waited 12 hours to calm down and edit my outrage because my intial reaction last night would have been expressed in very un-nice terms.  
 
Bottomline in my opinion:  Great idea ... very badly executed!  And, I can't fathom why it was rolled out right before the 3rd biggest card sending holiday of the year.  Also can't help wondering if this was the cause of all the problems last week and over the weekend.
 
I agree with ALL of the previous posters about the problems with the new menues.  I want to thank Kathy and Penny for voicing their concerns about the "variety" shown on the new display pages ... they expressed it far more concisely and diplomatically than I could have.  Personally, I was appalled by what I saw last night.  From just a very quick summary .... Birthdays>> 38 sub-cats divided among only 19 artists, many showing the same or similar card 3-4 times from the same artist ... Graduation>> 13 sub-cats represented by only 6 artists ... Grads>>Relationship>> 18 sub-cats represented by 9 artists ... >>Grade Level>> 5 sub-cats represented by 3 artists .... and in drilling down, it was the same artists and series of cards replayed over and over again.  It's obvious that new cards are more heavily weighted in this model.  I don't have a problem with that -- I actually think it's smart to highlight fresh content -- as long as core content is not lost or so deeply buried that a shopper would never know it existed.  This is no reflection at all on the artists whose cards are being displayed -- they have absolutely no control over this and are, quite frankly, disadvantaged in the "fatter" categories because their displayed cards are not clickable.  Again, on a personal level, I found this "new tool" an affront and an insult to the 2000 + artists whose work has helped to build the core base of content for GCU over the last 1-2 years.  
 
Okay, personal thoughts and impressions aside ... this is a business, so let's look at it from a business standpoint.  Penny and Kathy hit it right on the head.  I can't see how those display pages I saw last night can possibly be a good representation of GCU to shoppers -- neither new ones or loyal customers.  (Perhaps they've changed overnight -- I hesitated to do a quick check again this morning because I didn't think my blood pressure could stand it.)  I stress again, no disrespect intended towards those artists or their work, but from a business perspective, I can't help asking myself ... what the heck is GCU thinking?
 
Some of you may remember that I've express concerns in the past about the "appearance" and perception of bias in previous discussions about GCU Picks and Holiday Email Reminders.  Like Penny, I'm often among those who benefit from that real or imagined advantage.  And I am in total agreement with Penny that I would much rather see a broader variety and mix of styles than what we often see.  In all fairness to GCU, they have listened to us on this issue and have gone to extraordinary measures to do work this out.  With the new home page ... the expanded "All Cards" page ... etc., there has been significant progress on that front.  That's what threw me on the new menu -- it seems like a huge step backwards.
 
Ultimately, that's what brings me to my biggest concern ... It's not the new shopping tool that worries me the most.  It's the "business" thinking, or perhaps the lack of fore-thinking that surrounds this new model ... it's implementation ... and the timing.  Why not have waited until after Father's Day to roll this thing out?  It would have made more sense to beta test it live in late June/July/early August and work out the kinks before the big holiday season without impacting sales on the current and remaining few card-sending holidays of Spring.  Maybe there is a good business reason for launching it now ... I just can't possibly figure out what it could be.  
 
I think Tom hit on all the very sound technical points and problems.  It seems to me that a reliable and intuitive ON-SITE SEARCH tool is at least AS if not more important if GCU hopes to attract shoppers from high traffic portals (ie Twitter/Facebook) rather than just from search engine and reminder markets.  Look, "I'm a Trekkie, Jim, not a TEchie!"... (sorry, got StarTrek fever this week, lol!) ... but I know that highly advanced SQL database protocols are a huge undertaking and do not come cheaply.  So, I'm all for finding solutions that may fall short of perfection ... but not at the cost of rushed implementation that alienates both shoppers and card contributors.  
 
Okay, that's my 5 cents (inflation, you know!).  Whew ... I'm glad I waited until today to rant   ... I would have had to bleep out every other word last night.  
 
--Teri  
 

Hi Teri,
Love that squirrel, he makes me smile!
I do not seem to be having a problem on either of these things, just did a test and all OK.
Using Mac/Safari.
Pamela

I'm here, caffeine free and with eyes wide open...
 
Many thanks to you all for your candid feedback, complaints and suggestions.  It is all 100% welcome and valued.
 
First, let me be clear that this is NOT the new shopping tool discussed previously.  That is far more complicated and data intensive.  This is merely a front-end change in category navigation.
 
We will take all discussed here to tweak and improve upon this design.  We have been testing this in development (goodness, you should have seen the 1st version  ).  Apparently we need to do so with more scrutiny.
 
Cards in the category roots, wrong category or "other" category is not a new problem.  It is just more obvious now.  Agreed, not allowing artists to change categories after approval does not help.  Unfortunately we had abuse issues with artists changing categories improperly post approval.  
 
Like many changes in the past, we appreciate your patience and cooperation in implementing improvements & tweaks.
 
Mindy
 
PS: We'll look into the Favorites issue you mention

The tweaking has begun, we have...
 
a) cleaned up the headers for brevity & clarity
b) added back the category trail to page top ie: Birthdays >> Age Specific >> 1st Birthday
c) added a first subcategory labeled "All" which shows all cards in the category.  This includes ALL cards even those in the root category and will temporarily alleviate this issue of the cards in the root not being featured in a General subcategory yet which we will continue to work on.
d) more fixes to come....
 
Keep in mind most of our sales are still coming from natural search and these category pages are typically not the pages they land on.  So while we continue to make improvements this will not impact the bulk of our buying traffic.

I'm curious.  This change was put in on May 5th-6th.  The days leading up to it I generally had between 25-50 store visits a day and steady sales.  Since then it has dropped to generally less than 10 visits per day and almost no sales.  
 
It could be a fluke, or it could be a result of placing the “ALL” and the “subcategories” essentially at the same hierarchical level, tempting the buyers to avoid clicking ALL where most of the GCU cards and the GCU stores get exposed.  ALL has so many cards it’s natural to want to avoid it and go for a very specific level, where really only a fraction of the offerings exist.  (9 out of 10 Bridesmaids cards are in ALL for instance, vs. Sister or Cousin).
 
Prior to the change a shopper had to click ALL before the next level was revealed, allowing some chance they would browse at this higher level.  Now they likely bypass ALL.
 
Anyone else notice anything?

Quote from Mindy on May 7^th, 2009, 5:08pm:

 
I know this was mentioned already among the comments above and could be considered perhaps one of the more frivolous aspects of this metamorphosis, but not really, as contributors' creations should have justice done them: it's very disconcerting to see some display examples in the wrong format (cards obviously designed for landscape dimensions compacted into portrait). I do hope - as do no doubt many others - that that's one of the things that will be corrected somehow in the not-too-distant future.  
 
Other points have been better summarized and expressed than I could ever hope to do, and I'm not quite sure what to think about certain elements yet, but I would like to say how interesting and gratifying it is to participate in this work-in-progress, so: thank you (and bon voyage on the great watermark excursion)!

Quote from Joan_135833 on May 12^th, 2009, 8:14pm:

 
Hi Joan,
Yes that is high on the list and I've actually previewed a draft design today that will fix this allowing both card orientations displayed correctly on the pages.