Become a Marco Specialties Search Pro
Tips and Tricks of Using our Website
Finding exactly what you need using website searches can, at times, be frustrating. This article is designed to help by offering some tips and tricks on how to navigate our website and find the best results possible. Naturally, we want to be sure that you’re getting the most relevant information for your particular search, and we want to do all that we can to make it easier.
So let’s introduce you to our website!
Here are some of the notable features of our site:
- You can Search by Game which is great for casual browsing. Our website does NOT list them in alphabetical order.
- You can Search by Category which is a great tool to narrow down broad searches and scrolling through our available tools, hardware, etc.
The best thing you can do if you’re looking for a specific game quickly is simply to type the game name into our search bar. As you can see above, it will either list Game Specific parts or the Game’s Parts List first.
In the below video, we’ll walk you through using the Related Items tab and the Product Compatibility tab.
These tabs hold useful information and many times offer specific parts related to the item listed (ie: proper screws, washers, rivets, or other Game Specific items).
The Product Compatibility tab lists the games that are currently known to be compatible with the product you’re viewing. This is extremely helpful when you’re interested in a certain component that can possibly fit a variety of machines.
This is also a useful tool to navigate our site quickly if you’re looking for a specific game. If you click on the game listed under this game specific part (MANDALORIAN (STERN) INSIDE ART BLADES) it will direct you to that games full part list.
Product Listing
Our product listings may contain reference numbers in the text, these numbers may list the assemblies that this particular part is in, equivalent part numbers from other manuals (Bally, Stern, Sega, Williams, WICO, Chicago Coin), or any substitutes or replacement part numbers if we have them.
Pinball is a DIY hobby and many of our part listings and compatibilities come from crowdsourcing, so don’t hesitate to let us know if we’ve omitted something.
As you can see in the above video, the full assembly (part #511-6971-00) is listed in the reference section of the fire button switch (part #180-5218-00) description. This helps you identify where this particular switch would fit in. With the Related Items Tab you can then reference the other parts of the assembly (ie: the bracket and the screws).
This is great when you’re only looking for the different components (ie: just the bracket, or just the switch) as opposed to the finished assembly.
The E-Mail Me When Available option works well if you see a particular item listed as out of stock. Our catalog is updated live when our receiving department takes in new inventory so sign up for notification to be alerted the second a part comes back in stock. This feature is a great tool if you’re tracking an item you really want!
Sometimes Less is More
On our site, being specific in your search sometimes eliminates the part you’re looking for and at worst makes it look like we don’t carry the part at all. Here at Marco we strive to carry information on as many pinball parts as possible so if you come across this road block it may be that too much information was placed into our search bar.
Going back to our fire button switch, notice that when the search becomes too specified, “Mandalorian fire button assembly”, our site gave us less than stellar results. But we know this switch is in our system, we just saw it! Even though the information entered is valid, our search was unable to find the corresponding item.
Removing the game and only searching for “fire button” brings up many results, including the switch we are searching for.
Once you utilize our product compatibility, it becomes much easier to verify if the part number you pulled up works with the game in question (in this example, Mandalorian).
If you’re getting results you’re not hoping for, don’t give up — perhaps create a more generic search that has the general identifier (ie: bracket, coil, etc.) and the specific (ie: switch, flipper, etc.).
Hopefully, these tricks and tips have helped you find what you’re looking for. As always, our dedicated team of pinball ninjas are available to take your questions, calls and assist in any way we can. So, if you’re still having trouble locating that hard to find part, just give us a call or email, and we’ll do our best to get your machine up and running again!