I've always wondered how the online comic sites

[sd2416]

Will do.

 

Added it to my favs.

[Flaming_Telepath]

Will do.

 

Added it to my favs.

 

[tth2]

The whole process is inordinately time consuming...beyond even what you're imagining.

 

So you get a collection in and the first thing you do is put it into order...title then volume then issue. This takes longer than you might think. I remember the inititial stock for Comicana Direct included 27 long-boxes just of the letter S.

 

It took over a day simply to get them into order.

 

Then you start the processing...grading, bagging, boarding, inputting and potentially scanning. If you're lucky, you have a database with pre-loaded values and the grade entry triggers a calculation that gives you a price. If not, it's out with the OS and calculator.

 

We've taken a decision not to use stock scans, but we also won't scan every book. Roughly we put a $10 value limit on scans...they have to be more expensive for us to load up a scan...but we also scan any book that has different printings or variants and we scan all copies.

 

Loading the stock details and the scans to the site is your next hurdle and sometimes the sheer size of the upload causes problems with time-outs, etc. We have a programme that resizes the scans into three sizes...thumbnail, standard and large...as it loads them up. We're actually populating the site with scans at the moment and have experienced a 20% drop out rate, which has prompted us to look for a different uploading solution.

 

All in all...a load of arseache.

Do what everyone else in the UK does for menial tasks--hire some Eastern Europeans to work off the books for below minimum wage.

[musicmeta]

The whole process is inordinately time consuming...beyond even what you're imagining.

 

So you get a collection in and the first thing you do is put it into order...title then volume then issue. This takes longer than you might think. I remember the inititial stock for Comicana Direct included 27 long-boxes just of the letter S.

 

It took over a day simply to get them into order.

 

Then you start the processing...grading, bagging, boarding, inputting and potentially scanning. If you're lucky, you have a database with pre-loaded values and the grade entry triggers a calculation that gives you a price. If not, it's out with the OS and calculator.

 

We've taken a decision not to use stock scans, but we also won't scan every book. Roughly we put a $10 value limit on scans...they have to be more expensive for us to load up a scan...but we also scan any book that has different printings or variants and we scan all copies.

 

Loading the stock details and the scans to the site is your next hurdle and sometimes the sheer size of the upload causes problems with time-outs, etc. We have a programme that resizes the scans into three sizes...thumbnail, standard and large...as it loads them up. We're actually populating the site with scans at the moment and have experienced a 20% drop out rate, which has prompted us to look for a different uploading solution.

 

All in all...a load of arseache.

 

Mercy, it is very time consuming! :o

[DiceX]

For those of you that run a store and a website, how do you keep track of the inventory. Say you have one copy of New Mutants 98. It is for sale in the store and on the website. You sell it in the store, how soon after the sale is it pulled from the website and listed as out of stock? Is there an inventory system/bar code scanner software you use to keep track of everything?

 

It seems like in effect, you are running multiple stores. The brick and mortar one and the online one.

 

 

We're still de-bugging - and we don't have a bricks & mortar, per se, although we do have 'visitors' - but the intention is for everything to be linked via one database and as soon as a sale is consumated, the item comes straight out of the system and can't be sold via any other means.

 

Whats your sites address?

 

www.comicanadirect.com

 

And feel free to let me know when you find things that make you go

 

Got some small glitches that we're working through. (thumbs u

 

I'm impressed. It looks very nice.

 

One thing I've noticed is when you click on a specific book you can't use the back button on the browser. You have to use the button on the page. While it's functional, I'm an old fuddy and would like to use my browser buttons.

 

Looks great so far, though. (thumbs u

 

 

[mister_not_so_nice]

The whole process is inordinately time consuming...beyond even what you're imagining.

 

It took over a day simply to get them into order.

 

We've taken a decision not to use stock scans, but we also won't scan every book. Roughly we put a $10 value limit on scans...they have to be more expensive for us to load up a scan...but we also scan any book that has different printings or variants and we scan all copies.

 

All in all...a load of arseache.

