Website is scary

[Sivar]

The Ascend Acoustics website is terrible, and considering that Ascend appears to be a direct web-sales company, that's like selling speakers out of the back of a beaten up 1970's van.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but to make this known so that it can be fixed. The website is the equivalent of a store-front for a direct sales company, so it seems that some effort should go into making it good.

I'm in this forum because I've long planned my speaker system. My list has included the Axiom 80-800 system for some time, but extensive research on AVSForums and others has suggested that Axiom may not be the best value for speakers in that price range.

Ascend, Aperion, and Chane (Arx) have been consistently recommended, so I am looking into all of those. I really like the Sierra Tower -- the bamboo looks beautiful, and if it really dampens vibration as well as MDF, its use is brilliant. Still, I am a professional software engineer and feel really uncomfortable ordering from a web company with a website in the state this one is in (The forums are 3rd party and are fine).

Again, I'm not trying to "troll" and don't want a bunch of defensive posts by Ascend customers. I genuinely believe that it is so bad it is affecting the business.

[astr0b0y]

Well, its your opinion so fair enough. I don't find it as bad as you say but it would rank in my top list of good looking sites. As for affecting business? Given that Dave is barely able to keep up with orders I don't think you're right.

[Zetta Matrix]

I am a happy Ascend customer (understatement) and I don't agree, but I see where you're coming from. I also am a technologist so I understand some of the origins of this feeling. I will try to make this post minimally defensive.

Dave makes speakers and sells them direct. Having visited Ascend's offices, I think that he runs a very lean operation. The humble, almost ascetic vibe you see is saving Dave's customers money. This is what Dave wants - the best speakers you can get for the most reasonable and customer-respecting price he can manage.

However, your point about scaring customers off suggests that maybe Dave could generate a higher volume demand and make his prices even more competitive and/or grow his business/profits, if only his website was state-of-the-art. Only he can say to what extent he agrees with that line of thinking.

In my mind, it's not necessarily worth his time and money to make his site as slick and safe as Amazon. And what part of it is scariest -- the aesthetics of the product presentation, the safety of an online transaction, or perhaps both? Would you feel better if you paid via PayPal, or bought the item through Amazon even if it was fulfilled directly through Ascend as a seller? I'm genuinely curious what you consider the most important aspect of the website is and what you would prefer to see. You didn't quite give enough detail for anyone to know what you wish it looked/acted like.

Finally, from reading the forum, it seems that a lot of us (myself included) do our transactions with Dina over the phone anyway. It feels really nice to get that level of customer support. If it was impossible to purchase them over the internet with a few clicks, I wouldn't mind.

best--
Curtis D.

[timmbw]

I bought my speakers based on their function and quality… not the look of their website.

[Sivar]

In my mind, it's not necessarily worth his time and money to make his site as slick and safe as Amazon. And what part of it is scariest -- the aesthetics of the product presentation, the safety of an online transaction, or perhaps both? Would you feel better if you paid via PayPal, or bought the item through Amazon even if it was fulfilled directly through Ascend as a seller? I'm genuinely curious what you consider the most important aspect of the website is and what you would prefer to see. You didn't quite give enough detail for anyone to know what you wish it looked/acted like.

I appreciate not being "attacked", despite writing a post that may rub some the wrong way.

I will answer your question with a scenario: Pretend that you have been reading about different speaker systems, have learned the value proposition of DS and visit some manufacturer websites: XTZ.com, axiomaudio.com, aperion.com. Then you visit ascendacoustics.com based on surprisingly consistent recommendations. Impressions:

"This site looks like it's from the late 90's. Is it safe to give these guys my credit card? Sure they are probably a trustworthy company (based on glowing reviews), but do they know what they are doing with credit card security? [As an aside, does Ascend know to use one-way encryption (hashes) for passwords or do they just store password in plain text?]

"Oh well, I want to price a system with that Sierra Tower I've heard about, or maybe something smaller. Let's see... ``System Advisor``! That's what I need! [uses system advisor] What the heck? This tool doesn't even mention the Sierra Tower [see #1], and it doesn't show pictures or specs or anything! This can't be right.

advisor.png


Oh, wait, there's another link for ``System Advisor`` [see #2]. Maybe that one works.

