Scrap-a-Faire Review

I was very intrigued by the idea of an online scrapbooking convention. Scrap-a-Faire offers the same elements as a traditional show but with 24-hour access to shopping, classes, and forums all from the convenience of your home. Over a period of 10 days, you can take classes, visit vendors, win prizes and chat with other scrapbookers. To register for the show it cost $5 and classes range from $10 to $35.

Registration: During the payment process my browser alerted me that part of the page was not secure. The 1st thought that entered my mind is…OMG, I’m about to send my credit card information over an unsecured Internet connection! I emailed Scrap-a-Faire with a screen shot of the issue and they informed that the only unsecured portion of the page is an image. I was happy to get a fast reply, however there was no way for me to confirm this was the issue. I asked if they had a Paypal option. No luck, but was given a pass to enter the show. I later tried to sign-up for classes and again the registration appeared not secure so I was unable to participate in that part of the faire. I was disappointed as I was really looking forward to taking some of the classes since I didn’t take any classes at CKC Seattle. I found this lack of security for payment to be a HUGE problem. For customer peace of mind, no part of a payment processing page should ever be left unsecured or unencrypted.

Vendor Booths: Once I logged in, I perused all the vendors’ sites and was not overly impressed. All of the vendor booths had the same look and feel. Part of the enjoyment of conventions for me is the uniqueness and branding of booths. There were a good amount of vendors to choose from. However, there was a lot of clicking around to navigate to places and the loading of pages was slow. Once inside the booths many just took you to the company’s website. I didn’t find any of the “fair specials” to be overly exciting. Many were free shipping with a certain amount purchased. Some had discount offers. I was hoping for some GREAT deals given the “virtualness” of this event (overhead is low compared to a traditional convention). Some vendors “show specials” were merely a list of files that had to be downloaded to find out what they were. This took even more time to download. It just felt like a lot of digging and clicking around.

Gallery: I thought the best part of the faire was the gallery of page ideas. This part of the site was done well and the pages loaded fast in this section. There were both exhibitor and a few vendor galleries with scrapbook pages and ideas.

Forum: I stopped by the forum several times, nothing of interest there. It would have been nice to see actual topics or categories here and more than just one forum. Each time I was there it was just random banter. There was a schedule of “celebrity” chats offered.

Prizes: Everyone loves to win prizes and enter drawings at these types of events. At Scrap-a-Faire you just click on a part of the vendor booth that is offering a drawing and get a pop-up alert that says “you’ve been entered”. This is very convenient yet somewhat impersonal. I think they could have at least made an actual webpage that says thank you for entering. It made the look of the faire experience seem not fully put together.

There were also other random technical errors. I received an email from Scrap-a-Faire that was not legible as it only displayed the code that is used to generate an email. All in all I was disappointed with the unencrypted/unsecured payment option, slowness of page loading within the booths, and the constant digging around for information. In case anyone is curious I did run the diagnostic check and my computer was capable of viewing the site properly. I viewed the site on Apple OS X Leopard. I have a background in web development and usability.

I still love the concept of participating in an online convention. I hope upcoming shows will address some of these issues. For $5 and the convenience of being at home it’s worth trying out. They have to fix the secure payment option though.

Summed up…

* I don’t want to spend a ton of time waiting for page loading or downloads.
* Digging around for information is not a good use of time.
* Secure and encrypted online payment is always a MUST for me.

{update 12/21/07} - As a registered user/attendee of Scrap-a-Faire my email address was opted-in to every vendor that participated in the faire (and possibly more). I have received many, many emails that I did not sign-up for and the emails say I’m receiving the newsletter because I attended Scrap-a-Faire….NOT COOL.

Filed under Scrapbooking |