Why is it that “keeping XXX competitive” always means loosing sight of the main user ship in favor of more profitable options?!
Please take a page from Makerbots book. They had a fantastic user base who loved their product, they WERE dedicated to putting out the best product they could, and they did a great job with the rep 2 and 2x, then they lost sight of who there users were and started going after the more professional and high end pro-sumer markets because they thought it was more profitable. They completely alienated their main user base that they had established and were unable to penetrate the professional market. No professional shops use Makerbots because they are too small and not reliable enough, and they’ve alienated the maker community to the point where this year at the World Maker Fair just the mention of a Makerbot was scoffed at by everyone unanimously.
It feels as though 3D hubs is approaching a fork in the road, one side is makers and the other is professional prototypes. I don’t think you guys are even in the same stratosphere as professional prototyping shops, The company I work for does hundreds of thousands of dollars in prototypes per year, and we don’t, and never will, use 3d hubs. Cost is not a motivating factor, neither is speed. We want accountability and quality. I can call up my contact at protolabs or any other professional prototyping company and talk to the engineer that is going to be making my part. On hubs, its kind of a crap shoot to whether or not a hub is run by an engineer with some free time or just some person who bought a printer.
For most personal projects this distinction is not a big deal but for the professional world that is a show stopper. And to be frank its not worth my time to sift through the hubs to find and try one that looks professional, I would just rather pay the premium and not have to worry about it.
Please pick a user base and stick with it. You have a loving maker community that leans on you for low risk prototypes and personal projects. IF you seriously want to go up against the big boys of prototyping and professional work you need to up your game by several orders of magnitude.
While this appears to be the case now, I know yesterday (at least during the afternoon) default sorting was based on shipping speed. This was brought to my attention by a customer who was trying to place a repeat order and couldn’t find my Hub, as well as by another Hub. I’m happy that’s not the case anymore.
I also have to agree that if a customer sees overnight delivery, they will expect one day turnaround. You guys will have to make it explicitly clear to them that they are mutually exclusive and selecting overnight delivery does not guarantee one day turnaround.
Regarding shipping, its impossible to set a hard cost on overnight delivery, because it’s based on weight and distance. Is it ok to just offer it but not set a hard cost? Otherwise, I’m going to have to set it ridiculously high and that probably won’t be right for a lot of orders.
I suppose it can be handled on a case by case basis as well; a customer who lives in New York can get 1 day delivery from just USPS, which is much cheaper, whereas someone in California would need to use FedEx/UPS. I’ll have to play around with options, but it may be beneficial to notify customers when they upload a print to the main search page that quoted shipping rates (unless for flat rate) are subject to change.
“Hubs is going to define “Best Match” as whatever they want, regardless of whether or not you like it.”– Actually, I think 3dhubs does respond often to suggestions, and are open to hearing things we do not like. I would not categorize them as doing “whatever they want”. They have shown that user feedback does help them in determining changes to the way they do things. In fact, they are far more responsive than almost any other venue I can think of!
Other than that, I agree with everything you said here.
Again, my primary dislike is for the term “best match”.
I also think the results that get displayed do not match what they claim in the how to hub ranking page. I run the statistics, and they do not match.
I repeat, I am agreeing with you- I think they need to take more into account besides what is linked on their how to hub ranking page.
Isn’t it maybe a good idea to just set filters? Than you can speak about a best match. People can choose a color, a max distance, a resolution, a materiaal,… Then you can talk about a best match. A hub that can deliver what the customer set in the filters. How can you determine a best match for a customer when you only have a file? You don’t even know what the customer wants…
Whatever has happened to the sorting system, I’m not complaining about it at all! I’ve had my hub up for for months, with no orders at all. Then in the last few days I’ve had 5 orders. So it’s not all doom and gloom, at least not for me. I’m not sure how my hub (current ranking 13.7) is attractive to users in my area, but for whatever reason, suddenly people are sending orders my way.
Congrats on the orders! If I may make a suggestion, add more pictures! You have some nice machines and a good variety of filament, so showcase what you can do. Pictures always help drive orders up, people like seeing what you can do before they buy from you.
