You "old timers" out there will remember. 13 years ago, when I started Roadless Gear, our website was THE MOST ADVANCED website in our industry. We were the first to have online ordering. We were the first to have a "what's new" section on our website. The first to have a “wish list”...links to email a product to your friend, etc, etc, etc. In short, Roadless Gear was the first website in our industry to fully exploit all the modern internet tools of the time. All the while, making sure it was not “gaudy”. My goal was to wrap all this technology in such a way that was as seamless as possible to the customer. To keep the design simple and easy to navigate. Because, 13 years ago, our “average” customer was not very experienced with computers and the internet.
That was 13 years ago. And, as you know, 13 years in "computer time" is AN ETERNITY! Today, customers are much more internet savvy. They grew up with EBay, Amazon and the like And they expect web sites to look and feel a certain way. The tried and true format of RoadlessGear.com, while still very functional, feels “old”. I’ve known this for a while now. But let’s face it. I spent countless hours putting this thing together 13 years ago. And was really dreading doing it all over again. So please forgive me my laziness. This is been a long time coming – and even I must admit the time has long since passed. Time to roll up my sleeves and do it all over again.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new Roadless Gear website. Actually TWO websites....because we are now the first website in our industry to be mobile ready. When you connect to us from your mobile device (IPad, Android, smart phones, etc) you will see a completely different website. One that is optimized for the device and will not needlessly waste your precious bandwidth. So you can shop while you are broke down on the side of the trail.
You didn’t think I was going to do all this work and not be able to brag about another Roadless Gear first, did you <wink>
Not only have I completely rebuilt the website from the ground up. I have added hundreds of new products. Well…not really “new”. We’ve sold these things for years. Our regular customers always knew they could email us and say “how much for a left handed hyrodsilator” and we would supply it. But our newer customers actually thought we only sold a couple hundred different products. The new web site has over 1,000 products. And I will be adding more over the coming weeks.
Do I think this new Roadless Gear is the end of my website building time? OH HELL NO! But I can promise you that 13 years from now, Roadless Gear will still be around. And I will be working 18 hour days once again to ensure that the RoadlessGear.com website is everything you expect in a website.
-Figmo