 

I don't use stock scans either(except for my "scan coming soon" image)

 

It does take a bit longer, but I'd rather the customer see the EXACT book they are buying. All images on my site are 800pixels high, but I maintain the original scan twice that size on my home computer I can email to anyone on request (thumbs u

 

Take awhile, but i love comics and comic art

 

[Flaming_Telepath]

For those of you that run a store and a website, how do you keep track of the inventory. Say you have one copy of New Mutants 98. It is for sale in the store and on the website. You sell it in the store, how soon after the sale is it pulled from the website and listed as out of stock? Is there an inventory system/bar code scanner software you use to keep track of everything?

 

It seems like in effect, you are running multiple stores. The brick and mortar one and the online one.

 

 

We're still de-bugging - and we don't have a bricks & mortar, per se, although we do have 'visitors' - but the intention is for everything to be linked via one database and as soon as a sale is consumated, the item comes straight out of the system and can't be sold via any other means.

 

Whats your sites address?

 

www.comicanadirect.com

 

And feel free to let me know when you find things that make you go

 

Got some small glitches that we're working through. (thumbs u

 

I'm impressed. It looks very nice.

 

One thing I've noticed is when you click on a specific book you can't use the back button on the browser. You have to use the button on the page. While it's functional, I'm an old fuddy and would like to use my browser buttons.

 

Looks great so far, though. (thumbs u

 

 

Thanks.

 

The removal of the standard back button function is because the site is basically one page that loads and reloads without leaving a cache? I'm no techie, but I've been advised that this will allow for much quicker load speed, especially when somebody is set to 100 books per view.

[sckao]

Hmm. Yeah. I would say don't do it. Breaking the "back" button is a very bad idea even at the expense of speed.

 

The Navigation scheme is also a little weird and you want links to SHOW they're links. Your featured books are links but they don't APPEAR to be links... which makes it look like they're not for sale when they are. You're also flirting with problems when you make your title/heading graphics the same color as your links. Interior Links show up as underlined typically which is better, but I assume your heading graphics will eventually have to be clickable as well.

 

(Clicking on the image in a DETAIL page blows it up... but it's not obvious that clicking on it again gets you back. Since you disabled the back button here too, it's quite annoying.)

 

Lots of little things that are easily fixable.

 

More later if I have time...

 

 

 

 

 

[MrBedrock]

For those of you that run a store and a website, how do you keep track of the inventory. Say you have one copy of New Mutants 98. It is for sale in the store and on the website. You sell it in the store, how soon after the sale is it pulled from the website and listed as out of stock? Is there an inventory system/bar code scanner software you use to keep track of everything?

 

It seems like in effect, you are running multiple stores. The brick and mortar one and the online one.

 

We have begun using a version of Microsoft RMS which will eventually link our main store and our on-line store. The POS system in the shop and the shopping cart on the site will both pull from and interact with the same system so that all sales will be instantaneously adjusted out of the system.

 

At least that is the hope

[Flaming_Telepath]

Hmm. Yeah. I would say don't do it. Breaking the "back" button is a very bad idea even at the expense of speed.

 

The Navigation scheme is also a little weird and you want links to SHOW they're links. Your featured books are links but they don't APPEAR to be links... which makes it look like they're not for sale when they are. You're also flirting with problems when you make your title/heading graphics the same color as your links. Interior Links show up as underlined typically which is better, but I assume your heading graphics will eventually have to be clickable as well.

 

(Clicking on the image in a DETAIL page blows it up... but it's not obvious that clicking on it again gets you back. Since you disabled the back button here too, it's quite annoying.)

 

Lots of little things that are easily fixable.

 

More later if I have time...

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers, Shin...much appreciated.

[mycomicshop]

The removal of the standard back button function is because the site is basically one page that loads and reloads without leaving a cache? I'm no techie, but I've been advised that this will allow for much quicker load speed, especially when somebody is set to 100 books per view.

 

Your developer could make the Back button work within the single-page architecture you're using. He may already be doing that and just needs to extend it to cover some of the links that aren't currently captured in the history. I agree with the other comments that having the browser's back button work as expected is important.

