The wait is over! As I have said many times in previous posts and emails, this site has been a labor of love. I began the journey of this new web site way back in November of 2019, researching new platforms and identifying the features that I wanted the new site to have. While our last site was functional and served its purpose, it lacked several functionalities that modern web sites have to make online shopping easier. I think our new site accomplishes that goal, so lets go through a few:
Product Search
Yes, search! As simple as it may sound, it was a difficult feature to implement on our old web site. The new site has a robust search capability that assists you in the process. The search bar is in the top right corner of the site, on every page. You can type something as simple as “blue paint” and it will return every blue paint we offer. If you type “Fusion blue paint” it will return all blue paints under the Fusion brand. I put a tremendous amount of time and effort into getting this search feature (and the next feature we discuss: Filters) to work properly and return accurate results, and it was the bulk of the time spent designing the new site. I hope you find it useful!
Filters
If you are not certain what exactly you are searching for, then Filters will allow you to drill down into the product catalog to find products by attributes like color, size or paint type. They work on the “or” principle, which means you can select more than one attribute to widen your search. For example, if you are not sure if you want a blue or a green paint you can select blue, green and turquoise and see all options at the same time. You can also filter by Brand, size, sheen and paint type.
Wish List
Wish List is a new feature that allows you to keep a list of products that you’d like to order in the future, or just to remind yourself to look at them again. Your wishlist is kept in your “My Account” section and there is a link at the top of the page.
Waiting List
The single MOST requested feature BY FAR is a waiting list, and I am ECSTATIC to introduce it to you today! Our waiting list will automatically notify you when an item that you would like to purchase is back in stock. You will have to verify your “subscription” by email, but it will only be used to notify you about that particular product. Once you have been notified, the item will be removed from your list so you will only be notified once. You can always add it again if it goes out of stock again.
Note: This should not be confused with the Wish List. The wish list WILL NOT notify you of anything. It is simply a list you keep for your own reference. The waiting list is a notification service, and can be accessed from any product page.
Product Reviews
Also on the product page you will find the Product Reviews tab. There are three tabs below each product’s image on the product page: Description, Additional Information and Reviews. I invite and encourage all customers to review any items in our catalog. I try very hard to make sure that all products on our site meet my own standards of quality as if I was one of our customers, and reviews are valuable in evaluating a product before purchasing it. It can also act to alert us to a product that may need a higher level of scrutiny in terms of quality, or how we represent it in images or text descriptions and filterable attributes.
Shipment ETA’s
One carryover from our previous site will be a more prominent display of our expected shipment ETA’s. While I hope that these will become a thing of the past very soon, as Fusion gets completely caught up on shipping paint in adequate quantities and in a timely manner, I will keep these at the top of our page until that day comes and we no longer need them. The Waiting List feature is also designed to reduce the need for specific shipment notifications and I plan to discontinue our regular shipment email once this feature is put to good use by our customers.
Order History
Another item that turned out to be more complicated than I expected was existing customer Order History. Your order history can be found in your “My Account” page. Our previous web site platform did not have a favorable format for exporting order history data, so I enlisted the help of a company that specializes in exactly this. While the transfer did seem to do what it was supposed to do, there are. a few inconsistencies here and there. Order numbers will not be the same as the old site, and order dates may or may not match. Also, although products are displayed in your history you will not be able to use them as links to re-order them, unfortunately. This was a technical issue between he old site and the new one that I could not get fixed. All orders starting now on the new site will have reorder links in your order history.
Summary
I think that pretty much wraps it up. Again, I hope that everyone finds these improvements helpful and worthy of the wait. The transfer from one server to another was a little more complicated than I had hoped, and took longer than planned, but I am really excited about the results. Also, a big welcome to all of our customers from vintiquefinishes.co where we sold Debi’s DIY Paint exclusively! The main goal when I started this project was to combine the two sites into one. There were reasons that they had to be separated, which I will go into in another post, but I was able get it done on this new platform and still keep all shipping guidelines in tact and not breach any of our retailer agreements.
Enjoy the new site and please don’t hesitate to reach out in any available contact format. We have comments below, email, phone, contact page, reviews, Facebook and soon a couple of new options! A chat feature is something that I was unable to implement in the new site upon its launch, but I am hoping to be able to have a more-or-less instant contact capability in place in the very near future.
Thanks so much for your patronage and your patience while I worked on this mountain of web site work!
-Mike @ Vinique