Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

[SilverSolder]

Drinking a beer now because digikey just logged me off and lost all the odds and ends in my cart. 3rd time something like this has happened recently on digikey  The thing is that most of what I'm ordering was already thru other distributors just so I could minimise the hassle of dealing with the digikey site. What I had in the cart were equivalents of out of stock items from the other distributors.

Is this some "security" feature that kicks you out after a certain time?

[gnavigator1007]

Possibly, but they were also having server issues throughout the day. Just a huge pain in the ass when jumping between browser tabs. I did manage to recover most of the cart after getting 404 on the login intermittently

[Tomorokoshi]

It might be a timeout. Sometimes when working through an order at work there would be a meeting of some kind, and then after returning it would be lost. A workaround is to collect all the parts in a spreadsheet and upload the spreadsheet.

[rsjsouza]

Interesting that you are losing a BOM this way. Many rep websites keeps the information when items are added to cart AND I am logged in. That happens with sophisticated sites such as Newark, Mouser and even on crude websites like BGMicro.

[tooki]

Interesting that you are losing a BOM this way. Many rep websites keeps the information when items are added to cart AND I am logged in. That happens with sophisticated sites such as Newark, Mouser and even on crude websites like BGMicro.

Just as an FYI, on Digi-Key, a BOM is a totally separate thing from a cart. But DK has quite robust BOM and cart management (allowing multiple saved carts, shared company-editable BOMs, etc).

DK, like many sites, will allow you to add things to the cart when not logged in, and then merges them with the existing cart saved in your account when you log in.

Clearly what gnavigator1007 experienced was a bug, not a design decision.

[rsjsouza]

Interesting that you are losing a BOM this way. Many rep websites keeps the information when items are added to cart AND I am logged in. That happens with sophisticated sites such as Newark, Mouser and even on crude websites like BGMicro.

Just as an FYI, on Digi-Key, a BOM is a totally separate thing from a cart.

Yes, all these sites have a formal BOM manager, although I meant BOM as its more generic definition. 

[gnavigator1007]

Yeah this was just an issue with the cart, though I've had separate problems with the BoM manager. This time it did at least save part of the cart I had going and didn't lose everything. Unfortunate that I had to redo a good bit of stuff, but I really should have been building the order in csv and uploading. Was lazy on my part, but was also hoping to avoid previous issues of uploading and editing BoM. This was comparatively small order compared to when I've encountered BoM manager problems and thought I could get away with it

[james_s]

Were you logged in when you started the cart? I've always been able to resume my DigiKey cart as long as I'm logged in.

Those carts that automatically empty if you step away for too long drive me absolutely crazy. If only companies realized how many sales they lose from that. There have been many occasions where I've gone through and put a bunch of stuff in my cart intending to buy it, got distracted and came back to an empty cart and then decided I didn't really need the stuff badly enough to go through all the trouble of adding it again and just abandoned the idea.

[gnavigator1007]

I was indeed logged in when this occurred and fortunately I was able to resume part of the cart I had going. Once I was able to login again, the cart showed 0 items. Found that most of my items had been saved by going to the cart tools menu and selecting "add carts". Not sure why it didn't save everything or why it logged me out or why I came back to a new cart with nothing in it once I could login again. Maybe a browser issue on my end 

Those carts that automatically empty if you step away for too long drive me absolutely crazy. If only companies realized how many sales they lose from that. There have been many occasions where I've gone through and put a bunch of stuff in my cart intending to buy it, got distracted and came back to an empty cart and then decided I didn't really need the stuff badly enough to go through all the trouble of adding it again and just abandoned the idea.

I've got quite the habit of keeping things in carts that should probably be wishlisted. Been bitten several times checking out in a hurry for a single item only to quickly realise afterwards that I just bought a ton of other stuff I'd been waffling on. You'd think I'd learn after the first time, but so far nope.

I wonder if the self emptying carts have something to do with inventory management. Not really the same thing, but I remember when Dave first put the 121gw up for early sale to supporters that more people were able to complete checkout than he actually had stock for. I can see how people like myself could cause further issues depending on how it's set up.

