“According to them these changes have caused more orders made.”
They have said this in response to EVERY SINGLE COMPLAINT about any new changes for the last couple years. I can think of at least 3 specific ones that were reversed after implementation regardless.
As someone who understands the effort involved in what we do, I sincerely congratulate you on your success and wish you many more successful months ahead. However, the assumption that these changes are directly related to your “best month” does nothing in terms of addressing my concerns, even if the relation is substantiated.
The “view hubs” menu, which used to show local hubs before you narrowed the search, is only visible after you “select material” or “advance search”. If someone clicks on a hub in "view hubs” there is nothing to indicate to the customer that they’re not already seeing all the “prototyping materials” offered, so why would they view the hub page?
Even if someone does make their way to the hub page, they are terrible. It takes FOREVER to scroll through materials. My materials can no longer be viewed in a drop-down menu (that fits nicely on the screen) from the “view hubs”. I’ve tried to have clients from outside of 3d hubs place orders off my hubs page and it’s always a nightmare, which is really part of my bigger point here.
If they cared about the hubs then that’s where they would be making improvements. When is the last time they did any work to the hubs pages? They don’t because it’s a relic of the original strategy, which has since been abandoned. I’m literally trying to give them money from my outside clients because I like the payment platform and it’s more and more like pulling teeth every time. The payment platform and hubs pages should be light-years ahead of where they are but it’s been crickets for the last year. Multi-extrusion? Design work? 3d Scanning? More abandoned relics. Seems like they are no longer interested in empowering the hubs and expanding their tools, features, services. We got one widget a year ago…. abandoned relic.
It’s obvious that they want orders to take place on the main page and they want them standardized. They want most of the decisions to be made before the customer gets to a specific hub, and then THEY will decide which hub is best. Remember when they used to be excited about the number of hubs (and hubs in general)? In fact I don’t think the word “hubs” is used at all anymore on the homepage. Now we are “3D Services”.
The focus has shifted away from the service you and I provide to the service that 3d hubs provides. The new model is to get customers for 3d hubs and outsource the work to us. They are focused on 3d hubs customers instead of getting more customers for hubs. Those might sound like the same thing but they are not. All their “improvements” seem focused on efficiently routing jobs to hubs. They give you metrics of the data THEY think is important. These metrics are all geared towards making you a better subcontractor, not a better hub.
I didn’t join 3d hubs to be a subcontractor or a “3d service”. I joined because it was a platform for me to operate MY business and get customers for that business. For this, I gladly give them a cut. When I started, I felt like I was their customer. They were providing services to ME. Now I feel like they want to make me their employee. This current strategy of 3d hubs is at odds with my own.
They stopped putting work into anything that would empower me or my business individually because I’m not their customer anymore.
-Jesse
