Welcome to our new website

Here we are, it's been a long time coming but after 10-11 years of service it was (admittedly overdue) time to move to a new cart to show our products.

First and foremost - we must confess, but this site is not finished, and not really near it. All the important functional stuff is there - you can buy things, see what we have and contact us, so it serves it's purpose. But in a combination of circumstances that the old website was not always refreshing properly and with a move to a new inventory system needed for this new catalogue, our financial year end falling at the end of September meant this was the best time to bring forward the move to our new home on the web.

We've got about a third of the product descriptions tidied up now, but a lot of stuff hasn't have come over perfectly from the import. All the words are right, but the layout is sometimes a little funky. We're fixing these but it takes time to check and tweak over 5000 product pages, so bear with us on that one. 

What's the difference with the new site then?

Responsive Design

We're now responsive to mobile and tablet devices - the website immediately scales the product columns and menu style from horizontal to vertical stack depending on the screen size used. No more pinching, scrolling and zooming around to click awkward menus that only really worked in desktop use. Our old site was okay on a desktop computer, but it was dire to use on mobiles. But let's face it, when we made our last website, the iPhone was nothing more than a fanciful concept, so it wasn't really a big concern at the time.

Filtered searches

When browsing selected categories, you can now filter searches. Sure, we've seen it on other PC part sites that you can search by brand and sometimes model series, but we've gone a lot further. Try the Cases > All Cases section - you can select cases by number of drive bays, colour scheme, side panel type, form factor, even drag sliders to set a minimum or maximum width, height or depth to find a case that fits your space just right. Cooling > Case fans can be browsed by connector type, blade colour, lighting colour, minimum / maximum airflow and noise levels. Mechanical Keyboards can be filtered by switch type, keycap material, lighting colour, country layout... you get the idea. What's more, you can then adjust any view to show products sorted by name, price, how recently added and refine only to show items in stock today.

We'll be adding this to more categories in time, but have given priority to categories of products where we feel it's most useful. Additionally, more properties will be added - the motherboards section will be given a few tweaks soon, such as being able to refine by support for extra features such as Crossfire, SLI, Thunderbolt, lighting control etc.

Some sections allow comparison of products - just highlight those you want to compare using the bar graph icon under the thumbnail for each product, and then click comparison list to get an overview of feature differences between a few models.

Customer Accounts

Customer accounts are now enabled, so you can save your delivery details, and view a history of items ordered. This does have other perks - putting in your address and staying logged in means you can get a quicker checkout, and also use the 'Shipping cost' tab in products to see the delivery options for one item, since your postcode will already be pre-filled if you're signed in.

It means as well you can save items to your wishlist by clicking on the heart symbol, handy for remebering things you want to come back for later.

Bigger, Better Pictures.

New products are getting bigger pictures, and we're improving some sections just now such as taking new mechanical keyboard photos to make them clearer and show the correct layout. That is, trying to put an end to past laziness of using manufacturer photos of whatever layout they bothered to photograph when of course that would look different to the UK models we sell, so although it's a massive job we've been taking our own snaps of every keyboard and trying to lead ahead of everyone else in this respect.

Admittedly a lot of products will still carry the website's old 400 pixel wide images, but we're gradually replacing those, and certainly any items added over the past few months (we've been making this site in tandem with keeping the old site going) have 800 pixel wide zoom.

Look and Feel

There's lots of other stuff like real-time search suggestions in the search box (like the auto suggestions on google), the checkout is much clearer and the look is generally a bit more... well, it's not as 'last decade' at least. But we've still stuck to the same ethos of before, that we want to give you all the product information you need, but without extra clutter and adverts flashing all over the place.

Systems

Again our systems page is not quite finished, but we've tweaked this to show more about the example systems, improved the quote form and given some options to adjust the specifications with the Configure button. As of last week, we're set up to offer finance, and this can be a great way to make a system easier to afford, including a 50% deposit and 50% over 6 months interest-free option which spreads cost but without costing you any interest. More details will be added this to the website shortly.

Delivery

We've refined our delivery options a little, introducing cheaper 2nd Class Post for small / low priority items, and also introducing a local delivery service. That is, customers in Ayr, Prestwick, Troon, Coylton, Monkton, Mossblown, Annbank can get same-day delivery. This is free in Ayr / Prestwick / Monkton for orders over £20, or for further afield or for orders under £20 value, a £2.40 charge applies. 

Blog

And we have a blog now. But you know that already, right?

Fin

There's lots of other small details, and there's more to come too - we'll be adding online financing, a new decal and decal stack ordering system, a referall / affiliate scheme and more over the coming months, so keep checking back for more improvements!