Why change a website that everyone loves and praises?

First, we had to deal with an unfixable bug in the shopping cart which was causing intermittent problems. New technology was the way forward.

Second, our ‘product mix’ is now of higher quality than the site was originally designed for. We wanted to bring a quality look to match the quality of the inventory.

Third, we wanted to optimize for all devices. In the old days ‘going online’ meant connecting to the internet using a personal computer or laptop with a reasonably large screen. Today we also use smartphones and notebooks. For websites to display at their best on small devices the website needs to be able to shrink itself to fit the screen. New technology was again the way forward.

A unique and possibly the greatest feature of your old website was the detail in your descriptions and condition reports with pictures showing exactly what was what. Has that changed?

Rest easy, there has been no change to the detail which, as before, you reach by clicking the button that looks like this. This is where Madelena’s users find the detailed descriptions and condition reports that are our unique selling point. We believe in ‘Do as you would be done by. No surprises thank you.’ Every care is taken to show defects as realistically as possible.

Why did you not change the technology but keep the old look?

We noticed other websites moving to a cleaner, less cluttered look and feel. We thought ours would look better and make navigation easier for first time visitors if we made some changes. Existing users we hope will very quickly discover that the core content of the website has not changed at all.

We have moved to a new logo that works with all categories and are now using a simple color scheme applied consistently throughout the entire website. White text on dark background is used in many places for easy reading.

An attention grabbing homepage and bold navigation routes to the merchandise and to the sell and discover pages we hope will encourage visitors to discover the joys of collecting amazing objects.

Hints and tips when the mouse is ‘hovered’ over a box help the user with additional information and save clutter.

To make our informational articles more accessible we now have a dedicated DISCOVER section in each category which includes a blog and other links that may be of interest.

What else did you change that might improve the user experience?

A Skype button with a reminder of UK time and office hours to make phone calls more easy to make than ever before. And simplified email management.

An improved shopping cart, enhanced security and a smoother check out and payment that should now work perfectly for everybody on every type and version of browser.

Many customers wanted to see Early Staffordshire figures only so these are now shown on a separate page as well as being included with the Victorian Staffordshire figures. Palissy collectors wanted Palissy separated from majolica so we now have a separate Palissy page. Similarly we have separate pages for all the Decorative Arts categories: R.Lalique glass, Minton Secessionist ware, the Wedgwood luster wares including Fairyland lustre, and the art nouveau period WMF silver plated ware that is another specialist category that we deal in.

A Twitter feed for the upcoming younger generation of collectors has been added. This is a good place for short comments from visitors of any age.

Others wanted titles with the ‘thumbnail’ pictures so these have been added.

For more efficient searches the SEARCH box can now handle ‘and’ and ‘or’ in addition to the single word search. For example “Jones,plate” (Jones or plate) returns 215 items containing either the word ‘Jones’ or the word ‘plate’. “Jones plate” (Jones and plate) returns 15 items containing the word ‘Jones’ and the word ‘plate’.

If you don’t love the new website after a short while we really do want to hear from you.

Your comments on anything no matter how small are important to the success of the website. Customer feedback both praise and complaint is key to our development, always was and always will be.

On the CONTACT tab