Williams updated their website!

[Anonymous]

I'm a big fan and buyer of Williams products, but the new website is disappointing to say the least. It certainly reflects poorly on the company and is a terrible marketing tool. I hope they intend to improve it and add more information with better pictures.

I plan to email Williams today to let them know my thoughts.

Doug

[Jumijo]

Email Williams and give them your thoughts on their new site. They read each email and do listen to what people have to say.

Jim

[prewardude]

Methinks we are not seeing the completed site yet; I'm sure the bugs will be worked out in the upcoming days. They probably just put it online as-is to let everyone know that they're working on it (and, of course, to gain some publicity with all the "Williams Website" threads). [;)]

Regards,
Clint

[watinva]

Williams makes great model train products at very reasonable prices. They did a great job with their recent ad comparing Williams post war reproductions with Lionel post war classics. I think this company has got it figured out and will be in business for a good amount of time to come.... I hope so because I plan on buying more of their products in the future. Hopefully the webpage will get sorted out but if not, I could care less. If I have to chose between fancy webpages or great trains I can afford, I think I will go with the trains. I think Williams does a great job with a very limited amount of people. Keep up the good work and thank you for my GG1, GS4, Seaboard Switcher, Wabash ABA F3, and Monon BL2 and caboose.

[Buckeye Riveter]

I must agree with Birds, Dr. John and Allen. The photos are fuzzier than we post on the forum.

Choose one:
1.) High school kid did class project and built their web site.
2.) Some one in the marketing department's kid/relative claimed to know how to build a web site and they got the job.
3.) They took twenty bids and choose the lowest bid to build the website. (Ya get what you pay for.)
4.) A moonlighter did the job for next to nothing and it took five years.
5.) A executive committee had to micro-manage the project so that their egos would be stroked.

As one who has built web sites, (see an old outdated one at http://www.geocities.com/algomafishcorps/ ) they could have easily done better.

Great product, poor marketing and sales.[:(]

[Anonymous]

Looks to me like that had "Discount Web Designs, Inc." do the new site for them. On my large screen computer monitor, the pages don't even begin to fill the screen, and images are so small as to be virtually useless. And a bunch of text gibberish is also showing up on, for example, the products page.

I'm a bit surprised that they launched the site with doing some testing first with different platforms, different operating systems, different browsers, etc.

[Dr. John]

I am glad that Williams finally updated their website. However, I must agree with Birds. The new rendition is not as attractive as the old, nor is it as informative. Also, you are still unable to order on-line ( perhaps too much of a headache for Williams?).

At least we have a better idea of what is currently available, assuming they keep the site updated on an on-going basis.

[Birds]

Their new site has much less product information than the old site. It lacks dimensions of products, minimum curves, and does not show nearly the breadth of product which the company produces that the old site showed.

It almost looks like making the new site active might have been a mistake (we have all seen web hosting companies make mistakes as to which of their clients pages should be live versus those for testing). These pages still look like they are still in production and testing as opposed to ready for prime time useage. Noticed quite a few gibberish lines of text to fill space, typos, dead links, etc.

My understanding is that the Golden Memories series are complete train sets - reproductions of classic postwar train sets such as the Santa Fe, Congressional Limited, etc. If I remember correctly most of the sizing was O-31 minimum.

The difference between Golden Memories and the Traditional lines was much more clear with the old site.

[jimhaleyscomet]

What scale is the Golden Memory Series vs the Traditional Line? What are the differences?

Jim H

[guilfordrr]

Amazing! [;)] Thanks for the heads-up.

[02camaro]

Check it out: www.williamstrains.com