[rsjsouza]

I wonder if the self emptying carts have something to do with inventory management. Not really the same thing, but I remember when Dave first put the 121gw up for early sale to supporters that more people were able to complete checkout than he actually had stock for. I can see how people like myself could cause further issues depending on how it's set up.

If that is the case, I know that both Mouser and Newark are ahead: they update my cart with items that flipped to backorder status.

[gnavigator1007]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that digikey is one of those sites that intentionally empties carts. The problems I've had with them seem more like errors to me.

[chickenHeadKnob]

Well I just had a go at searching Digikey.ca. What an unusable fuxored mess. I search with find chips for a part  say STM32H730VBT.
 
Find chips api to digikey finds stock. Click on the link and get 404 type error. So I  go to digikey's parts search box and can't find the part. So  then try parametric search with STM32H7 series , 550 Mhz, and LQFP100. I can tell it is finding the parts according to the parts found count, but then it craps out when I click "apply selection" with nothing.

[olkipukki]

Why only Digi-Key?

For last (say) 5 years, you can apply the template "____ has changed and it is not very good"  to any in Top 10 distributors

[SilverSolder]

Why only Digi-Key?

For last (say) 5 years, you can apply the template "____ has changed and it is not very good"  to any in Top 10 distributors

Apply it to other e-commerce sites too...  e.g. eBay lost the ability to do wildcard searches e.g.  "HP54*" many years ago, and I still haven't forgiven them!

[rdl]

Yeah, ebay dropping wild card support was super annoying. I had to rewrite almost all my saved searches. I think the biggest winner in any stupid search contest would be Amazon. Their reviews system is amazingly bad due to jumbling almost anything remotely similar in the results. Looking for a power supply a few weeks ago, I was finally able to somewhat narrow down reviews to the one I wanted by filtering results according to "style" and "color". 

[olkipukki]

If you constantly using Digikey, Mouser, ... or either eBay,  worth to invest some time to learn their APIs and automate in-house process. Of course,  there're limitations, but you don't see in front a screen and pulling out your hairs...

I would suggest to start from Mouser since their Search API is straight forward, literally request/response in Python scripting can be done in minutes. DigiKey/eBay is a whole routine dance should be perform in order to get into the system.

[fixit]

Gee - I still like DigiKey very much.  I've used DigiKey since the '70s when their catalog was nothing more that a single sheet of paper folded into quarters, stapled and then mailed.  The back side of the sheet was the order form.

The clincher for me is  DigiKey's policy of FREE shipping if you mail them a check instead of charging.  They usually ship USPS but sometimes UPS.  I can order a single 0.10 resistor and get it shipped free.  The downside is that you have to wait for the mail service but that is typically not a big deal for me.

so with the help of "rfdes", I spoke with Digi-key and to the surprise of the attendant, she verified that they have free shipping but it is all by mail to request and deliver.
for some one that has 4x the shipping cost to the merchandice costs, this is a great help.

[drussell]

Well I just had a go at searching Digikey.ca. What an unusable fuxored mess.

Yeah, I don't see any advantages to the new setup.  It is certainly slower and less usable here.  Having to select "More Filters" all the time is stupid, the display is so much less dense that it is super annoying to use, many searches seem to end up on the manufacturer landing page instead of the product you're searching for, etc. etc.  Absolutely terrible.  Dumb, dumb, dumb....

My question is, what was wrong with the old interface?
What couldn't they change or add to the existing, much more usable interface?
Also, if it WAS necessary for some reason (difficult to believe)  then why, WHY re-invent the wheel without sufficient testing?!! 

Just my $.02... 

Digikey?  Are you listening?!!
Why you gotta make our lives more difficult to your own detriment??!   
Why?!  WHY would you do this?!!

(... let me guess...  corporate overlords?)

P.S.  Fuck Beta!!

[rsjsouza]

My question is, what was wrong with the old interface? 

