Interesting New Site Alert!
We offer our welcome to HeavyInk.com
November 9th, 2007 - I recently had a chance to speak with Travis Corcoran via e-mail. Travis has launched a new website that, after taking a look around, I decided to share with you, our loyal readers.
Who is Travis? Well, Travis represents a small team of engineers and comic fans that have launched a new venture on the web. Having a background in e-commerce (they're the team that's behind SmartFlix.com), Travis and his friends decided to apply as they put it "our fulfillment chops, ecommerce experience, and our excellent customer support to a comic book related site".
That new site is HeavyInk.com - a mashup of Amazon.com-for-comic-books, Facebook-style social networking, and a few other things. They've offer comic fans personalized RSS feeds (we need to set up some of those soon, but that's another topic entirely), free shipping on every order, author reviews, a recommendation engine, profile pages, classic style friend lists, blurbs, mini-blogs and more. It's an ambitious first step and Travis went on to explain "We're going to have tons more features in the near future."
What makes this site so special? We'll let Travis make the pitch for us...
HeavyInk is just at the end of its "public beta" right now. That means there are some rough edges, and lots of cool features yet to come, but here's what we've got right now:
every item is 20% off
free shipping on every order, even if you order just a single comic book (although we hope you'll order more than that!)
optional upgrade to UPS shipping, for extra speed and package tracking
for sale: every comic book offered by Diamond, including issues going back a few months.
for sale: every graphic novel (although we haven't yet created an inventory of these, so at first there'll be a few days delay on each order you place for graphic novels).
subscriptions to comic books with 20% off prices, free shipping, and our Triple Your Money Back guarantee. You can start a subscription at any issue you like, including the current one, one or two issues in the future (in case you're already committed to buying these at a local store), or even a few issues back, to catch up. You can read more about the Triple Your Money Back guarantee online, but the short version is this: if we screw up and forget to send you an issue you've subscribed to, and we can't make it good, we'll give you triple the price of the issue. What this means for you: we're committed to not screwing up!
cancel up until the last minute. Other stores lock you in: by subscribing today, you're locked in for months to come. We let you cancel any subscription (or any other item ordered) up to an hour before it ships. Turn a subscription on or off, whenever you want.
talent pages: interested in Warren Ellis, Todd McFarlane, Paul Pope, or anyone else? See what they've worked on, what other people think of them, and more.
title pages: You're an X-Men fan. What issues are available? What graphic novels?
socialize: every customer has an optional "profile" page where they can talk about themselves, link to their friends, send blurbs to other users, list their favorite comic books and authors, upload a snapshot (or a drawing!) and more. Find out who else likes the same comics you do...and who has got horrible taste and insists on slagging on your favorites.
forums: discuss your favorite comics, authors, artists, characters, or anything else related to comics or HeavyInk.
comments and reviews, not just on issues, but on authors, artists, titles, other people's reviews...
personalized recommendations: give us a lever long enough and a place to stand, and ...well, we can't move the world...but if you review or rate a few comics, issues, or people, we'll have enough data to start making recommendations to you about what else you'll love!
a crisp looking website with snappy response. Do you like the five second load times for pages at the other internet comic book shops? Yeah, neither do we.
the best search interface in the business. Accidentally type "Gaimann" (with two 'n's) at us, and we know what you mean (the competition doesn't). Did you search for Ex Machina, and dive into issue #30 when you really wanted #32? Get to the correct issue with a single click, and a quick page refresh - there's no "pogo sticking" using the browser's back button and then forward again to get to where you want to go. And, speaking of search, Firefox users can download our search plugin!
personalized RSS feeds. At HeavyInk every single customer has their own personalized RSS feed. Get as much information, or as little, as you want in your RSS feed - track just your shipments, so you know when to keep your eye on the mail...or add in information on new titles by your favorite artist, or new comments on a discussion thread you're active in, or all new titles by genre (interested in hearing about new science fiction comics?), and more.
better attribution, and better links from issues to talent: when you read an issue with a really compelling cover, you want to find out who drew it, and then you want to click on their name to find more by them. The other stores do this poorly. We do it pretty well now, and it's only going to get better over the coming months.
multiple covers. Some comic books come with variant covers. We show them all to you!
expert reviews. To get the ball rolling, and to provide some high quality information on talent and issues, we've got a team of dedicated comics experts writing mini essays on some of the biggest titles and names in the business.
Features that will be coming soon:
quizzes. Answer a few questions and find out which super hero you are, or what authors and artists you should check out, what high tech weapon you'd wield if you were a comic book character, and more. Want to create your own quizzes? We'll let you!
all the data available at Wikipedia about your favorite authors, artists, and comic book titles.
subscriptions to authors and artists. Like a certain cover artist? Click one button and receive everything by him or her (you can always cancel a specific item before it ships, though!)
wish lists
gift cards (actual hold-in-your hand ones, so you don't look cheap at the holidays)
browse by release date
historical information: who drew Spiderman #45 ?
who's in your neighborhood? If you're arranging a carpool to Comiccon or GenCon, or if you just want to get an AD&D or GURPS game going, you'd like to find other HeavyInk customers nearby.
an affiliate program, so that you can invite your friends...and earn money (or better yet: free comics!) doing it.
...and tons more.
Okay, thanks Travis! Chuck here once again... Wow, that's quite an ambitious agenda. If their design team pulls it all off (and from taking a look around their site it appears they are well on their way), this will certainly be a destination location for comic fans.
The Related Recap is a daily column by site creator, Chuck Moore.
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