Revamped site, now live

[Jeremy at oddly enough]

Hi, after much delay, I've finally moved my osc shop from the development stage to fully live. Still lots to do, but it's way better than the previous site. I've put in a forum and gallery as well. Haven't harmonized the login yet, but I have a good idea of what angle I'll take for that. I kept it pretty simple and straightforward for the user. I need to finish the site use guide, and I'm also thinking an FAQ with quick answers will also be beneficial.

 

 

www.oddlyenoughmosaics.com

 

 

Thanks in advance for your comments,

Jeremy

[radders]

Inital thoughts:

 

Nice header.

 

Rather bare main page.

[Jeremy at oddly enough]

Just noticed I neglected to use html tag to make it easier to go check out the site.

 

Oddly Enough Mosaics

 

The text definitely needs work, yes, and I also hope to add a subtle tile effect to the background for the header and column left. It also occurred to me today that I might make a special Christmas header, using red and green, maybe some snowflakes.

 

Jeremy

[AfterDark]

What the Rad man said.

 

Kinda lost interest after the first half second.

[DIVINEHEALTH]

Hi,

 

Would an explanation of what mosaics are be useful to people visiting?

 

Also the enlarged image would be nicer if it were larger?

 

kind regards

 

usman

[radders]

I thought 'missed opportunity'. Oh boy, if I had a site about mosaics I would put the most wonderful mosaic I could find on the front page!

[binare]

looks like a blog not a shop.

[miguel_os]

The homepage is not mosaic-related at all. It only has text on it.

Colors are nice.

Login, check out... has no SSL.

 

Good luck.

[Guest]

yeah.. the text is almost impossible to read, and the categories box (left side) should be a bit longer so the text doesn't double up and become even harder to read..

[Jeremy at oddly enough]

OK, site's been up for a while. I've done some tweaking, got a phpbb and gallery running, figured out how to pull random pics from the gallery onto the osc pages. I've tried to make the three main features as obvious as possible, our products, the bb and the gallery(hopefully relevant, dynamic info that will keep customers coming back often!)

 

I still need to do the drudge work of standardizing the product photos to a common size, probably 400 x 600 or so. I think I will also go to an automatic large product pic on product_info.php.

 

A little harder, will be the task of harmonizing the login for the site and the bb/gallery, though I do have the databases merged into one already. Does anyone have auto logon installed and running. I read some of the threads about it, and it seemed to be a bit problematic, but if it works, I'd like to do this!

 

Jeremy

 

www.oddlyenoughmosaics.com

[Guest]

Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures of your best mosaics on the homepage instead of so much text would keep people looking around (or atleast pics in main content area instead of the right - I was wanting to look at the pics, but my eyes kept being drawn to the text). I would see how much of your text you could put in info pages, so people who want to know more have easy access, but the many others can just browse by photos. Also, finding a way to differentiate between your boxes and main content might do you well, and make things more clear. I respect trying to get rid of the stock look, but some definition between the two areas might be helpful. Would losing the size in category list make it easier to keep them to a single line instead of doubling up? Something to think about.

I like the header, and that the colors you use keep things clean in appearance.

 

Good work so far!

 

NS

[Guest]

Your store scrolls sideways at 800 x 600, and remember that a lot of people are still using monitors at this resolution. The store almost fits at this resolution, but not quite so it won't be too difficult to narrow things down just a touch.

 

One other thing that I didn't like, I didn't like the blue borders around the thumbnails in the "Our Gallery" column on the homepage. It'd be a simple matter for you to change this to black or something less obtrusive than the blue, or to do away with the border entirely.

 

Otherwise it all looks pretty good to me!

[Jeremy at oddly enough]

Thanks for your suggestions! I think I've got the 800x600 thing fixed (I hadn't checked in a while! I almost always use the higher setting!) I haven't changed much else at this point, I've been busy with other things. The blue border comes from trying to limit the colour palette to three colours in the css, and it is using the colour for links. I could change it to the darker blue, or make it transparent, but I'd probably need to define a new class of hotlinks to separate it from the existing ones.

 

Originally I was going to go with a horizontal line, or maybe box of photos, in the main text area. I was having trouble working out how to get them to display horizontally on my test page, and it occurred to me that I had all that blank space in the right column anyways, so... . I do like them there, and they are on each page of the osc section that way, with a new set of pics each time a page is generated. Visitors do seem to spend more time in the store, and to visit more pages since I made the changes.

 

Jeremy