404.PNG



A 404? Are you kidding me? On a WEB-based company's website!?

Okay, one last shot. Maybe this is some old version of the website found by Google. I'll go to the forum and ask:


FORUM.PNG


What? is this forum to learn about Ascend, or only for those that already know about their stuff?

-------------------------------

After this experience, would you spend thousands of dollars on speakers through this company?

[Sivar]

what part of it is scariest -- the aesthetics of the product presentation, the safety of an online transaction, or perhaps both? Would you feel better if you paid via PayPal, or bought the item through Amazon even if it was fulfilled directly through Ascend as a seller? I'm genuinely curious what you consider the most important aspect of the website is and what you would prefer to see. You didn't quite give enough detail for anyone to know what you wish it looked/acted like.

I didn't answer some of this.

What part is most important? Feeling like if I enter my personal info, it won't be easily hacked due to incompetent security (which is very common ... take a look at intheswim.com, a site where I asked my account be deleted because they store passwords without any protection at all).

Would I feel better buying with Paypal? Yes -- they may be a pain in the ass but I know they are safe.
Through Amazon? I personally rarely buy through 3rd party vendors on Amazon, but that's an idea. Perhaps a few % extra can be charged through Amazon to make up for the extra costs to Ascend.

I agree that it's not worth it for a small business to make a website like Amazon, but I am surprised to find any disagreement that it isn't worth it for a small web-based business to have a decent website. It is, after all, a WEB-based company, that competes against others that have much better websites. Would you spend thousands at a brick'n'mortar store with a poorly maintained building that had peeling paint, leaks in the roof, stains on the carpet, and didn't appear to have any clerk except maybe in the back room?

You'd probably assume that they were about to go out of business, and that you'd be on your own with anything you bought there!


As a customer looking for speakers, the website is my first and only impression when no local speaker shop is available to peruse.
If you can forget for a moment all you know about Ascend and imagine that you are a first-time buyer, visit aperionaudio.com (my other top contender) and then ascendacoustics.com. Which gives you the better impression?

[curtis]

For what it's worth, Dave has posted that a website redesign is in the works.

If I were to do business with a company, the website is surely something that I would see first, but I would do a lot of due diligence before I made any decision...I always do. How a website looks is and would not be a priority for me in making my decision.

Aperion spends A LOT more on marketing than Ascend does, website appearance is very important to them (ie. marketing). Their business model is entirely different. Selling internet direct is the only thing they have in common with Ascend.

For instance, Aperion lists "Sensitivity" for one of their products as 87db....and that's it. An educated consumer would immediately wonder "is that anechoic?" An un-educated consumer just looking at numbers would not know the difference. In an objective measurement in a review, that anechoic measurement is actually 84.5db. That 87db is, IMO, misleading. I can probably forgive a 1db difference...but 2.5 is a fair amount. That is marketing.

I have a fair amount of experience with Aperion, but IMO, dollar for dollar, there are better values in the ID space.

Good honest information is what I would be more interested in.

[davef]

Sivar,

I appreciate your opinion. If our website causes you that much concern or distress, it is OK to take your business elsewhere. Please know that while we receive plenty of feedback regarding our website, the majority of it is actually quite positive. Many appreciate that old school approach, and that is precisely our way of doing business. When you call us, you actually get a friendly and knowledgeable person on the phone, in addition, I also make myself quite accessible to everyone. Imagine that, no voice mail menus to navigate, friendly honest real people who are happy to talk to you, real customer service. And of course (ask anyone who owns our products) an extremely high quality product at an honest price.

While this business approach might be a bit unusual compared to how most businesses operate these days and what consumers *expect* to see, I think you would be a bit shocked at how many happy customers we have and how many speakers we actually sell... Ask anyone who has visited us, we are assembling and testing speakers all day long. We are, after all, an actual loudspeaker factory, with onsite engineering facilities and an 8-10 hour per day functional production line. You will not find this at any of the other *loudspeaker* companies you mentioned.

