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New Site Launch

3 September, 2014 (20:38) | General

I realize the world of the internet is about constant change. What was new last month is old this month. So to share that we’ve been working on these changes for close to 4 years probably sounds ridiculous. But, while we were supporting the old site, we were already making new applications for the new site. The Color Mixer introduced two years ago was the first application designed towards the direction we wanted to go with our website. The concepts for the new site were prepared by Chris Farrell and Jeff Jones who did the entire programming for the incredible ColorMxr. Jeff passed away two years ago. So this introduction of our new website is certainly also a tribute to this incredibly creative and talented friend.
Thanks go out to so many folks at the shop and our web programming team at Mobisoft. We look forward to your feedback to help us make this a site that is of real value to you. Already our website contains thousands of pages of content, from technique to product, from video to searchable workshops around the globe. Your input will allow us to continue to share our passion for paint and for our arts community.

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Comments

Comment from Antonia
Time: September 4, 2014, 1:42 am

I’ve been anticipating this, with some trepidation. It isn’t as bad as I feared, though it is the same concept as the QOR-site.
A quick browsing doesn’t reveal any really bad problems – except for the column to the far left: it doesn’t scroll, and if you are using a smaller browser window you don’t see everything in it. I am still not sure what/if there is anything below Williamsburg in there.
Oh, and the language selector doesn’t look like it is in the right place. And maybe it isn’t.

One annoyance from the old site remains: instead of opening new windows for things that are conceptually separate, or even better giving the user a choice, you click on something and is transported to Williamsburg, or this blog or Just Paint. If you had in mind looking over some of the other links on the main Golden page this is annoying.
I’m guessing the fact that the left hand column disappears when you click on the contact-tab is just a mistake?

I haven’t ventured into the retailer-space yet (please, please re-name it something other than “marketplace” – it’s a very confusing name for what it is!), will be interesting to see if there’s any major changes there.

Comment from Antonia
Time: September 4, 2014, 2:09 am

Oh, and one other thing:
The site is still lacking the most important thing (even more than before): A comprehensive listing of pigments.
In the store we have the various printed things that give us this, but often it would be very useful to be able to email a link to a customer asking about a specific pigment.
The colour information now on the site is very nice to play with, but not very practical for sending customers to or for incorporating the data in our own newsletters or hand-outs in demos or workshops.

How about a pdf-library with this kind of information? It could include all MSDS, listings of colour ranges with pigments, all application sheets, full pdfs of all issues of JustPaint!, etc.

Comment from Mark
Time: September 4, 2014, 9:08 am

Dear Antonia, why trepidation? New sites are an act of renewal. In this case the new format allows many of the users here at Golden Artist Colors to quickly add content to the site versus having to thread everything through a small portal of support. So the long and short… you’ll be seeing a lot of great information quickly getting incorporated into the new site!!
The QoR site was a first test of our new design, so the similarity was intentional. The other sites, will over time be converted (i.e. Williamsburg), but first things first. I’ve had no problems using my back arrow to get back to any place I was previously on, but that’s just the way I’ve worked in many websites. I’ve made sure your comments are available for our team to review, and I’m sure they’ll have more insights over the next few days. As you can imagine, with a conversion this big, they are quite busy right now!!! Thanks again for your thoughts. Best, Mark

Comment from Mark
Time: September 4, 2014, 9:16 am

Antonia, we have data on every pigment, which was also in the new site.
Here’s a link
http://www.goldenpaints.com/products/colors/heavy-body/titanate-yellow
You’ll see it describes in detail the information on the Titanate-Yellow. There is a detail page for every color. Are you looking for a listing of every color on one page?
http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata
This is all the colors, again which is searchable. Thanks again, hope this is what you’re looking for. Best, Mark

Comment from Noreen Tyler
Time: September 6, 2014, 12:07 am

Amien’s website has been hacked and your website kind of floats all over the place on an Ipad. It shouldn’t do that on any device including a PC. Hopefully your designers know something about web standards otherwise your money is going down the drain.

Please do something about amien. I totally miss all the Geeking out over materials.

Comment from Mark
Time: September 6, 2014, 2:54 pm

Thanks for the input. Always appreciated. Mark Gottsegen was AMIEN. Without his energy it is difficult to bring it back but we’re trying!

Comment from Antonia
Time: September 25, 2014, 4:29 am

Hi again, thanks for the comments :-)

Yes, I’d already discovered that, and I love it for casual browsing. What that format is not good for is quickly answering questions like “which colours contain/does not contain pigment xyz?” – we have some printed materials from you where I can look it up, but having that information in _listform_ online would be really handy.

Why trepidation, you ask. Well, when you get used to something you get good at using it, quickly finding things, knowing exactly how to navigate to check something. So format changes inevitably means extra work. And when a site is re-vamped very often glitz is prioritized over usability – but I must say that except for a few minor glitches here and there, you’ve succeeded pretty well.
(I don’t like having to use the back-button much, prefering to browse with “families of tabs”, so when what I expect is a link _within_ a site takes me somewhere else I get a bit annoyed, since if I had anticipated it taking me somewhere else completely I would have opened it in another tab. Sure it’s just a few clicks to put things how I like them, no biggie, but the essence of good design is that things are predictable.)

BTW, the site performs very well on a 10″ Android tablet (much better than the old one did, drop-down menus are murder on a touchscreen). Just checking it out now on all the five different browsers I have installed, some are better than others but all are usable.

Comment from Mark
Time: September 25, 2014, 10:47 am

Antonia, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve continued to navigate around the site. I’ve shared yours and other’s comments about the new site. What we’ve come to realize through this process is that we have an enormous level of content for an artist materials company. With more links and more possibility of links going haywire. We’re quickly catching up on those, but the numbers of checks are in the thousands.
Did you know that the old pigment list was sort-able to allow you to select among many of the column headings to hopefully group together your answers to common pigments, etc. Hopefully, we will soon have the same functionality on the new site.
Glad the Android worked. I look forward again to your feedback as you have any time to noodle around!! So far my IPhone is useless, but this too will pass. Best, Mark

Comment from Harvis
Time: June 1, 2020, 6:39 pm

Can I get to see the link already?

Comment from Farve
Time: June 1, 2020, 7:37 pm

Nice work Chris Farrel

Comment from Christina Davis
Time: June 20, 2020, 2:53 am

You guys are doing an amazing work. Keep it up.

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