Cinematique Instruments is clearing out - Specimenphone and Junks Drum OUT !

[cinematique]

Good day

we have announced the launch of its new website! The new website has been given a complete restructure and a fresh new look. Please, check out!

To celebrate, they are offering five new bundles, including "Contemporary Production" and the "Cinematique Bundle", for which they will grant discount for a period of 10 days. This period end on June 28.

Finally, we will be clearing out our shelves and cupboards and will be releasing small, interesting and useful instruments such as marimba, junk drum, specimenphone or a glass bowl over the course of the next three weeks.

We already released the SPECIMENPHONE ( http://www.cinematique-instruments.com/ ... nphone.php ) and JUNK DRUM http://www.cinematique-instruments.com/ ... k_drum.php

For more information and pricing please see www.cinematique-instruments.com.

Thanks

Florian

[whyterabbyt]

Is there any option to get direct to the instrument page without having to go through the 'massive abstract picture' page, which is, to me, just a bit pointless and annoying. And maybe have the 'add to cart' link beside the price, instead of having to go back to the picture page again?

BTW I noticed the following issues:

Specimenphone isnt turning up in the Instruments dropdown, although Junk Drum is.

The Metal Objects link from the dropdown is broken.

Percussion Instruments has a different layout from almost everything else (yay, no 'big picture', but it has different main page layout too, even accounting for the multiple instruments on the page)

The front page for the Bundles has a different stylistic feel to the single instruments pages, ie the recessed rounded boxes instead of flat rectangular images, and its kind of annoying that the instrument links go to the 'big picture page' instead of the info.

[whyterabbyt]

Oh yeah, a couple more 'annoying customer' questions:

1) Any upgrade path to the bundles if youve already got some of the individual instruments?
2) There's no no more access to all the 'previous customer' links from the newsletters. No more loyalty pricing?
2) <blatantly cheeky>What was the deal with this offer? (http://www.kvraudio.com/news/cinematiqu ... -eur-18756). I never saw anything more on how to go about getting the freebie, or when it ended. I bought stuff on May 20th but I never knew if that offer was still going.</blatantly cheeky>

[wwjd]

wow. left the site after two clicks. another one of those "gee, I'm cooler than other websites on the net" that is slower and more pointless to navigate.
usable websites keep customers.

[topaz]

This site won't even load on my iPad 60gb virgin fibre optic.

[bbaggins]

wow. left the site after two clicks.

Ditto. I'm sure somebody worked really hard on that "fresh new look", but it is not at all conducive to exploration and is slow. I'd suggest emulating some of the smaller vendors rather than Native Instruments.

[paterpeter]

While I appreciate web sites that try to be different, I agree that this one still has some issues.

Here are some thoughts:

• My first gripe is the way the site uses and requires javascript. In most cases, javascript should be used to improve an otherwise working web site. But with javascript disabled, this site simply breaks, both functionally as well as design-wise. Navigation is quite inconvenient with this slowly animated menu.
• The information page for each instrument is too hard to discover (clicking on the image or clicking on i), it should be more clearly visible.
• Try to enable compression of static content (especially javascript files) and combine files as much as possible to make the site load faster.
• There are a couple of 404s when loading the page (loading.gif and closelabel.gif). Also the product links on the drumboxes bundle page are broken.
• You should try to fix the HTML errors (use http://validator.w3.org to check for errors)

That being said, most of this is technical stuff. I like the general design a lot. With a few tweaks the site can be made user friendly and stylish. Keep up your work!

Regards,
Andre

P.S.: I added your sale to Deals4Musicians, best luck with that!

[cinematique]

Hui!

oh, oh, oh - you are hard judges!

Shame you don't like this site! But maybe you all can help us learning how a website has to be?
Below we just try to reply to some of your posts...

Oh yeah, a couple more 'annoying customer' questions:

1) Any upgrade path to the bundles if youve already got some of the individual instruments?
2) There's no no more access to all the 'previous customer' links from the newsletters. No more loyalty pricing?
2) <blatantly cheeky>What was the deal with this offer? (http://www.kvraudio.com/news/cinematiqu ... -eur-18756). I never saw anything more on how to go about getting the freebie, or when it ended. I bought stuff on May 20th but I never knew if that offer was still going.</blatantly cheeky>

1) How complicated this would be?
2) No sorry!
3) You are talking about Cement 2. This was a 1 week special promotion. But watch out - maybe Cement 2 comes again

Generally we are sad about your disastrous critics.

wow. left the site after two clicks. another one of those "gee, I'm cooler than other websites on the net" that is slower and more pointless to navigate.
usable websites keep customers.

Shame! You don't like our approach. which isn't intended to be different. It seems, there is nothing we can so!

wow. left the site after two clicks.

Ditto. I'm sure somebody worked really hard on that "fresh new look", but it is not at all conducive to exploration and is slow. I'd suggest emulating some of the smaller vendors rather than Native Instruments.

Puuh. Harsh critics again.... see above.

While I appreciate web sites that try to be different, I agree that this one still has some issues.

Here are some thoughts:

• My first gripe is the way the site uses and requires javascript. In most cases, javascript should be used to improve an otherwise working web site. But with javascript disabled, this site simply breaks, both functionally as well as design-wise. Navigation is quite inconvenient with this slowly animated menu.
• The information page for each instrument is too hard to discover (clicking on the image or clicking on i), it should be more clearly visible.
• Try to enable compression of static content (especially javascript files) and combine files as much as possible to make the site load faster.
• There are a couple of 404s when loading the page (loading.gif and closelabel.gif). Also the product links on the drumboxes bundle page are broken.
• You should try to fix the HTML errors (use http://validator.w3.org to check for errors)

That being said, most of this is technical stuff. I like the general design a lot. With a few tweaks the site can be made user friendly and stylish. Keep up your work!

