What's new
Van's Air Force

Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.

JUST RELEASED (November 18, 2021) New and Improved Van's Aircraft Online Store

greghughespdx

Well Known Member
Advertiser
To the VAF Family -

It's been a lonnnng time coming, but we're super excited to announce that we've released our new online web e-commerce store, and you can access it at http://store.vansaircraft.com now before we announce it to the rest of the world. We will be sending invitation emails to all of our customers' email addresses soon, as well, but if you want the sneak-peek, here's your opportunity!

There's so much that's new, we really can't list everything here - but here are a few of the highlights:

  • All new modern look and feel and substantially better technology under the hood, with better content organization
  • Substantially improved product/catalog searching
  • Photos and technical drawings of parts and products to help in identification
  • Detailed specifications (sizes, lengths, material, etc.) for hardware and other standard parts
  • Filter the items you’re viewing by various parameters, including applicable RV model, hardware specs, and more
  • Cross-reference part numbers and identifiers on items that are known by multiple names/codes
  • Browse the parts and hardware included in the kit for your RV
  • Create and sign into your very own Van’s store account
    • Save items on a list of future purchases
    • Associate your kit(s)/airplane(s) with your account and connect part orders to an airplane
    • View the most recent digital plans for your RV model
    • Quickly access service information documents for your RV model
    • Securely save as many billing and shipping addresses, payment methods, and other useful pieces of information as you like, to avoid re-typing on subsequent visits
  • Emails are generated when your order status changes, covering the initial order, invoice, shipped status, and more
  • Tracking info for shipments is included in email and account notifications
  • Access the history of all orders made on the new system, including the ability to quickly re-order items from your history when needed
  • Product Q&A – Have a question? Submit a question on the product page to help others when they’re shopping for the same products in the future.
  • The current stock status of each product is shown, so you can know what’s in stock and what’s not as you place your order
  • You’ll be presented an option at checkout when necessary, so you can choose to wait until all backordered items are ready to ship, or have us ship each item on your order as they’re available
  • Tax is now calculated before you check out where required (note: we’re still working on being able to provide shipping quotes at checkout in a future release, and we know everyone wants this as much as we do – turns out that’s a pretty complex and significant amount of work!)
We still have a number of smaller user interface enhancements and improvements that we will be making over the next day and weeks. We hope you’ll enjoy the new store and find it to be useful in your future Van’s Aircraft shopping and purchases!

We want to thank the many Van's customers who volunteered to help test the new store over the past few months as well as several of our employees and contractors! I'll include that thank-you note in the next post.

Some screen grabs are below, but be sure to go check it out for yourself!

Screenshot-2021-11-18-145849.png


Screenshot-2021-11-18-150317.png


Screenshot-2021-11-18-150048.png
 
I wanted to recognize and thank a few key people here at Van’s for their extra-dedicated attention to this huge project. I hope it's okay to do this in the public forum. These folks are not often recognized publicly and this effort deserves it. Plus it's an opportunity for you to hear about people at Van's whom you might not otherwise know about!

  • Jordon Rustad from our IT department has put in endless hours and has done a tremendous amount of complex work on this store project. Between managing and transforming massive sets of data, and working miracles several times throughout the project, he’s really knocked it out of the park!
  • Jasmine Hudnall from our front office ops team has done an incredible job of mapping out internal business logic and processes to define how the store should work, discovering bugs, testing, employee training, testing, testing… You get the idea! Driving improvements in our ERP system, as well as the new web store software, has been a critical part of making this happen and it’s taken a while! Jasmine has stuck with it and chased things down until they’re good to go.
  • Nancy Baird from our Orders team has been testing, processing store purchases made by participating test customers and providing terrific feedback about business as well as customer needs and functionality. That means she’s been processing lots of orders from two web stores lately, which is quite an extra workload!
  • Kevin Miller from our tech support team has spent a big chunk of time recently working through a ton of product names and helping get them in a place where they’re more customer-friendly.
  • Conner Lader, who put a lot of time in on the back-end processes and workflow that lets us display and update plans/kit assembly instructions on the My Aircraft page.
  • and a slew of others who have worked on the project internally over the past many months.

