Just got my new Seaskin Nova -- The Good and the Ehhhhh...

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Seaskin has an impressively laid out website, particularly for all the options they offer. The site steps you through the ordering process, breaking the options down into logical groups with a visual for each of the option and a "select" button to add the choice....the choice remains hi-lit on the screen as you browse the other options in the same category. There is also an option next to the "select" button for each option so you can read further information about each option. It begins with you selecting the fabric color and the color of the stitching, followed by these 8 additional categories:
1. Style and Cut
2. Zipper and Pee Valve Options,
3. Seal, Kneck, and Wrist Seal Options (where the warm kneck options are located among other options)
4. Valve Options
5. Boot and Sock Options
6. Additional Protection Options
7. Other Comfort and Customization Options
8. Pocket and Attachment Point Options.

There is not an overwhelming number of options in each category, with the largest number of selectable options being 19 (seal, kneck, and wrist seal options). One is stepped through all this BEFORE entering one's sizes...this maximizes the amount of time one has to think abougt what they are ordering and fiddle with their selections BEFORE being wisked to a page for final review where all the selected options are cleanly laid out beneath each of the nine category headers they fall under, it even gives one a total price for all the options in each of the nine categories. At any point, there are convenient links to navigate back to each category page where the selections can be once again reviewed and changed if desired. I can't fathom a way that the selection and ordering process could be more facilitative without it becoming cumbersome.

In the end you failed to make the correct selection inline with what you wanted to order, and you failed again to catch your error in the review before finalizing your purchase, and you failed once again to go back and look at your order after you completed it to catch any mistakes that you made so that you could have contacted SeaSkin to adjust your order, and yet you think that "SeaSkin's website is flawed in the sense that it makes mistakes like this easy to make." You F#cked up and its somehow SeaSkin's fault because they created a website that facilitates the otherwise complex process of ordering a completely customed product.

Do you blame the icecream shop for making it easy to walk up to the counter and order your flavor of choice only to read through the list of flavors posted on the wall after you received and started eating your icecream?....or apply any other cogent examples of a similar mentality.

I don't even know how to end this post other than to say "SMH" because there are no words to address this kind of Karen like mentality that you and the OP have expressed, albeit to differing degrees.

-Z

Zef,

I know how the website works, I've used it myself. And the website is good, but it's not perfect. The design of the website does not follow commonly-understood best practices in the field of web design. If you cannot fathom a way to improve the selection and ordering process, perhaps you are not the person in the best position to evaluate whether it can be improved. Maybe a person who is in the best position to do that would be, I dunno, a person who has studied user experience and web design?

I didn't make a stink about it when I did not end up purchasing the thing I meant to purchase -- the suit was purchased in 2019, and the post you quoted is the first time I've brought it up anywhere, and I never told SeaSkin about it. Partly because the stakes of my issue were small, partly because I was able to fix it anyway, and partly because, as you said, I clicked the wrong buttons myself. I would never say that SeaSkin is responsible for my mistake.

Like I said, their drysuit product is top-notch. Within the domain of made-to-measure drysuits, I have not one single complaint. Especially when you take into account the much-lower cost versus their competition, the value of that product cannot be beat. But can I say the same about their website product? No, I can't, because in the domain of websites, there is plenty of room for improvement. I can't speak to whether making those improvements is worthwhile -- that is for SeaSkin's business management to decide. I can't speak to whether it is the best drysuit ordering website in the world, I have only ever ordered 1 drysuit. But to say that it is impossible to make the website better, is just not a correct statement.
 
Essentially admiring my point. The inhabitants of any given ivory tower should be disqualified from judging how ivory their particular tower is. The outsiders have a better perspective.
To a degree, yeah, I agree.

But please consider three things: I was being facetious, I'm not entirely un-self-aware, and I've not given enough information about myself for anyone to judge whether I'm a theory-spewing egghead or someone who's highly involved with industry.
 


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https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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