Regards,
Andre

P.S.: I added your sale to Deals4Musicians, best luck with that!

Yes some of the technical stuff is already fixed. Concerning the disabled javascript this is a good idea to keep in mind in future, firstly we have suffered teething problems BTW. How many flash sites don't have such substitution sites.
In terms of "difficult to discover"... mmmh we don't think so.

Sorry, we didn't want to annoy someone. We just tried to do our best....

KInd Regards
Eric/ CI

[TristezaOrange]

Hey Eric!

Let me start by saying that I am a HUGE CI fan. Your instruments are magnificent and they always have that something special that other libraries lack.

However (you knew this was coming, right? ) unfortunately I have to agree with a lot of what people said in their comments above. Browsing your site was a pleasure for me in the past. I almost always left with a new instrument too (your prices are no-brainers too, considering the quality). Now I don't really want to visit the site anymore. I am genuinely sad to say that, it's not just an emoticon. There are two reasons for that:

1. It is not as aesthetically pleasing as before.
2. It is not as PRACTICAL as before. (main reason)

I am not saying that I will stop purchasing your instruments (and I don't mind the lack of a loyalty discount TBH, your prices are already great), I'll certainly keep buying CIs. But the site redesign... I think it was ill-advised. I'm sure that it's disappointing to hear that after much (I'm sure) work went into it but that's how I feel. I am also a bit disappointed in your answer to the critiques here - it would be best to listen to your fanbase instead of dismissing their advice as "tough audience" or something.

Good luck in the future, I'll certainly be there to get more libraries.

[cinematique]

Hey Eric!

Let me start by saying that I am a HUGE CI fan. Your instruments are magnificent and they always have that something special that other libraries lack.

However (you knew this was coming, right? ) unfortunately I have to agree with a lot of what people said in their comments above. Browsing your site was a pleasure for me in the past. I almost always left with a new instrument too (your prices are no-brainers too, considering the quality). Now I don't really want to visit the site anymore. I am genuinely sad to say that, it's not just an emoticon. There are two reasons for that:

1. It is not as aesthetically pleasing as before.
2. It is not as PRACTICAL as before. (main reason)

I am not saying that I will stop purchasing your instruments (and I don't mind the lack of a loyalty discount TBH, your prices are already great), I'll certainly keep buying CIs. But the site redesign... I think it was ill-advised. I'm sure that it's disappointing to hear that after much (I'm sure) work went into it but that's how I feel. I am also a bit disappointed in your answer to the critiques here - it would be best to listen to your fanbase instead of dismissing their advice as "tough audience" or something.

Good luck in the future, I'll certainly be there to get more libraries.

Thanks TristezaOrange for your kind post.

Our apologies for the wrong words. But it is disappointing to hear someone saying "gee, I'm cooler than other websites on the net"...

Honestly, it is a real shame, you don't really want to visit our new site. But if you don't like the site aesthetically, what can we do?
We willingly will optimize the site in terms of speed but we - at CI - don't find the site is impractical. But, maybe you are so kind tell
us what in detail is impractical? Would be great !

[TristezaOrange]

Thanks TristezaOrange for your kind post.

Our apologies for the wrong words. But it is disappointing to hear someone saying "gee, I'm cooler than other websites on the net"...

Honestly, it is a real shame, you don't really want to visit our new site. But if you don't like the site aesthetically, what can we do?
We willingly will optimize the site in terms of speed but we - at CI - don't find the site is impractical. But, maybe you are so kind tell
us what in detail is impractical? Would be great !

You're welcome!

Well, first of all I would remove the splash screen that appears when you go to the site. Just have the shop page as the start page. It is not obvious that you'll visit the central shop page when you click on the CI logo.

Another problem for me is the fact that when you click on the instrument you're interested in in the shop you first have to go through the page with the "play" button, the "info" button and a big picture of the instrument UI. Totally superfluous IMHO. Just have the info up front when you click on the instrument in the shop.

Thirdly, the graphics look a bit more jagged and less anti-aliased to me than the previous site but it may just be my imagination. I don't mind the JS stuff and animations at all TBH.

All of the above IMHO. I am not website designer - far from it!



See? I visited the site again! I also picked up Clap Trak while I was there.

[whyterabbyt]

Generally we are sad about your disastrous critics.

Mine? I thought my first post was mostly helping you spot issues with the site.

[cinematique]

Generally we are sad about your disastrous critics.

Mine? I thought my first post was mostly helping you spot issues with the site.

Agree, your first post was even helpful...

[cinematique]

Thanks TristezaOrange for your kind post.

Our apologies for the wrong words. But it is disappointing to hear someone saying "gee, I'm cooler than other websites on the net"...

Honestly, it is a real shame, you don't really want to visit our new site. But if you don't like the site aesthetically, what can we do?
We willingly will optimize the site in terms of speed but we - at CI - don't find the site is impractical. But, maybe you are so kind tell
us what in detail is impractical? Would be great !

You're welcome!

Well, first of all I would remove the splash screen that appears when you go to the site. Just have the shop page as the start page. It is not obvious that you'll visit the central shop page when you click on the CI logo.

Another problem for me is the fact that when you click on the instrument you're interested in in the shop you first have to go through the page with the "play" button, the "info" button and a big picture of the instrument UI. Totally superfluous IMHO. Just have the info up front when you click on the instrument in the shop.

Thirdly, the graphics look a bit more jagged and less anti-aliased to me than the previous site but it may just be my imagination. I don't mind the JS stuff and animations at all TBH.

All of the above IMHO. I am not website designer - far from it!



See? I visited the site again! I also picked up Clap Trak while I was there.

Thanks. Some interesting ideas. We will discuss some of your topics in the near future.