Market's New Website Goes Live

The revamped website for the Reading Terminal Market went live last week. While there are plenty of tweaks still needed and the overall organizational structure of the site isn't ideal, it's a far sight better than the previous iteration, which was not updated as merchants were added.

The most important improvement (beyond the fact that the merchant list is up to date) is that the site is mobile-friendly.

Another addition is the ability to search for a product and determine which vendors sell it. Though useful, this function is hardly perfect, since it depends upon each merchant keeping the market informed of its product line, and the market updating the database. For example, search for "chocolates" and you'll be told to try the Pennsylvania General Store and Wursthaus Schmitz, but not Sweet as Fudge or Chocolates by Mueller. But search "chocolate" and you won't get the first two although you'll get the latter two, as well as Famous 4th Street Cookie and Old City Coffee. Go figure.

Just like the old site, you can read the market's Mission Statement and Operating Policy Guidelines. But good luck finding them. The logical place would be under the "About the Market" menu heading, but that item is filled with directions and parking info along with a link to pages about the market's history. Instead, if you want to read the Mission Statement and OPG you have to click on "Contacts" where there are further links to those two items. Hardly logical or user friendly.