Ya, I get some of the info would be a bit sensitive. I think maybe offering a monthly private “Hub Insight” that each user could view that showed just local data would help with that. That way even if a competitor made an account to collect data they would only be able to see a little bit of it. Main thing I would love to know is, in order:
1. How many people actually go to my hub?
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What material types are most popular for orders?
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Why someone didn’t order from me?
4. What printers are the most ordered from?
5. How many orders happen around me?
First two I think would be the easiest and least sensitive, at least in a private “Insight” page.
And I think I’ve seen this mentioned elsewhere but I definitely think either a overhaul of the Trends report or a whole new section like this is needed. The current trends info, well they look nice and might be fun to look at for new users, are not at all interesting to experienced users. I remember looking at it a bunch when I first started and was all excited. After a while I realized it was all kind of fluff, for lack of a better term at the moment.
A quick breakdown of what I mean as an experienced, well versed user (To clarify, I get these trends are usefully new hubs/customers but I am going to ignore those points to show the other side of things):
1. World Breakdown, now apparently World HD Breakdown- So I just noticed this, didn’t it use to show every hub? Now it just shows HD? Really, that’s a lot upsetting but moving on.
2. Highest Rated 3D printers- Ratings are for the most part biased. There is no way the Form 1 can actually rate higher than the Form 1+. Its just a fact. Last time I filled out a rating I gave my Zortrax on average I think a 4.8. Was it biased? Of course, I love this machine. And these don’t help hubs expand business because like I said they are partially biased and just because the Form 1+ is a good printer doesn’t mean people are ordering from it. Sorry Formlabs for calling you out twice, nothing personal just the first example I saw, I love your printers. Also maybe just because I gave the Zortrax high marks doesn’t mean those same reasons as the operator are as highly valued to the customer. Does the customer care that their slicer software is so easy my 5 year old brother already can operate it all on his own? Nope. Does the customer care that the average print set up is about 5 minutes from downloading the print to pressing start on the machine? Nope.
3. Trending Printers- Ok, so more people bought them this month. Does that mean they are better printers for selling prints? Maybe they just were on sale. Maybe they are a new launch and had some good marketing. Again, not to call out Formlabs but you list the Form 1+ as jumping 30 spots, but we know why that was. They dropped in price. Has it helped boost any hubs sales that bought one though?
4. Top Cities- Well I would sell a kidney or two to move to Amsterdam, Paris, Milan etc. I wont be doing that anytime soon (Though I have been to all those cities plus a few more and Amsterdam is by far the best, I do plan on moving back soon, looking to hire? haha) so that wont help me boost sales. Plus I already live in #8 city, Boston. Also this is just based of printers listed. What about sales trends in that city? Sure one city might have the most printers but that also might mean since everyone owns one no one is ordering.
5. Printer Distribution- See points #2 and #3 as same issues apply.
6. Manufacturer Distribution- See point #5.
7. Manufacturer By Region- Huh, who would have thought American printers would sell best in America and European printers best in Europe? Again though, see point #6.
8. Printer Listing- Well I love to see that 3DHubs as a company is growing in listings, it doesn’t really show anything important. Maybe this is actually a sign that 3DHubs is failing. With too many printers listed there is now to much overhead with people hubs and photos and information. Too many people own printers and no one actually has to order prints since they already own the machine. How about how many sales you have total? Because just because people are listing things doesn’t mean people are buying, and lets be honest, that’s whats important.
9. Print Categories and average value. Kind of good to know I guess. But there is nothing we can do with this info. So scale models is the most expensive average order. What can I do with that info. Maybe post a few photos of small models to show off our printer? But its not like I can tailor my page to bring that in. Maybe I could get a Form 2 (again with Formlabs, almost like I got them on my mind) because they can generally do tiny models a little better than FDM. That would also account for why the average order is more expensive. But things that I wish I knew related to this are: Whats the most common printer chosen for “Scale Models” and how frequently are their “Scale Model” orders? Maybe its the most expensive because that is the fewest orders and the few that do happen are just expensive. If buying the Form to get those orders would help would it even be worth it if I only get one scale model print a month?
10. Popular Print Categories- Well I guess I should have really reviewed all the graphs before writing them as I partially answered point #9 with this graph. So as I brought up in point #9, Scale models is the 3rd least popular category meaning if I wanted to get into that for the expensive orders it doesn’t seem worth it since prototyping is over 4 times more popular and the average order is 17% less. But again I just had to kind of piece that together. I might be completely wrong. Maybe adding a Form 2 to my hub will bring in more customers, even if in the end they only actually needed an FDM print.
11. Color Distribution- The one useful thing as a Hub operator that is here. Because of this I didn’t have to go out and buy every color right away to do process of elimination to know what to stock. I already had white and black to start, I figured blue and red would be next, but I never would have though transparent would be next, or that grey would be so little. To add to this though, like I’ve mentioned, would be what type of material is popular? Because my machine currently cant print PLA or things like Ninjaflex and I feel that might be an issue but I really have no evidence to justify purchasing another machine or modifying my machine to do that.
12. 3D Printing World Map- Oh, wait, there it is. Well that makes me a little more upset. Why does all reliant data get grouped together but this? People already feel like you are pushing the small hub out of the way to make room for the big, bad HD hubs. Now you have literally pushed the entire world that made 3D hubs what it is to the very bottom of a very long page. Hmm, if I were to overthink this I would take it as some sort of subliminal message about 3Dhubs plan for us.
So take away: Almost half the trends are user biased. The remaining don’t promote any useful knowledge that anyone who is really into 3D printing didn’t already know. Some of them are fun to look at to start but once you really break it down there isn’t anything there but a good UX designer.