In addition, throughout this project we’ve worked with a terrific team of software developers from a company called Harmonic Northwest. Gage, David, Eric, Tristan, Cameron, and Chen have helped us through complicated system integration issues and assisted in making improvements, in addition to building and customizing a modern web-store platform that will serve us all well into the future. Their partnership has allowed us to tackle new projects and advance our online capabilities, one step at a time.

Again, we hope you like it and look forward to your feedback!
 
Last edited:
New Web Store

It's about t.....no, wait, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

Can't wait to try it out.

Now, about my finish kit....... j/k :D

Laird
 
Great, Fantastic, etc etc

Wonderful news. I just logged in, made an account & added my aircraft, all very easy.

Kudos to the Van's team for coming up with another way to help ensure that this fool and his money are easily parted!
 
I was just on the web store about an hour or so ago and was still the old style. How fast things can change.
 
WOW!

What a dramatic improvement in the Van's online store experience!!! I will definitely be shopping on this site a lot more often. Congratulations to the team at Van's that made this happen!
 
I "test drove" the new site a few days ago and IMO it is a vast improvement. The search function works much better and is more forgiving if you don't know the exact nomenclature for what you are searching for. A nice feature, I believe, is that images of the parts drop down under the search box as you are typing. Also, you can put items on a wish list for later review.

Thanks to Van's team. I know how tough this is to implement. I appreciate it.

Chris
 
What a dramatic improvement in the Van's online store experience. I will definitely be shopping on this site a lot more often. Congratulations to the team at Van's that made this happen!

As someone who has been fortunate enough to preview this new store during beta testing I completely agree. It's orders of magnitude easier to navigate, find specific items, add items to the cart and save lists, shipping addresses, account info and payment options. While I'm sure there will be a few bugs to work out along the way, my experiences in the store have been great. Formerly I often dreaded having to look up and order parts from the old store, this new one modernizes the experience and makes the process as easy and seamless as using any other online site. Great job, Van's team!
 
Last edited:
New Store Issue

The new store looks great! I created an account, associated my plane with it, etc. I did notice an issue while I was poking around though. Didn't find anywhere to report a problem on the website - so I thought I would post it here.

After you log in and go to your associated plane, it gives the option to download the plans for your plane (Greg mentioned this as a feature). Unfortunately, it gave me the plans for an RV-8 (I have a -7) and a lot of the drawings are missing.

Not complaining - just thought the Vans crew would like the feedback.
 
The new store looks great! I created an account, associated my plane with it, etc. I did notice an issue while I was poking around though. Didn't find anywhere to report a problem on the website - so I thought I would post it here.

After you log in and go to your associated plane, it gives the option to download the plans for your plane (Greg mentioned this as a feature). Unfortunately, it gave me the plans for an RV-8 (I have a -7) and a lot of the drawings are missing.

Not complaining - just thought the Vans crew would like the feedback.

Same here. Download brings up RV8 plans and I have a RV7A Slider.
 
The new store looks great! I created an account, associated my plane with it, etc. I did notice an issue while I was poking around though. Didn't find anywhere to report a problem on the website - so I thought I would post it here.

After you log in and go to your associated plane, it gives the option to download the plans for your plane (Greg mentioned this as a feature). Unfortunately, it gave me the plans for an RV-8 (I have a -7) and a lot of the drawings are missing.

Not complaining - just thought the Vans crew would like the feedback.

We will look into this in the morning - thanks for the heads-up!

greg
 
Secure Payment Card Data

Along the way we had a couple of people ask us just how secure the new web store is when it comes to storing credit/debit card information, so I wanted to share some details on that topic here.

