Your websight sucks!!!!

[The_Angry_Kraut]

As a web designer I am totally inclined to agree with OP. In 2014 it is absolutely unacceptable to not have pictures of your products available or maintain an up-to-date inventory. The burden should not be on the consumer to have to call and wait on hold while an inventory check is performed, the business should make all information readily available to the consumer. There are many vendors across Canada who make online shopping simple and easy, I rather wait an extra day or 2 for shipping and give them my business. I have even paid more for certain products from vendors who offer this convenience.

 

[Harrier .45]

And yet both our store and our website remain incredibly busy, even without photographs, and despite our impossible-to-navigate site configuration. Go figure!

 

[new and novice]

And yet both our store and our website remain incredibly busy, even without photographs, and despite our impossible-to-navigate site configuration. Go figure!

Customer feedback is an important way to improve your business, and increase profits. Take the critiques as something to use to your advantage, not hurt your feelings. When I shop for anything the 1st place I go is to their website. The more advanced, the longer I stay, and the more I place in my shopping cart. I'm able to price things out, add or remove until I feel it's an affordable purchase. You can't do that with your site.

The writing is in the wall as Cyber Monday is growing in popularity, and web shopping is beginning to chip away at the retail outlets business to the point that some ledgers are seeing red.

You really should look at the websites of the other site sponsers on here. I've shopped & purchased at Flaherty's, Wanstalls, Irun guns, & Brant. But only looked at the epps site for kicks. It just didn't do it for me.

Adapting and changing is an important part of business. It is not enough to just say " our website remain incredibly busy, even without photographs". IMO, that is the approach that Blackberry took.

 

[Harrier .45]

If you know how to use the advanced search, it's the best of any gun website. You can really narrow it down. All semi pistols in 45ACP under a grand, new and used? Sure (EDIT, speaking of website that sucks, this forum's URL parser sucks, link fixed)

Let's try this

As far as pics, I agree it sucks but it only sucks for a windowshopper. A new gun looks like any other. For used guns, you can email their photo guy and he will send you huge, detailed photos of anything you want within the day. Yes it's an extra step but for a serious buyer it's not a big deal. Granted, sometimes I don't know that I want a gun because I didn't know it existed (or looked the way it does). But I can understand why they wouldn't want to spend many calories catering to a buyer like that, especially with the volume of used guns that go through there - they'd spend half the day taking pictures.

Thank you Juggernaut. At least we know some people get it! LoL

The site really isn't that hard to navigate. We have put in and Advanced Search feature in the top right corner. On the resulting page you can add as many or as few details about the product you are searching for, and filter the results of those searches any way you see fit.

On the main pages you can select categories, filter by price, by the date the product entered the inventory, etc.

It's a wonderful thing that every second person here on GunNutz just happens to be web designer, full of their own ideas as to how this could be improved, or that could be made better. And yet the web designer we hired to build our site did so to the criteria that we requested, with the design that we selected. We thought it far more useful to spend our efforts creating a site that was functional and focused upon the very core of our business --- selling guns!

The issue of photographs, or the lack thereof, on the website has been discussed ad nauseum in various other threads salted throughout these boards. If you wish to read our stand on the matter, feel free to search out those threads. Our responses and our justifications for our decision not to include photos are readily available for all to read.

If you have questions about any other products we carry at Epps, you need only pick up a telephone, or fire off an E-mail to one of our multiple addresses, and we will be happy to assist you as we are able. There seem to be no shortage of Internet-savvy customers who claim themselves curiously too busy to post an inquiry to the actual people who can answer their concerns and questions far better than anonymous responders on a public forum.

In the mean time, we continue to stand by our website as 100% compatible with the goals of our company. We are not here to entertain our customers, we are here to run a business, and in doing so, to provide our knowledge and our services to every customer as efficiently as we can manage.

Are we perfect? No, absolutely not. We are always looking for ways to better ourselves and our business, including reasonable suggestions from our customers. But that also means that the customers need to play a role in that betterment and improvement by putting an honest effort into understanding and accepting some of those changes we have made.

I state again, without flippancy or sarcasm intended, that despite the grumblings and complaints we read here every time these issues come to light, the design of our website, whether considered a failure or a success by any portion of the public, has not resulted in any slowdown of business at Ellwood Epps. Online purchases account for more than 50% of our daily sales. So we must be doing something right.