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[adb club cricketer]

Was recently looking at buying a bat online and found Crowncricketer to provide much better online browsing experience compared to any other I have seen/experienced in past.

The simple reason being you get to see pics of the exact bat you purchase in the website itself, along with weight in grams (so you get exact weight rather than a weight range), plus it mentioned if oval handle or not. These three things really helped me a lot in making a decision as otherwise, I need to ask the seller for bat pics in my preferred weight range, and wait for few days for them to get back, and if I found the returned list unsatisfactory, ask for more options, and eventually, if I don't end up purchasing one, I feel bad for wasting the time of the seller and not ending up buying. This overall process is very time and effort inefficient for seller as well as they need to go to the store and take pics based on buyer requests which will only help that particular buyer.  They need to repeat this process for the next customer who requests such information and lot of back and forth exchange is involved. This is with the "good" retailers who even provide such a service, then there are a whole lot of other retailers who don't even send such pics and have only a stock photo in their website, e.g. prodirectcricket where the buying experience is even worse as you are buying a bat totally blind.

However, with Crowncricketer, i can browse 100s of bats without even asking a single question from the seller and then order the exact one I want in terms of looks, shape, exact weight and handle and get the one that I see, all by just browsing the website and process can be done in minutes in total convenience.  While I found bat buying online very difficult in past as retailers just post a stock photo of the bat and also specify a generic weight range (most specify like 2-8 to 2-9 for e.g., but even saying 2-8 is vague IMO as that can have a 30 grams weight variation : we dont know if it is 2-8.1 or 2-8.9 which can affect my purchasing decision).  Given my past experience buying a bat online, and being tensed as to whether it would be to my liking or not after ordering, crowncricketer website browsing was a very refreshing and less stressful experience and I don't know why all retailers selling online don't follow this model. I think all retailers are really missing a simple but highly effective trick here which greatly affects their sales IMO. I can't remember the number of times I visited a bat website such as a prodirectcricket or talentcricket for e.g. and backing off as the unknowns are too many from the blind purchase.

I am not related to crowncricketer but this is just a post on how this business model  of putting exact bat pics and weight in grams and specifying if oval or round clearly for each listing - even though simple really, causes a huge improvement in user experience and I feel more confidant in buying bat online from such a site.  I wish all retailers go this route in future.

I also need to mention that TCB is similar and much better than others in that they post exact bat pics and finer grained weights such as 2-8 1/4 or 2-9 3/4 which is good but grams specification is still best as it gives most granular weight detail.
IJC also post exact bat pics (for a few bats only) but they specify weight as 2-8 or 2-9 which is not granular enough.

[jp2408]

I'm glad you found somewhere that serves your needs, but I can't imagine it would be possible for any retailer to post exact pictures/stats/weights (down to 1/4 ounce) and also operate at any sort of scale - the maths of the labour involved just wouldn't add up (at least not in the UK). Several specialist retailers offer the chance to get pictures of exact bats etc via enquiries (email/phone etc) which seems a fair compromise to me and caters for the badger as well as the casual buyer!

Also I would be extremely impressed if you could really genuinely (and consistently) tell the difference between bats that are 30g apart. In percentage terms you are comparing a 2lb 8oz at 1134g to 2lb 9oz at 1162g, which is a 2% increase. Do you think you could tell the difference between a 1kg bag of flour and a 1.02kg bag, freehand, consistently?

[adb club cricketer]

I'm glad you found somewhere that serves your needs, but I can't imagine it would be possible for any retailer to post exact pictures/stats/weights (down to 1/4 ounce) and also operate at any sort of scale - the maths of the labour involved just wouldn't add up (at least not in the UK). Several specialist retailers offer the chance to get pictures of exact bats etc via enquiries (email/phone etc) which seems a fair compromise to me and caters for the badger as well as the casual buyer!

Also I would be extremely impressed if you could really genuinely (and consistently) tell the difference between bats that are 30g apart. In percentage terms you are comparing a 2lb 8oz at 1134g to 2lb 9oz at 1162g, which is a 2% increase. Do you think you could tell the difference between a 1kg bag of flour and a 1.02kg bag, freehand, consistently?

I am sure stronger guys might not be able to tell the diff, but I have found massive difference in my game and runs output when I went down from 2-8.6 to 2-8.0 and it is not even a full 30 grams difference here. The swing felt just that much more natural/easier. I agree not everyone may be sensitive to 30 grams weight but having exact weight will only help more people than less. Secondly, you are swinging a bat to meet a ball coming at pace towards you and depending on the quality of pitch you play, might even need to be able to adjust late based on ball deviation off a bad pitch or from a skillful bowler, so every bit of weight matters here. It is not about comparing to lifting a dead weight such as a rice bag, e.g.

I don't think taking the pics and weights is that much of an effort. After one time effort of the entire inventory, seller just needs to do that for the new bats coming in and I am sure this delta is not that big even at the big retailers.
Whether the effort is worth or not is for the sellers to decide - whether they see the potential increase in sales combined with sellers time saved responding to requests from multiple buyers individually is worth the  increase in effort due to the pics and weight recording.

[AJ2014]

It's not that easy to buy a bat on it's weight Alone There are other factors to be considered as well.
I bought 4 gn xrd mega bats, all same weight, but they all picked up differently, might be due to slightly difference in spine heights, even they had the same handle.
First xrd I received in still using and the rest sold on.
Best way is to buy in store if you're so picky, but then price will be higher.

[adb club cricketer]

It's not that easy to buy a bat on it's weight Alone There are other factors to be considered as well.
I bought 4 gn xrd mega bats, all same weight, but they all picked up differently, might be due to slightly difference in spine heights, even they had the same handle.
First xrd I received in still using and the rest sold on.
Best way is to buy in store if you're so picky, but then price will be higher.

Agree it is not easy to go by weight alone, but when you are saying having exact weight doesn't help fully, not even having that info is worse/doesn't make things any better. While pick up varies even at same weight, a general rule of thumb going by exact weight has worked out fine for me in the later part of my online purchases after my initial mess of purchases made by not taking weight into account.

Many cases, buying online is the only option, and while you can't ever make online buying experience same as in store, you can get as close to it as possible - exact weight is one such detail. And this post is not about weight alone, I as mentioning the specific bat pics as well. Just being able to look at the various specific bats available helps when purchasing online. I have seen two kahunas (or any other bat for that matter) differ in their swell position, buying stock photo based kahuna doesn't help choose if I wanted one versus the other. Same thing you mentioned with your GN where spine differed between two bats at same weight, so specific pics will help once choose if they want the one with higher spine or the other at same weight.

While this may not seem for everyone, I do feel there is a large market out there for buyers when provided with this info. Crowncricketer is doing extremely well and I believe, this is one great differentiation in their model, people might be drawn to it even without realizing the points I raised. Even for someone not picky with weight or bat pics, subconsciously, they would be more confidant to order a bat on their website after seeing the exact pics and weight details.