 

As a matter of personal preference, I dislike the use of a single-page architecture for web sites. A single-page architecture is appropriate if you're building something with a complex interface where the user views what they're doing as "using an application"--such as a word processor or a drawing program running within a browser. But if the user is just visiting a web site where the primary navigation metaphor is moving from one page to another, I don't see the point. You create additional work for yourself and you degrade the user experience unless you go through the effort to support all the basic browser behaviors users take for granted: forward and back buttons work, having a URL in the address bar that you can copy to return to the resource you're currently viewing, hovering over a link displays the destination in the status bar, right clicking a link lets you copy it or open it in a new tab or new window, etc. It's possible to recreate all that expected behavior, but I'd rather stick with the standard request model and get all that without any additional effort or complexity.

 

The biggest factors in how quickly each page loads are the size of any new cover images that have to be loaded for that page, and the back-end database queries you're running. Those two elements will often dominate your page download times regardless of which architecture you use. By using a single-page architecture, the only speed improvement you're getting is avoiding download of a new HTML page with each request, but that should be a pretty small contributor to your overall page load time.

[Flaming_Telepath]

Thanks for the comments.

[Chespirito]

The removal of the standard back button function is because the site is basically one page that loads and reloads without leaving a cache? I'm no techie, but I've been advised that this will allow for much quicker load speed, especially when somebody is set to 100 books per view.

 

[comicwiz]

I was looking online at a few sites to fill some of my runs on a few titles and was thinking someone had to scan all the images for the back issues, assign a grade and a price for each grade and upload that info on the site. Each week, the new issues that come out, those images have to be uploaded and prices, etc. Not to mention if that site sells things other then comics. (toys, cards, clothing, etc)

 

Where we have run into problems is with labeling individual scans with Google searchable names which match up with the various databases so that everything works together and folks can find the items which are available on our web-site. That has been a massive pain in the butt and is one of the reasons our site has been in a state of flux for the last couple of months. When it is all done it will be cool. Hopefully it won't be too long from now.

 

Are you referring to changing the numeric id naming convention (i.e. http:/www.bedrockcity.com/Item-Details.aspx?id=38323) for each book as opposed to including the title in the url (i.e. http:/www.bedrockcity.com/Item-Details.aspx?100-Bullets-Vol-07-Samurai.html ).

 

This renaming convention that embeds the title into the item url definitely improves Google referrer traffic. I've seen quite a difference between one of my sites that uses the old numeric id naming, and the "SEO-friendly" version which embeds the title right in the url.

 

That said, you're still leaps and bounds ahead of what even the top dealers sites are doing as far as making their sites SEO friendly. Even using the numeric id naming system, the thing you should absolutely do is have a title, a named scan (meaning, don't just stick up the scan using image1.jpg - call it 100_Bullets_Samurai.jpg ), and make sure your description makes ample use of the kind of keywords that people who would be looking for the book would stumble upon using search (i.e. artist name, publisher, etc.)

 

Seems like more work, but you only need to do it once, and if you're going to have an online store, do it right the first time. Everyone is quick to point out that eBay brings you the traffic, but if enough people put some thought to making their sites more visible in search, you would be surprised and astounded by the kind of traffic an online store can generate simply because Google bots like visiting your site. And the more Google finds your site friendly to their pagerank model, the better your chances of generating the kind of referrer traffic that converts to increased sales.

[sd2416]

For those of you that run a store and a website, how do you keep track of the inventory. Say you have one copy of New Mutants 98. It is for sale in the store and on the website. You sell it in the store, how soon after the sale is it pulled from the website and listed as out of stock? Is there an inventory system/bar code scanner software you use to keep track of everything?

 

It seems like in effect, you are running multiple stores. The brick and mortar one and the online one.

 

We have begun using a version of Microsoft RMS which will eventually link our main store and our on-line store. The POS system in the shop and the shopping cart on the site will both pull from and interact with the same system so that all sales will be instantaneously adjusted out of the system.

 

At least that is the hope

 

A few of the stores around here just use generic bar codes where it has a price and is labeled "GENERIC BACK ISSUE". No real way to track sales and inventory that way.