We still have a large number of products which we used to sell waiting to be added to the online store and will be making a more determined effort during the next few months to make these available online. Notably the wide range of lock products we used to sell.
To some extent their addition is linked in with our video download project which has for the few that we have made so far been successful along with the video descriptions of the products themselves which often explain changes to curtain track systems and how the new parts fit or replaced older versions.
The aim will be to have buy online digital downloads of how to fit lock products which can be purchased separately or as freebees when customers buy certain related products.

Certainly the systematic way that we now produce our videos has been well worth the sustained effort over the past years with the process taking a fraction of the time and the results far better. Our main objective during 2010 will be to continue to add to the video download series and where appropriate demonstration videos of how products are assembled or operate.

The Goelst parts product range has been added to the catalogue.
Our main aim will continue to be our videos, but we do tend to get sidetracked and if asked for a spare part or product which we manage to source usually end up adding a complete new product range in the process.

We continue to be very pleased with our new web site and the back end administration so much more efficient and pleasant to work with for us as we are sure the new web layout and system is likewise far more pleasant for our browsers and customers. As with the video’s a lot of hard work to get here, but well worth it !

Hoping that the summer will be a good one for all of you, with we hope some fine weather to compensate for the difficult winter for those of us in the UK.

We are sure our browsers and customers are enjoying the new site layout and online store. The conversion rate has certainly improved and we assume this is because it is so much easier to find what products visually and the search feature is much improved.

A start has been made on digital download video’s and we have added more explanatory videos to the site detailing how products work and how certain products have superseded previous versions.

About 630 products have been added to the store now and we hope to finish adding the rest of our original catalogue by the end of February.

We wish every-one all the best for 2010 and the future.

Our brand image has now also been integrated into the site and although the design works best with the Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 browsers we hope to have complete compatibility with Internet Explorer 8 by the end of October.

Since early 2006 and the introduction by the banks of chip and pin we upgraded our sites shopping cart solution.
This enabled us to comply with the card scheme rules and using a payment gateway we were happy that our online order processing was secure as were the banks.

We continue to use a payment gateway, however with new software developments to our accounting package and with upgrading to Windows Vista the integration with our shopping cart would no longer function.
We looked around for a solution which suited us better and also something that would be more customer friendly.

And here it is !

Benefits for our customers.

• The way the new cart lays out the products makes it much easier for customers to browse through the entire range of spare parts easily, helping them find the exact part they are looking for.
• The ability to display multiply images for each product helping with identification of spare parts and the suitability of complete products.
• A single product on each page eliminating the confusion some customers had when purchasing.
• The ability to compare products side by side.
• The ability to shop by brand as well as category.
• Top Sellers List, possibly making shopping faster for some customers.
• A new products list, this used to be an issue as we do add products that our customers request, but it wasn't always possible to keep them informed when this happened. Now they can check periodically and watch out for them.
• A single page checkout.
• Customers can now create accounts, keep an eye on their orders and review their entire order history.
• RSS feeds and newsletters like this one, keeping browsers and customers informed.

Benefits for us.

• The integration with our accounting and other software will save us considerable time and effort.
• Adding products to our site will be easier and faster, and this will improve our customer service, a win win for everyone.

As you can see as of the 22nd of August 2009 the web site is still a somewhat work in progress, however we are adding our existing product range fast and have tested all the feature to ensure they work.
The template design doesn't really match our brand image and we are working on that one, and are happy that the result will be stylish and simple.
Our implementation date will be the 1st of October when we will transfer all our links to this site and make it fully operational both for our customers and ourselves.