Probably nothing, apart from the perception it looked "old" and "outdated". I see this in the corporate world all the time: the cyclic perception that the face of the company needs to "evolve" and "follow trends", which usually detracts from the usability. In my experience, the biggest tug-of-war for the past 10-15 years is about the amount of data presented at once. The technical folks usually sees the practicality of having everything in a single page with an easy Ctrl-F to find things. The publishing/marketing tends to move towards a more hierarchical aproach with the style du jour (tabs, left trees, right rolling TOCs, etc.). Regardless the approach, I have seen a lot of instances where the front end changes while the infrastructure is still picking up.

[E-Design]

Well I just had a go at searching Digikey.ca. What an unusable fuxored mess. I search with find chips for a part  say STM32H730VBT.
 
Find chips api to digikey finds stock. Click on the link and get 404 type error. So I  go to digikey's parts search box and can't find the part. So  then try parametric search with STM32H7 series , 550 Mhz, and LQFP100. I can tell it is finding the parts according to the parts found count, but then it craps out when I click "apply selection" with nothing.

I just put "STM32H730VBT" into Digikey search box and it went right to it. Must have been under maintenance when you tried it.

[james_s]

Probably nothing, apart from the perception it looked "old" and "outdated". I see this in the corporate world all the time: the cyclic perception that the face of the company needs to "evolve" and "follow trends", which usually detracts from the usability. In my experience, the biggest tug-of-war for the past 10-15 years is about the amount of data presented at once. The technical folks usually sees the practicality of having everything in a single page with an easy Ctrl-F to find things. The publishing/marketing tends to move towards a more hierarchical aproach with the style du jour (tabs, left trees, right rolling TOCs, etc.). Regardless the approach, I have seen a lot of instances where the front end changes while the infrastructure is still picking up.

This is exactly my observation. The college courses on web design are all geared toward trendy social media type websites so the current generation of web developers pretty much all learned to design this sort of site so it gets used everywhere, even sites like DigiKey where it is not at all appropriate. There is this trend toward "clean" interfaces, which is infuriating as it means TONS of useless white space, content that should fit comfortably on a 640x480 display feels cramped on a 1080p monitor, with as much functionality as possible hidden in cryptic little menus. If corporate had any sense they would recognize that DigiKey's customers are almost all engineers, and that their site should be utilitarian, tailored to these users who make up the bulk of their customer base. None of us care if it looks "dated", we care that it works, we care that it enables us to quickly find the parts we need. Stop trying to be Facebook or Amazon and focus 100% on making the site functional and meeting the needs of the core customer base. This sort of idiocy that is going on can make or break a company.

[SilverSolder]

The DigiKey web site fiasco is what happens when you let a web design team have at it with zero input from customers - no user acceptance testing at all.   

In the financial industry, making any change at all to the user interface pretty much guarantees that the customers will not accept the upgrade.  I visited a few sites to understand why.  I found that traders are so used to the way the screens are, that they don't even look at them - they type information into them blindly, and just trust the application to behave consistently every time.

Unlike us poor slob Digikey customers, the financial industry has enough clout to tell their vendors to go back to the old screen and insist that any new features do not interfere with how things already work today.

[asmi]

The only "marketplace" I will ever accept from the likes of DK is drop-shipping. This makes sense and I see the benefit - it expands our access to parts which are not stocked by DK itself for one reason or another - too low volume, too specialist, too expensive, too much PITA to store/handle, whatever.

[chickenHeadKnob]

Well I just had a go at searching Digikey.ca. What an unusable fuxored mess. I search with find chips for a part  say STM32H730VBT.
 
Find chips api to digikey finds stock. Click on the link and get 404 type error. So I  go to digikey's parts search box and can't find the part. So  then try parametric search with STM32H7 series , 550 Mhz, and LQFP100. I can tell it is finding the parts according to the parts found count, but then it craps out when I click "apply selection" with nothing.

I just put "STM32H730VBT" into Digikey search box and it went right to it. Must have been under maintenance when you tried it.

Yes it is working for me  now. Previously I was getting an internal error landing page

[Ysjoelfir]

So... did they revert all the changes? Stupid marketplace is gone, search is back to normal and all options get shown completely expanded from the beginning on, and I get the impression its WAY quicker again.
Could it realy be that they trusted their users? If so - I am very pleased!