Modlab Site

I finally got round to creating a little website/shop thingy where so I can make my stuff available to a wider audience. I would greatly appreciate any feedback so if you get a chance please have a look and post comments here.
the site is http://www.modlab.co.uk

I didn’t have a huge amount of time so I used a bit of free software which has a good CMS on the back end for managing the catalog etc.

Edit: I am looking for feedback on stuff that’s not working, plain wrong or is difficult to use and any negatives or positives. Go on be honest!

7 Likes

Congrats!

I like the layout, and it looked good on my Nokia.

The pages seemed a bit slow, but not extraordinarily so.

Good on ya Hughgo,

i will endeavour to help you stock the cupboards before i vacate these fine shores… :wink:

1 Like

@ mhectorgato - Yeah the performance isn’t great, I haven’t enabled disk or mem cache yet as i need to get the hosting service to enable it on the server for me.

@ Justin - Excellent news. I’m going to be adding more ModLab modules too over the next few months plus building out the bargain bin etc.

There’s more categories than products. Big things planned? :slight_smile:

Maybe… :smiley:

I was drinking the other day, and thinking while drinking… There’s http://www.modlab.co.uk, there’s http://www.ingenuitymicro.com/, then there’s my site which is, thankfully, not open yet, GHI creations section, and probably there’s more sites where somebody sells a few hand-made Gadgeteer modules. A webshop with 1-3 modules doesn’t get much attention, and, unless somebody quits his/her daytime job, those small sites will never get its product list populated.

Maybe we should all go under one hood? That should benefit everyone, I think, by both attracting customers and spreading Gadgeteer spirit. Tindie.com? Ebay?

2 Likes

@ Simon from Vilnius - thinking and drinking can be a dangerous habit ;). But I’ve already been thinking long the same lines. The more of us that make and sell modules the better.
We all know our base costs and we should work with a recommended sale price but always have a reseller price too that way we can all make something buy selling others modules too. Great idea. Maybe we should start an offline discussion about this ?? Any other module makers interested??

I’d also be interested. Being based in Indonesia some people are a little skeptical on dealing with this country even though my company is 100% foreign owned and I have big oilfield service companies as my clients.

It would be great to have a European based sales point so count me in. I’ve a few more ideas other than the LCD that could be added to the list if I had a sales outlet.

This is sounding like a good idea, … going to keep a close watch :clap:

@ HughB - not sure “selling each other’s modules” is going to work well. Management, supply, money and insurance issues will kill us. Interesting stuff happens when it comes to money :slight_smile:

My idea was relaying all the management to a 3rd party, focusing on supplying modules.

Take tindie.com, for example. I spent quite some time browsing it, and I think I’ll give it a try. It’s a website [em]where people come looking for gadgets[/em]. All we need now is a good supply of Gadgeteer stuff there. If I list there my SimplePower module only, I probably won’t get many customers; however, if you list your stuff there and give links to my stuff, and I give links to your stuff, it might work. We need a critical mass of Gadgeteer modules, so somebody, accidentally passing by, could get attracted, ending up in buying a fully functional set — mainboards, modules, cables, wires, examples. There’s plenty of good stuff on GHI Creations section, but there’s no easy way to buy it!

That is quite a valid point Simon.

True. I’ve been waiting long time for the Bolt module for months now. Not the creators fault but the crappy postal service in this country. 3 months in and nothing so far. :frowning:

@ Simon from Vilnius - As Dave says you make a very good point. The tindie thing looks interesting though. The creations site is a good way to showcase community made stuff but you are right there is no easy way to buy.

@ Simon from Vilnius - I’ve had this thought as well. Eventually I want to offer my own modules, so I thought having a site full of different creator’s modules would lend credence to the site.

A rising tide lifts all the boats.

Was going to start building such a site actually, but other projects has really impeded my side-project time. I started to build out a DB and play with setting up ASP.NET WebAPI and MVC sites in Azure.

But my time for that sort of thing (and module making) has largely went the way of the Dodo.

That’s exactly why I went for an off the shelf freebie store (prestashop) and wordpress site running on a subdomain for the blog.

EDIT: Thinking about it why don’t we all put permanent links to each others webstores? that way we can generate more referral traffic and make more people aware of the community effort. Also if you have a blog then post about each others creations ??

So, I’ve started already:

Waiting for others!

By the way, they introduced “markets” concept recently. I’ve created a Gadgeteer market, but we need 10 people to unlock it. So, who’s with me???

6 Likes

looks interesting. if we can get 10 that would work…
Incidentally did anything interesting come out of the Microsoft embedded / IoT conf? I haven’t had chance to see if there was anything new…

1 Like

I’m in! So only 8 left :smiley:

In like a robbers dog… ;D

I’m in also!