When you submit your card on the new Van's store, either to store it for future use or when placing an order, we immediately validate that card with our payment card processing service provider. The card processor then provides us with a unique tokenized value (basically, a fancy cryptographic key) that they create to connect your card account to our company. We then store that token value, which can be used only by Van's Aircraft to make a charge on your account. In other words, we never store your actual card info - just the token. And, that token is only valid for making a purchase if the charge comes directly from Van's. Even if someone was somehow able to steal the token, they would not be able to use it to conduct transactions and it doesn't contain any actual card data.

In addition, this means our employees will not be able to see or access your actual card account number in our systems. They will only be able to see only the last few digits of your card number when interacting with you, for the purpose of identifying the card you want to use when placing an order.

I hope this information helps people when deciding about saving payment cards on your account at the new store!
 
Last edited:
... In other words, we never store your actual card info - just the token. And, that token is only valid for making a purchase if the charge comes directly from Van's. Even if someone was somehow able to steal the token, they would not be able to use it to conduct transactions and it doesn't contain any actual card data.
...

This is the right way. Excellent work.
 
Thanks for this!

Will past orders associated with an email address (used to create a new account) show up eventually in the "My Orders" section, or will this just include future orders?
 
Greg - -congrats to the entire Team! a Welcome improvement. Keep the evolution going!:D

The search tool given ".040" renders all raw parts of .040 for your building needs. Thumbs up !!

Saved parts list . . . . . woooo hoooo! Sales are going up!
 
Last edited:
Thanks for this!

Will past orders associated with an email address (used to create a new account) show up eventually in the "My Orders" section, or will this just include future orders?

Only those orders made on the new platform will be displayed. We looked at displaying historical orders from the old platform but the cost to implement was just too high.
 
Last edited:
missing RV6 S/B?

Great improvements. Have been through projects like this and I do appreciate how hard it is to pull off. Nicely done.

Question: Why is the RV-6 omitted from the Service Bulletin aircraft list?
 
Great improvements. Have been through projects like this and I do appreciate how hard it is to pull off. Nicely done.

Question: Why is the RV-6 omitted from the Service Bulletin aircraft list?

There should not be any models omitted, we will take a look.

EDIT: After speaking with Bill I better understood what he was reporting. There are still a number of items on the store that have not been completely "tagged" with aircraft model numbers for filtering, and so in the "Service Bulletin and Notification Kits" store category there's no RV-6/6A filtering option displayed when viewing the products. That will change when we do a forthcoming category update. We've added literally thousands of parts and items more than the old store had, and some of the categorization data still needs to be updated. Thanks!
 
Last edited:
Very nice work Greg!

For those of us eligible for a military discount, is that something that we’ll be able to verify once and store it with our account?
Your current form needs to be filled out and emailed with sensitive information documents such as a DD214. This presents some security issues via email.

Future RV15 order perhaps :D
 
Last edited:
Very nice work Greg!

For those of us eligible for a military discount, is that something that we’ll be able to verify once and store it with our account?
Your current form needs to be filled out and emailed with sensitive information documents such as a DD214. This presents some security issues via email.

Future RV15 order perhaps :D

We don't have a specific plan for the RV kit military discount reviews being done via the store. We will put it on our "think about it" list though! :)
 
Plans download

Nice work!

Now what about being able to purchase and download the $10 thumb drive plans for another model? I can download the plans for my RV-6A but would also like the plans for the RV-7A for the extra detail FWF and it would seem that the technology is now capable. There is no USPS to Australia right now and FEDEX or UPS will cost way more than the thumb drive!
 
Nice work!

Now what about being able to purchase and download the $10 thumb drive plans for another model? I can download the plans for my RV-6A but would also like the plans for the RV-7A for the extra detail FWF and it would seem that the technology is now capable. There is no USPS to Australia right now and FEDEX or UPS will cost way more than the thumb drive!

