Best Manufacturer's Website Features

Accuphase lists all of their vintage products and their years of production allowing me to research such items as their T101 tuner. This is a great feature because quality manufacturers which have been around 20+ years still have many products in use.

I agree PDF manuals (service manuals would be nice too), and Good images are key. Martin Logan does a good job with this. CJ has a nice section on vintage products - also a good thing.

For a few reasons, most sites will not have the following:

* Suggested retail prices for ALL products

- prices change, thus chances are a possibility of the site getting out of sync with prices, exists. Also, given currency fluctuation, would encourage grey market shopping from countries where the prices may not always be in line 100% with each other.

* An accurate list of dealers and what part of the line each one carries

- Not likely. Too easy to simply spam them all with some bottom-feeder email like "what's your best price, will you sell for $X? "... manufacturers and dealers don't want that. also encourages selling out of territory, a big no-no with manufacturers.

* Links to the dealer's website if they have one

- helpful, but see above.

I like one where you can have a zip-code lookup of your nearest dealer, it gets the info to the buyer without listing all the dealers in a big list.

Other nice things:

-many images, esp. of factory/production.
-updated news page with real news about what is going on there, developments, etc.
-interviews, links/copies of reviews, etc.

-Ed

I appreciate an up to date website with all the new products listed and their features. In the past since I am a Mac man, they have been horrible at doing this. It's almost like they do not want to sell their products. Always more engineering instead of sales related.

Well, one of the first things I can think of is a site that's STOOPID. That's the Synergistic Research Soft Core Porn site. Geez, why can't some guys ever get out of junior high school?!

As for what makes a good site, I want to know about the PRODUCT--specs. Gimme specs. However, I also seem to be drawn to companies that present a consistent and clear vision of their product. VTL, Manley, Cary, PS Audio come to mind. From jump, those sites seem to let you know what's what. I also like sites that have lots of info about their older products. Pass Labs and CJ are really good about this.