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.
I think you are completely right Enza3D. It should be sorted by reviews and prices. Who cares about one day delivery or order completion if the price is too high and/or the quality isnt good? Of course its good to add the option to sort by completion and delivery time, so people that need it fast can find a suitable hub. But the standard way should be sorting by somekind of reviews in combination with pricing!
“Best Match” - whenever I am not the best match, I feel insulted. Especially when I actually am the best match, but someone else is labeled best match. Rude.
That being said, can someone explain what is going on here? Is the ranking now changed so faster shipping increases a ranking? Can someone explain it to me? I have no idea what the actual change is…
I still think the best match option sucks. When I look up Belgium, I’m way under more expensive hubs, with way less reviews, further from the center of Belgium and longer trunaround times. Thats not really a better match than me I think…
Please stop linking to this page of what makes a hub a “best match”.
1. The criteria is weak. What makes a hub a “best match” has far more factors than are listed on this page. If this is all the criteria used in “best match”, then the algorithm is very weak. Additional factors, such as material offered, colors offered, prints completed, and a host of many other factors are not reflected on that page.
2. I have spent an inordinate amount of time ranking pages by available information, based on what you show on that page. Based on the limited factors shown on that page, I have ran multiple scenarios on hubs. Almost always, based on just those factors, 3dhubs recommendation for “best match” comes back differently with my simulations than what shows as “best match”. Now, I know 3dhubs algorithms are “secret”, but that does not make them more accurate for “best match”.
As you know, I hate the “best match” terminology, and will continue to push for this important change in terminology.
Yup. I have a hub near me that lists as best match in the town where my hub is located.
It shows up first in my home town, where I live.
It has:
Lower response time
Less reviews
Less completed prints
More expensive pricing
Less colors
Less materials
Less services.
I also happen to know that the prints are much worse than mine.
I have over 100 prints, with PERFECT reviews.
I have had customers who printed there, and came back to me. But that hub shows up as best match in my hometown, even though it is farther away. (in fact, not even in my hometown)
Nothing is more insulting than seeing that hub listed as “best match”. What is amazing here, is that I am not complaining about it being listed first above me. Its the terminology. I have no problem being listed second on a list of “best matches”, but saying that hub is the “best match” is aggravating as hell.
Does the amount of business I have brought to my hub, not count for anything!!!
I do student work, put posters up in the local colleges, do print seminars at the library, and folks who go to 3dhubs see this other hub as “best match”.
Infuriating, and demotivating. What does a person have to do to be the “best match” at their own address?
Hubs is going to define “Best Match” as whatever they want, regardless of whether or not you like it. It’s a subjective definition and really should not be used at all on a site like this. How can anyone possibly know who a best match will be for a customer when a lot of factors (speed, cost, services, etc.) are entirely left out of the equation? The existing filters take care of things like materials and the services, but frankly, they are not that intuitive for a customer to use (outside of the material selection, that is nicely done).
Where you get ranked by the default sorting wouldn’t be as critical as it is now if the customer could actually sort through the results in a logical way. Really, the only true sorting anyone can do of Hubs they get matched with is by distance, which is really only useful for customers who are picking up. It would, in my mind, make far more sense to do away with the “Best Match” option and make the sorting able to be by cost (lowest to highest), by number of reviews/completed jobs (the Hub with the most reviews goes first), by quality of reviews (a Hub with more 5 stars ranks above one with more 4 star reviews), and by potential delivery time (incl. shipping and printing, Hubs will have to define some kind of cutoff time for this). All of this being in addition to existing filters.
“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.
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.
