From: Adrian Johnson <ajohnson@i...>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2001 23:12:00 -0400
Subject: [WAAAAYYYY OT] What makes a good miniatures web site
> And hours, and hours, and hours of time, which costs money. Hiya folks, Hear, hear on that <chuckle> Roger... Several hundred thousand? Um, no. OTOH, GW does market something like 200 - 300 new miniatures per year (according to a retail store owner I was talking to on Saturday, who has a huge pile of their stuff). If you look through their published catalogues, there are a *lot* of miniatures in the current range, let alone all the stuff they can do out of the older ranges by special order. But 100,000+??? No. Having said that, and being in the web development business myself as an independant contractor, doing websites for little companies... it would cost a bundle to do a miniature company's site, no matter how you look at it. Unless the company only has 50 miniatures... If you hire someone like me, and get me to do the pics with a digital camera, it's going to cost too much. Yes, I can set up an assembly line for the photos, with a lighting rig all set up, my digital camera mounted, focused and ready to go, etc etc. But still... Taking 500 pictures will take quite a while. Then resizing them, setting them up as a thumbnail and a "full size" version properly webified for good download speeds - even if working on-mass is still pretty time consuming in those numbers. It isn't complex, by any means, just time consuming - and someone like me will bill by the hour... If you hire a student who is hungry, they'll probably get annoyed with the whole thing and realize they're being taken advantage of by the time they get through it all, unless you pay them an even vaguely reasonable amount - and then it's getting pricy again. Or you'll *maybe* get lucky and get a hungry student who is *really* hungry and has nothing to do for a couple of weeks. If you have the skill to do it yourself and put up your own website, it's going to cost you a bundle in terms of your own time. Either time out from work, which might incur business related costs (not doing other money earning things) OR time out of your private life, such as it is, which is *more* expensive in my opinion, though not cash-wise. Either way, as Heinlein said, TANSTAAFL! (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) Generally speaking, when it comes to the web just as with most other places in life, you get what you pay for. Yes, you don't need pictures at all for a catalogue website. Yes some people will be satisfied with a written description. But the topic line of this thread is "What makes a GOOD miniatures web site" (my emphasis). The issue here is not whether or not a site can be made at all, but what comprises a GOOD site. A good web sales site these days has pictures of the product. A poor or mediocre site does not. And that's all she wrote... (and yes, I know there can be POOR sites with pictures... that isn't my point - most people who shop on the web want and expect pictures of what they're shopping for - no I don't have actual stats for this, just my experience in the business - but ask *any* web designer/developer and they'll say the same thing). Ok. That's my $0.02 Now, this has been an [OT] thread for a long time. Many emails, actually. Some people like pics, some people don't care either way. That's cool. Whatever. Perhaps we can agree to kill the thread.