How to Sort Products...

The best inventory sorter that I've seen so far is the one on Western Depot's website. 

You can fill or leave blank as many fields as you want and it'll bring up exactly what you ask it for.

 

No, No, I'm not talking about filling in a FILTER. I'm talking about browsing... Clicking the links.

 

How should the products be sorted into their categories...

well you could separate the diesel power into modern vrs 1st and 2nd generation.

Once in O/Lionel/Locomotives/Steam, just sort them by model number low to high. That way I can look for 6-11405 or whatever and know if you have it or not pretty quick.

You want to see how not to sort items, go to Pat's Trains. Ive bought from Pat and I would buy from him again but finding stuff on his site is a huge pain in the A**!!!

The best I have seen is M. B. Klein's (modeltrainstuff.com).  The website is organized in levels pretty much like you describe in you opening thread: by scale scale, but then by type (rolling stock, locomotives, passenger trains, vehicles, figures, track, accessories, etc., then you get all of what you selected (O Gauge, figures).  THEN you can pick from a pull down list of manufacturers (so you get a difference list for, say locos, as opposed to say, figures), and THEN, most useful for browsing, you can ask for the items to be sorted by newest first, oldest first, lowest to highest cost or vice versa.  Sounds perfect for browsing.  

 

I agree that Western Depot has a good organization but their search feature is among the weaker ones. 

On Charlie's and Mr Muffin's I search by part number which requires going to Lionel or Mth web pages and using there search engine to get the part #   If you could have a search engine like the manufacturers....

Model train stuff and wholesale trains show up on google when you do a model # search.

Just my thoughts, please sort by "SCALE" or "SEMI-SCALE". Nothing worse that viewing through steam locomotives, or diesel locomotives without any indication of what is "SCALE" and what isn't.

Don't forget there some things that are not scale specific or may apply to more than one scale. I would prefer to access to those at the first level.

I agree. Then in O the third level would probably be Scale or Semi Scale? Or the second level?

I would also like sites better if they separated the scale stuff from the non-scale stuff.  It can be a pain some times to wade through tons of non-scale stuff to find the scale items, especially since som much more stuff is non-scale.

 

Andy

and no matter what have an "ALL" button so everything will load.  nothing more frustrating then have a page reload every 10 or 20 items.

One thing I've noticed is that unless you use the DEALER's part number, MOST sites won't find something.  As an example, if I type in 6-18005, most of the sites won't find it.  If however, I search for LIO618005 or LIO18005 or whatever other codes the dealer uses, up pops the item for which I was searching.  Very frustrating, because unless you find *something* in the search results, you don't even have a clue what your part number scheme follows.

I agree with Lee. Model Train Stuff is easy.

 

And thanks for asking. You guys really do a nice job asking our opinions and keeping us informed. I really appreciate it and it has resulted in business for you as a result with more to come this week.

Carl, that is exactly how nicholas smith works but I love to just browse items lookign to fill some holes. Some sites do not lend to that tactic

Don't fix - what's not broken

Gromet, as I read your original post, the first thing that came to my mind was Western Depot's site.  I realize you're looking at it from a "links" perspective, but what you're describing from a practical perspective is exactly what the Western Depot filter provides their shoppers.

 

For example, if I want to stop at steam engines, that's all I need to specify.  If I want to go further, I'd specify the particular type of steam engine.  Assuming your website database allows it, you can categorize and sub-categorize items to your heart's content.  And what is presented back to the user at that point is a dynamically-created INDEX of links that the user can then click on to view select items in more detail.

 

Although it may seem like overkill at first glance, I find the Western Depot site to be one of the easiest to "find" items.  There's nothing more frustrating than entering search key words only to have the website's search function deliver a list of stuff that has no correlation to what was asked.  And some very popular dealer sites do exactly that.  Big turn-off.

 

David 

 

Forcing people to go though too many links is counter productive, and will likely cause people to turn away.
I suggest against going any further than separating steam, diesel, and electric. At that point, give people the option to use filters for finer selection.

Another thought: many websites show pictures of each item that is for sale, so few pieces fit on a page. Pictures are great, but I would prefer to have an option to see what is available as a list, so much more product would fit on the page.