Now that Markenburg has more than 300 different products in its product range for some time, we may not just assume that everyone can find their way in the webshop. Fortunately, with the basis that the new website offers, we can do something that we couldn't do with our previous webshop. And that is filtering.
Filtering can be done in different ways, but we first have to look at the categories and themes that we already have. The three best-known categories are "stage setting", "buildings" and "infrastructure". Themes are included within the categories. For example, in the "buildings" category, you can find the theme "Heistraat". Heistraat theme contains a range of products (buildings) that can be captured within the framework of the theme in question. With the Heistraat theme, this is village buildings. Nevertheless, village buildings are still a broad concept. And those who are looking for a nice home, but do not yet know exactly what they are looking for, can go to at least 10 different themes.
And there the filters become interesting.
Whoever looks at the Markenburg product page will see some filter options from now on. Scale filtering is the most obvious filter option and also the easiest to explain. Markenburg has by far the most products available in scales 1:160 (N) and 1:87 (H0). But we have also been working hard in recent years on a range in a 1: 220 (Z) scale. Those who wanted to find all 1: 220 products on the old website had to search a lot. Now, with the filter, it becomes easy to see which products are available in that scale. Select the desired scale and press the blue "apply filter" button. All themes that contain applicable products are given a number after the name. The number indicates how many applicable products are in that theme. All themes that do not contain any applicable products with the filter(s) filled in, turn dark gray. When a filter is applied, only those products that meet the filter are visible in the themes, the rest is invisible. That makes searching a lot easier. When a filter is deleted, all products in the theme will reappear.
In addition to filtering by scale, hard work is currently being done on filtering by building type and filtering by year of construction. Suppose that a station building is sought from before 1925. Then there are a number of applicable buildings in various themes. With building type you can choose, 'stations', and with construction year, the construction periods that extend up to 1925 can be chosen. It is therefore possible to enable multiple check marks per filter option. By pressing the blue button "apply filter" again it becomes clear at a glance which themes contain station buildings from before 1925.
Filtering can therefore be very useful!
However, we do understand that filtering can still present challenges. Because what is the use of building types if you are looking for a telephone booth? We have also tried to think carefully about that. The "construction" and "objects" options can therefore be filtered in addition to many building types.
What is what?
- A building is a building in which a person can reside. For example in a living room, kitchen, retail space, etc. A place that is generally heated and where things such as electricity and running (hot) water are present.
- A structure is something that does not comply with the description of a building, but that does have a foundation and often also has something of a walled / interior space. Think of a shed, garage box, bridge section, garden wall or telephone booth.
- An object usually has no foundation and therefore does not have to be permanently connected to the ground during use. It is also generally not possible to stay in an object. Think of objects such as interior items, such as wooden floorboards and tiles, but also bicycles, tree grills and place name signs.
And that is also where the challenge of filtering comes up. Because does an object such as a place name sign never have any foundation at all? And when we talk about construction years, what is the construction year of a wooden floor? They are, after all, fairly timeless. We therefore realize that the filter options have limits, because they draw limits in a large range of products. What does or does not fall within the boundary is sometimes perfectly clear, but sometimes also debatable. Nevertheless, we hope to offer a useful tool with the filter options, with which you can experiment as much as you like, to gain a better insight into our still-expanding product range.