We are not driven by marketing (have you ever seen an Ascend advertisement anywhere - yet somehow you ended up here, bad website and all - really think about that for a moment ) We are not driven by the mighty dollar and maximizing profits.

While this might sound corny to you, we are fully driven by a true passion for audio, of which is backed up by real R&D and engineering. We have been around for quite a while now, and we have grown year after year after year -- and while most of our competitors # 1 expense is marketing, our # 1 expense is R&D combined with putting our profits back into our products.

Our website is and always has been fully secured. We are PCI compliant and our site is tested once per month. In many tens of thousands of credit card transactions, we have never had a single data breach. In fact, the only time we have ever been hacked was with our 3rd party forum software (vBulletin) – which, BTW, is hosted on a separate server to keep our main site more secure.
The broken link you posted was simply an error leftover from an update a few weeks ago (our bad) and should be fixed by early morning (thanks for catching that)

As others have mentioned, a website overhaul is actually in-process, but I had to put it on-hold because what I wanted for the site did not mesh at all with what our web designer had in mind (typical joomla or wordpress template driven marketing site – those are easy) and thus demanded too much of my time, during a time when our priority was manufacturing and getting Sierra-2 into customers hands.

In addition, and I feel I should share this with you – when customers have mentioned that we have all the business we can handle, this is quite true. When I started Ascend I never imagined we would be selling this many speakers. We reached a point last year which forced me to double our staff and add a second warehouse. I didn’t like it – I started spending less hands-on time with our products and more time managing people. That was not for me, and never what I had in mind for myself and Ascend. Keep in mind that every single loudspeaker that we ship is fully tested by me…. From HTM-200’s to Sierra Towers, yet another aspect that makes us quite unique.

In summary, until our website overhaul is finished, be that in a few months or several years – if our current website actually scares you away from our products, it is OK. I am quite sure that other companies that are really more about marketing than an actual loudspeaker company will be quite happy that you didn’t choose us, and those Ascend customers who understand what we are about might get their speakers a bit sooner Unfortunately, you would be missing out on products that sell without the need for marketing and without the need for a fancy website. I think that is something that requires a lot of contemplation.

[davef]

Okay, one last shot. Maybe this is some old version of the website found by Google. I'll go to the forum and ask:


FORUM.PNG


What? is this forum to learn about Ascend, or only for those that already know about their stuff?

-------------------------------

After this experience, would you spend thousands of dollars on speakers through this company?

What is your issue with the forum? The security question asked is "what are the 3 numeric characters of our CBM loudspeaker model" You entered 340, which is not correct. It is extremely difficult to keep spammers out of the forum and this is the method we have chosen which has proven to work well. And yes, this forum is for our customers and for those who want to learn about Ascend, and as such, it is fully necessary to keep spammers out.

[Sivar]

I appreciate the reply, David, and I am glad to know the website is properly secured.
Note that I posted not to complain, but to share that I thought some customers may be driven away as I nearly was. Clearly I was not because I took the time to bitch and moan about something that doesn't affect me.
If you recently finished a major business expansion then apparently this is not a huge problem.

While this might sound corny to you, we are fully driven by a true passion for audio, of which is backed up by real R&D and engineering.

This doesn't sound corny to me at all. I've been involved in several businesses that took the same approach to my field, software engineering, though sadly I noticed the more other businesses focused on marketing, the better they did. I am glad that Ascend appears to be the diametric opposite of ****, though as I mentioned earlier I think there can be some benefit to the 80/20 rule.

Based on my experience here, the old-school engineering feel of the company you've imparted, and the apparent maturity of the community you've built (what? post something not positive in a company's forums and get only reasonable responses?), I think I'm over the website.

As a side note, it may be worth looking into Drupal for the new site, if it is in early stages. While I dislike the PHP language it is written in, the Drupal product is free and allows a website to be designed and maintained with zero or very little code. I suspect that you would want a setup that is both functional and that does not require you hire a programmer every time you want a font size changed.