RS Components: new website layout stupid or just me?

[Agent24]

Has anyone else noticed the recent changes to the RS Components websites in Australia and New Zealand?

Whereas before the product selection was a lot like Farnell's, everything spread out along the top, easy to view and easy to select (and which worked quite nicely)... they now have this annoying new layout where everything is hidden down the left-hand side under automatically-collapsing sub-menus.

To make this worse, the values in each sub-menu list only show the first 9 or so values, meaning you have you click "More" every damn time.


With the old one you just scrolled a couple of times and selected what you want.

Now you have to scroll the whole page, find the sub-menu you want, expand it, scroll down to the bottom, click more, and scroll again to find the value you were looking for.

Then, when you've selected that, you must go find the next sub-category-menu, expand that, again find the 'More' button, then start scrolling again.

What makes it even more annoying is that as soon as you expand the 2nd menu you wanted, the first then automatically closes!


In my opinion this new layout is awful. It wastes time and energy for me trying to find anything.

Does anyone else have the same view or am I just crazy?

If the feeling is shared, I hope this ends up on one of Dave's rants! Maybe then RS would actually take notice and realize their new website layout is a big time-waster and quite counter-productive.

[Kibi]

Yes it is annoying. You are not going crazy

[onemilimeter]

You're not alone... The RS new layout is very annoying and not user friendly... The Farnell/CPC/onecall is much better...

[mikeselectricstuff]

RS's website has been terrible for so long I can't see them ever fixing it - they clearly have no clue about what users want and no interest in finding out.
Last time I spoke to a rep at a show he had no interest in hearing why it is so bad and claimed their users had no complaints Arrogent dicks - screw 'em.
 

[lowimpedance]

Ooo-yeah a real time waster, use the paper catalogue more (damn silly).

Mike you should have taken your Marx gen along and strapped it to the rep's crown jewels and fired of an arc or two - bet that would have gotten his attention then!!.

[Psi]

Yeah, its terrible.
That's what happens when someone other than an engineer designed a website for engineers.

It was much better before they did the recent update and it wasn't anything special before.

There's 2 things that annoy me about it atm.

- Speed, around 5 times slower than digikey to load pages
- You have to tick each property you want when doing a parametric search. Also you have to click "more" and then it removes all you have already ticked. Digikey's Shift/Ctrl + click action is 10 times faster/better.

[Agent24]

It was much better before they did the recent update and it wasn't anything special before.

I guess Digikey does allow for faster selection without having to use check-boxes.

However I prefer Farnell and old RS where the selection filters are in a scrollable frame rather than having to scroll the entire page.

[johnboxall]

In my opinion this new layout is awful. It wastes time and energy for me trying to find anything.

Does anyone else have the same view or am I just crazy?

No you're not crazy ... it's really, really painful. Feels like going around in circles when you search for one part then want to find some more like it, but perhaps at a different voltage rating or something. Then it's in their "extended range" and you have to wait a week. element-14 does a much better job for parametric search and making stock availability more obvious.

[joelby]

I've also noticed that RS are invariably more expensive than element14 these days. I don't think I've ordered anything from RS in more than a year and don't even bother checking them anymore!

[Psi]

I've also noticed that RS are invariably more expensive than element14 these days. I don't think I've ordered anything from RS in more than a year and don't even bother checking them anymore!

I noticed that RS went through a phase last year of having cheaper AVR's than digikey (mega/tiny) plus a few other parts, which was strange, but awesome.
However it only lasted 4 months or so and now RS is expensive again.

I do like RS because they have a trade counter in my city (Auckland, New Zealand) 
I can drive over and get stuff i need right away. And they have quite a bit in stock.
They will also order in stuff from Sydney overnight for free if they don't have it in stock. Even if you only want one 40c zener diode
I suspect they have a Sydney->Auckland overnight courier running every day.

[johnboxall]

I've also noticed that RS are invariably more expensive than element14 these days. I don't think I've ordered anything from RS in more than a year and don't even bother checking them anymore!

Sometimes - on rare occasions - they can be cheaper. Bought some zener diodes that were way cheaper than e14 once. But yeah, I don't look anymore as well. Plus I ordered an Agilent part from them (U1162A), waited over two months, called every week to see where it was (website said 5~7 days). They only return emails sporadically. Finally they discovered that RS didn't have the rights to sell that part outside of the EU. And ...  the part is still on RS Australia's website...

[BravoV]

Damn, so counter intuitive interface, this is a really good example that the top management probably like the marketing or whoever in charge in doing this changes at top level never even try it them self before launching it publicly.

Simply fail !

[Psi]

Damn, so counter intuitive interface, this is a really good example that the top management probably like the marketing or whoever in charge in doing this changes at top level never even try it them self before launching it publicly.

Simply fail !