That's on the list of possible future enhancements, but it's actually not as simple as I would like. That said, if you buy a USB drive for the -7A on the store, and in the notes field for the order you ask for us to set it up so you can download it, I can do that for you via another mechanism. For international customers who have a long wait or to whom we cannot currently ship the USB stick, we can make the time to do that.

greg
 
Only those orders made on the new platform will be displayed. We looked at displaying historical orders from the old platform but the cost to implement was just too high.

Greg,

Does this also apply to the "new" kit order page that shows our kit history and current status, or is there a way to link that to the new store account?

Thanks,
 
Greg,

Does this also apply to the "new" kit order page that shows our kit history and current status, or is there a way to link that to the new store account?

Thanks,

Also not integrated with the new store at this time. Possibly in the future, but TBD.
 
Along the way we had a couple of people ask us just how secure the new web store is when it comes to storing credit/debit card information, so I wanted to share some details on that topic here.

When you submit your card on the new Van's store, either to store it for future use or when placing an order, we immediately validate that card with our payment card processing service provider. The card processor then provides us with a unique tokenized value (basically, a fancy cryptographic key) that they create to connect your card account to our company. We then store that token value, which can be used only by Van's Aircraft to make a charge on your account. In other words, we never store your actual card info - just the token. And,that token is only valid for making a purchase if the charge comes directly from Van's. Even if someone was somehow able to steal the token, they would not be able to use it to conduct tansactions and it doesn't contain any actual card data.

In addition, this means our employees will not be able to see or access your actual card account number in our systems. They will only be able to see only the last few digits of your card number when interacting with you, for the purpose of identifying the card you want to use when placing an order.

I hope this information helps people when deciding about saving payment cards on your account at the new store!

It didn't help me today; I received an emailed invoice for a purchase I didn't make and shipped to an address I don't have. I did receive a subsequent email in which my CC was credited for the charge but no one from Vans said anything about it. I replied to the emailed credit but the person in the "reply to" field didn't know what I was talking about! It's still got bugs as far as I'm concerned.

-Marc
 
It didn't help me today; I received an emailed invoice for a purchase I didn't make and shipped to an address I don't have. I did the receive a subsequent emailed in which my CC was credited for the charge but no one from Vans said anything about it. I replied to the emailed credit but the person in the "reply to" field didn't know what I was talking about! It's still got bugs as far as I'm concerned.

-Marc

That wasn't a new web store purchase. I'll reach out to you Marc. Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Test drove the new store today. Registered my aircraft, which included updating the ownership, took a look at the online drawings, and ordered my calendar to go right through the process.

Really slick experience overall, worked really well and impressed with the new system.

I did have one disappointment though: no shipping price available at checkout.

As an international customer who has been unpleasantly surprised before by a large shipping cost I wasn't expecting for some small parts, seeing the shipping during the order process is a big item i would like to see to encourage me to order from and support Vans.

One thought, if it is likely to be a long time before this is integrated, would it be possible to add an option for "Confirm shipping cost before dispatch" that could be selected at checkout. Then the order would only be processed once the customer approved the shipping cost. The present system with the shipping being completely blind when the order is placed is not ideal.
 
I like

Like it, especially the service bulletin section.

Any chance of being able to download the specific SBs for my aircraft in, say, an excel file for maintenance records?
 
I must be overlooking something, but I can't find "the list". It would be a super inconvenience to us old farts if "the list" is unavailable. I use it all the time. Anyone have the hidden (from my eyes) URL for "the list"?
 
Question for Greg

I need to order some parts from the new online store and am trying to consolidate everything for efficiency and to save on shipping costs. Of the 4 different part numbers I need 3 are on back order. The one in stock is not needed urgently. If I check the option "Hold until all of my ordered items are available and ship together", do I run the risk that the part currently in stock could then be on B/O? Or is the part that's in stock pulled or somehow saved for my order when the B/O parts become available?

The new website is great, just trying to learn how it works.
 
Back
Top