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I would vote yes, partly because I am just getting back in the hobby and have lots of purchases to make at good prices on an easy-to-use website, and partly because one of my jobs is web design and, quite frankly, TW's site is terrible. The site layout has no uniformity of design. Going from one page to another gives visitors the impression that perhaps they just left Trainworld and now is who-knows-where? A simple header that stays put on each page, that doesn't wander around or disappear entirely, along with a uniform layout, font & color scheme lets a visitors know they're in a well-organized shop, not rummaging around someone's garage sale. It needs a distinct left-sidebar navigation column. This has easily recognizable links to categories & sub-categories at the top of the column that aren't interspersed with sale notices, store hours, etc. No matter where you are in the site, this column is there in the same place and is key to finding any other page in the site without having to click all the way back to the homepage and then scroll down pages to find the next category to visit. The site needs to be updated on a regular basis. I see pages with: "updated 2/20/2004" and that tells me that TW has been asleep for the past 7 months, hasn't been stocking shelves with new merchandise, hasn't been removing references to discontinued or sold-out items, etc. It may not be true, but that's how I read it. Your web designer might consider using a database & a bit more sophisticated programming language to offer current listings of your stock online. I would assume that your inventory is listed in a database in the office computers. Exporting it to a database file that gets uploaded to a server on a daily or weekly basis allows you to present current information without needing to change a single line of HTML code. A store webpage should be a dynamic, informative and reliable venue for your products. Your visitors shouldn't feel like they're looking at a print ad in a 7 month old magazine. I design websites using the methods I describe. My used book site, for example, has many thousands of books broken down into many categories & sub-cats. Since I use a database to catalog & track stock, changing thousands of webpages involves exporting a single data file to my server and never touching the webpages. A dynamic, automated on-line stock inventory system can easily be incorporated into a website and will not costs thousands of dollars per month and will not require an outside consultant to maintain it, probably only to set it up initially. If properly designed, a regular staff person could export a file from the inventory database, upload it to the web server and, in effect update thousands of product pages in minutes. Wayne
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