Na, upper management, the website designer, maybe some sales people, probably all tried it and thought it worked great. (after all, it does do everything engineers need it do)

The problem is they're not the people it's intended for. They will never see the problems unless they're the ones using it to do their job.

ya almost need two sites, a nice pretty picture site to keep the managers happy. Something they can show off to clients with pretty borders and such.
And another site, text based, few pictures, all nice and fast for the engineers to use.

[mzxc933]

Their old layout was already a pain compared to e14 and other websites (checkbox categories - no value ranges!), they ought to go to a big component manufacturer website and copy what they're doing with their catalogue. Search function is pretty ordinary as well.

They've shot themselves in the foot with the new design on many aspects - I disagree a bit on the price argument, there are few places where RS often is cheaper than e14 (though it usually varies by brand) - but the problem is that the first price bracket more than often than not isn't where they're competitive. The new layout of course only shows the first price bracket, making this a bit ridiculous.

[Kibi]

I've also noticed that RS are invariably more expensive than element14 these days. I don't think I've ordered anything from RS in more than a year and don't even bother checking them anymore!

Yes, there is that too. For example, a FQP50N06L MOSFET's from Mouser cost £0.77 each. I can buy one of them if I like.
RS want £1.11 for the same part AND I have for order five of them!

[Alex]

I was complaining about this a while ago

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=4040.msg53377#msg53377

I dont know what's worse. A layout that makes it impossible to find the most common things, making the layout worse than it was, or claiming on say the latest Electronics Weekly mag on a full page advert:

FIND IT - Quickly
DESIGN IT - For free
BUY IT - In a Click

[Zad]

Talking of new looks, it seems like Element-14 are investigating updating their site. They have a poll here: http://www.element14.com/community/polls/1322

Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of responses are from total retards who like being flooded with irrelevant crap!

[Alex]

Places rarely visited are entitled to any layout they wish.

[Agent24]

Talking of new looks, it seems like Element-14 are investigating updating their site. They have a poll here: http://www.element14.com/community/polls/1322

Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of responses are from total retards who like being flooded with irrelevant crap!

Thankfully it only seems applicable to the 'community' page rather than the catalogue itself.

[Kozmyk]

Screwing up is an old RS tradition.
Remember when they first put the catalogues out on CD?
Were they ever a piece of crap ...
Naff pictures and minimal specs - useless.
The paper ones were great.
After a few years you could build a coffee table out of them or counterweight stage scenery.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Screwing up is an old RS tradition.
Remember when they first put the catalogues out on CD?
Were they ever a piece of crap ...
Naff pictures and minimal specs - useless.
The paper ones were great.
After a few years you could build a coffee table out of them or counterweight stage scenery.

That's not even the biggest screwup - many years ago, in a doomed attempt to reduce print costs, they did a 'concise' catalogue, about a fifth the size of the normal one, with what appeared to be a completely random selection of the full catalogue - utterly useless.

[gregariz]

The paper ones were great.
After a few years you could build a coffee table out of them or counterweight stage scenery.

They also provide an unlimited supply of free doorstops

[Agent24]

Not sure when it happened but I was just looking on the RS website today, and it looks like they finally saw some sense and ditched that stupid "More" button in the parameter lists.  Now the site is much less annoying - thank f**k for that!


However, it seems Farnell have now received the retardation themselves, taken a step backwards, and decided to move the "Manufacturer" parameter OUT of the filter list, and put it in some completely idiotic separate pop-up javascript thing which only lets you select one Manufacturer at a time and which CLOSES every time you select another manufacturer, reloads the page each time, and is in general a big piece of crap.

What a bunch of dickheads! 

[im_a_human]

Despite the website being slow and awkward to navigate i find RS to be reliable and have not messed up my orders ever, not once. The delivery times are great unless a part is on back order but they send it when they have them in stock again and dont just forget. They also have some parts that i use that are old and valuable to my projects and i keep buying them up as spares because they are as rare as rockin horse sh** and cannot be bought from anywhare else. If you really want to have a proper rant about an electronics supplier then Maplin electronics is the worst. This company was great for the hobbiest once but went down hill about 15 years ago.

[metalphreak]

RS Australia have been hopeless the 3-4 times I've used them.

One order the invoice total came to <$40 and sometime between when I ordered and when they shipped, they changed the price of one component significantly. No contact or notice. Just received my goods with a different price invoice to the one on my account online, total charges to my card just over $60.

Last order, item was "in stock 6 days delivery". After a month of waiting I ordered from E14, got my parts within 8 days. Emailed RS to cancel saying I've sourced the parts elsewhere. Get a call the next day saying its actually in the warehouse now "Do you still want them shipped?".  Told them no so they cancelled it. In doing so, they charged my card, and then reversed the transaction...

To top it off, the previous week I got a catalogue doorstop in the mail (and not my parts ).

I will admit that the other 2 times I used them, everything went flawlessly but why take the risk when other companies can provide consistent results.

I'm sure they provide better service to their big customers, but otherwise you have to chase them up on everything.