Wanted: Harsh contructive criticism

[lauryn49]

First OSC site. Learned a LOT!

 

There is no budget for thorough user testing so I figured getting some feedback from the forums might be helpful.

 

Like I said, I want harsh constructive criticism. No diplomacy. :)

 

http://www.inyourbesthealth.com/

 

Thanks,

Lauren

[iainshaw]

initial impression is a good looking store - sympathetic colours.

 

The combined image weight of title_logo.jpg and title_logo_bg.jpg - the two images that make up your header is over 100K. I'm viewing this with ISDN and it's a abit lumbering. Maybe you could do something smarter there - there's something rather jarring about the image repeat anyway. Particularly as a lot of works has gone into building a consistent style of images for the products themselves.

 

Like the layout of product_info.php. Works well

 

good luck with it. :lol:

[lauryn49]

Thanks!

 

I've decreased the size of both header images and now it's down to 28K. It's easy to forget about that when you're constantly at the page and have everything cached.

 

Thanks for pointing that out.

[iainshaw]

much better - and I wasn't looking at the cached version

[jodo]

I like how you have "view cart" and "checkout" in the basket.

[lauryn49]

:) I know you weren't. I just meant that since I am the one developing, everything loads from my cache so it tends to be easy to forget about load time.

 

The View Cart and Checkout, by default, aren't in a very visible place. Either is My Account by I am not sure what I want to do with that yet.

[dakatone]

Great site, love all the work you have put into customizing it. It really pays off, especially when you note how your customers navigate and then correspond to that when enhanced navigations.

 

What I did was moved the "checkout" and "view cart" as you did, and also moved the "My Account/Login" link as an actual button at the top of the header, with my other four buttons. Products remain easily navigatable through the left column and main page displayal, so I left the top for services, like company information, product information, account, etc.

 

Again, great site and even more so being your first shot at osCommerce!

 

Ruhl

[dakatone]

Also forgot to note:

 

On your new products listing, the Ylang Ylang and Palm aromatherapy votive's larger image is not responding, and the dreaded red "x" shows instead. Not really a site design or architectual concern, but it is nice to find these things sooner than later. :-)

 

The second note I have is the Fairy Line Website link points to a notice that the link has moved. Customers may get confused over this.

 

I really enjoy everything you have done to the architecture and design of osC. You really start noticing the small yet significant modifications you have made.

 

Ruhl

[♥MYC267]

Very nice! The site is quite slick but the header is what worries me... it's not quite matching to the rest.

 

Apart from that I like! Good luck.

[AXM]

Great job Lauren,

 

Not much suggestions over here. Well you might consider shrinking the breadcrumb line a little bit. Looks oversized for the text it contains.

 

Another one is Living Harvest logo is pretty wide and extends the right column width a little too much and makes the center look too squished on 800x600 graphic mode. Otherwise looks great at 1024x768 on mine.

 

Yeah with for 800x600 mode the description tries to squeeze in between the picture/price box and the right colum and doesn't look all that attractive. Any way you can do a little redesign on the picture/price box to fill the entire width of the center column and still look good like it is now??

 

Also another thing. I'm not sure if people in your industry actually know part numbers or not (doubt it), but why not hide them on the listings and product info pages? Atleast hide them in the product info page if they aren't that popular and still give the option to look them up in the listing??

 

Just a thought. Nice job once again.

[lauryn49]

Thanks for all the great feedback. I didn't get a notification e-mail when posts were made so I apologize for the late reply.

 

I fixed the Fairy Line link...good catch :-) Also the two products that were missing large images....fixed those as well. They had just recently been added and I was working on the getting the large image up so of course those two were the ones you looked at :-)

 

I'm not to crazy about the header either....client request. Although I must say that most people either love it or hate it.

 

The 800 x 600 resolution problem.....I think I know what you are talking about but I am so hesitant to go into those darn tables and try to get that column to expand across the screen....but I've added it to my "To Do" list anyway because I don't like how it looks either when it's crammed.

 

I installed the title and meta tags contrib.....thank goodness I found it because right after I installed it orders started coming in, yeah!

 

Again, thank you all for the great feedback!

[Jack_mcs]

Just a few points you should look at:

 

Some of your pages are too large to fit on a 800x600 screen.

 

Your page titles are not optimized for search engines. Every page starts with the same words.

 

Your copyright notice should read 2004, not 2003.

 

Jack

[musicalmark]

I think the Site is beautiful. We have done one of own (our first) recently and can learn from your effort.

 

The only part I don't like is the header area combined with the different colours of and style of the menu tabs. I love the way you have carried the header image through to the buttons though - so perhaps it is just dealing with the menu tabs - their style and colours. I am no graphic designer so am not sure what will work.

 

 

Great job!