New Balance Tampa Blog

We've added another search feature to help you find Apparel and Clothing faster and easier. You may have already seen it appear on our navigation menu.

It's very simple and works just like the Shop By Size or Shop By Last features.

Are you wondering how these types of tools are faster? Each option clicked only returns valid results based on available inventory and you'll notice that the pages do not need to re-load with each click. Essentially, customers can figure out what they want (color, size, category, gender) from 1 single page. We are using a technology called AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript w/ XML) so your browser will require Javascript to be enabled.

Here's a screen shot (click it to try it out):


Let us know how we can improve it. I seem to remember the last customer that made a suggestion that we used received a free shipment of Running Socks (hint: we like customer input).

We wanted to let everyone know that our RSS feed has moved to a new location and is now hosted with FeedBurner. You can pick the feed up from this location.

Too, you now have the ability to subscribe to our Blog via email. Our blog posts will be delivered every morning between 9AM and 10AM. You can subscribe by entering your email address in the sign up form located in the navigation bar on the right.


Lastly, we unfortunately had to disable our Comments this afternoon due to Comment spam. We received over 900 comment spams within an hour. Look for Comments to be re-enabled once this subsides.

As always, your feedback is welcome. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

We received an email that indicated one of our longer running Coupon Codes was not working. I just wanted to chime in and let everyone know that I tested this code last night and I'm happy to report that it stills works.

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that during the checkout process we do have tools for you to check the validity of a Coupon Code. Michele has a nice write-up on these tools here. So, for you returning customers that link will appear like this on your Express Checkout Page:


And new customers are offered a very similar link like this:


Why am I re-hashing this? Well, after testing our site I realized that perhaps a slight usability issue may have caused this problem. Here's why. When validating a Coupon Code this will occur in a small Pop-Up window. That utility will essentially inform customers if a code is 'valid' or 'not'. What it doesn't do is automatically apply the code to your order. Customers still need to do that manually (after closing the Coupon Code Validation window).

Thanks for letting us know, we'll see if we can make this a little smoother for you.

You may have heard of Ukrainian, Leonid Stadnik? At 8-foot-5 he's the world's tallest human. I read about Leonid a few years ago in the USA Today. Back then he was only 8-foot-4. Amazingly, he's still growing. According to his Wikipedia entry, at the age of 14 he developed a pituitary gland tumor that secreted large amounts of growth hormone, resulting in gigantism.

Leonid is back in the news because he's been given a new giant sized bicycle and he's also received a giant car by President Viktor Yushchenko.

I knew this from reading about him previously but you might not. Stadnik unfortunately had to quit his job as a Veterinarian on a cow farm due to frostbite on his feet. Leo was walking to work in his socks because his shoes didn't fit. He has a 17" foot.

Hmmm, I think I know some folks that manufacturer and sell size 17 shoes. This is the kind of story that New Balance should jump at. Leo needs some size 17's and New Balance is looking to expand their marketing horizons by tripling their marketing budget. If Leo can make the front page of every major media outlet on the planet with a new Bicycle I think I'd be getting him some new shoes. It's a good deed and that kind of coverage can't be bought.

If you happen to wear a size 17, we can help you out. Did you know that we carry up to size 20? I tried our Size Finder for Mens, Width D, Size 17. We currently have 27 different models across 5 categories available in that Size and Width.

Oh and guess what, we don't just carry size 17 in a standard D Width. Nope, we have them available in 2E:

And 4E:

We even have them in 6E:

We feel strongly that carrying this wide variety of Sizes and Widths helps support our value proposition to you the Customer.

We've added a new feature here at New Balance Tampa that I think you're all going to like. Multi-View images are now appearing on several New Balance footwear product pages on our site. I say several because creating Multi-View Images happens to be a very time consuming process that requires sending the footwear to a professional photographer. To that end, we have completed Multi-View images for 16 models.

• WT811AT


• WW844WB


• WW926WT


• W587WB


• WW575WT


• WX1009BL


• MW844WN


• WW811WT


• MX1009WN


• MR1223SY


• M992GL


• MR858ST


• WR858ST


• WR1223ST


• MT811BK


• MW926BK

I wanted to let everyone know about a new feature we launched yesterday. It's called the New Balance Shoe Finder and you'll find it right on our home page. I've seen similar features on other Footwear Web Sites but I was always disappointed because I always found that these sites would allow users to choose from possibilities that they didn't really have Shoes for and that resulted in irritating "Sorry No Shoes Found" messages.

• Their Gender


• Available Sizes for their Gender


• Available Widths for their Gender and Size selection

The last 2 elements are the most important to you the customer. Our system was designed to not show you options that don't have matching shoes and so when you select your Gender the Shoe Size Selector will become enabled.

 

After a Size Selection has been made the system will then perform that same type of action and return all available shoe widths that match your Gender and Size selections!

 

Once your selections are made click the "Get Shoes" Link to view all of the possible footwear models based on your criteria.

 

To make it easy we've grouped the results by Category and we've provided you with simple filtering tools so that you can remove the Categories that you do not wish to see.

 

Here's what the filtering options look like for my search which was for Mens, Size 11 and D Width.

 

 

We hope you enjoy the new feature!

We've updated our home page. Let us know how you feel about the changes.

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we have updated our SiteMap.

SiteMaps are really helpful web pages that not only lists all of the pages on a web site but groups them into a digestible taxonomy. We performed a little housecleaning on ours and made some ergonomic improvements that we hope provides a pleasing experience.

Here's a snippet, and you can click here to view the SiteMap in its entirety: