jrdaniels0 Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Hello all, This is my first OSC site so please let me know what you think. For the most part it is done but I want others to look at it and give me feedback before going live. All feedback appreciated. Thank You. American Croppers Jeff D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxtel Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Hello all, This is my first OSC site so please let me know what you think. For the most part it is done but I want others to look at it and give me feedback before going live. All feedback appreciated. Thank You. American Croppers Jeff D. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> suggest you get rid of the <br> tag at the end of your pages, it produces the white banner. I would not show "my account" link if not logged in. your "top" link goes out of site with no way to get back in and also causes the session to be lost. Treasurer MFC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 Thanks, I haven't redirected the "website" to "website/store" yet. That's why the "top" link doesn't work. Also, Thanks for noticing the white banner. I'll look into that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MysticBlues Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Hi, I don't usually comment on functionality etc because I am NOT an expert and have made my store by the seat of my panties so to speak lol But I will say this... I love the look, I love the theme... It really works... It's sharp, clean, and appropriate to what you sell. Exellent job!!!! Liz :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 Thank You !!! :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakatone Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 Jeff: You and your wife have a great business here. It fulfills the need of a very specific niche of an already extremely popular genre, scrapbooking. Plus, that is not mentioning how popular the Armed Forces and patriotism is. You are miles ahead already with simply that :) The website might appear to be too stock for many, but it works and looks great for your business. "Too stock" is not bad because your customers are probably not going to be seeing as many osCommerce sites as we do. I really like the American theme that also portrays a sense of scrapbooking. Very specific to your business. Here are my suggestions, not in order of importance: 1. Change your title to something a bit more search engine friendly. Remember that the title is not for your customers, the Description META tag is. The title should be constructed purely for search engine optimization. Try something like "American Choppers - American Patriotic Scrapbook Supplies Military Scrapbooking." I do not think that is too long, but if it is you can leave out the hyphen and the second American, thereby creating a title of your best keywords. The Description META tag should read nicely since this is what your customers will see on their search results. 2. Your site is a bit too large in total size. Your main problems are images. The header alone is the largest file and could use to be optimized. The "Support Our Troops" ribbon is also much larger than it is displayed at and commands 8307 bytes! Reduce it to the size you display it at, and optimize it. You could get it to around 2000 bytes or less without messing with its clarity. Your HTML file created by the PHP files is also extremely large (over 30K). Try looking at your PHP files and see if you cannot eliminate redundant HTML creations. All of your infoBox corners are the same, yet it is calling FOUR separate files of 806 bytes each. That is a waste, combine the calls to only one image and refine it to around 250-400 bytes. 3. Your armed forces images in the header are coded wrong. They each read something like "images/banners\navy.jpg" and should have the slashes corrected to read similar to "images/banners/navy.jpg." You are also missing a Table Row closing tage ("</tr>") for the same header area. I would use W3C's HTML validator to check your coding. It is easy to make simple mistakes and the validator has imeensely helped me. You can find it here. The easiest way to do this is to view your page's source and copy it to an editor (like 1st Page 2000 by evrsoft); look at what the validator outputs and find the eroor in your pasted source using the line numbers. This will assist you in correcting problems big time. It can be done, I and many other osC users have 100% validated HTML, XHTML and CSS. 4. If you are making the "Top" of your server point to the /store directory rather than having an entry point (i.e. an informational site with links embedded to your store) then simply place the shop at the top and rid yourself of the /store directory and thus also the "Products" tab in breadcrumb. 5. Get an "About Us" page into the Information infoBox! This is a dire need and will only help business by establishing you as a more reputable, more REAL business with REAL people behind it! 6. You have a Privacy Policy and it is suitable; however, if you ever want a BBBOnline or eTrust certification (or even enhanced trust by customers) go with a policy adhering to the standard layout. You can find tremendous help at constructing a valid policy at BBBOnline's website. 7. I would add link to your footer of the main navigation areas of your site. The typical "Home | Products | About Us | Conatact Us" type links. This will help with navigating your site. 8. Kill the generic welcoming message. You have a login infoBox and this simply makes it redundant. 9. I like your idea of separating products into key armed forces branches, but instead of simply doing it as a search for that particular branch, why not create categories for them each and then COPY the respective products for that branch's category to it? This way, you can create a customized header for each branch and include some information or even the official motto of that branch. It will also show up on your category box. If you do not want this, create a last category with a blank name. Then create subcategories under that category for each branch, but again leave their category display name blank. This will result in only an additional small spacer at the end of the categories and will not show even if you are presently in the branch's category. 10. I would seriously consider the countries you have available for ordering and shipping to. I have personally found that while doing business from within the US, it is far easier and safer to only do business with US-based addresses. Canada is quite easy as well, and the UK is an option, but your main business is going to reside in the US. 11. On the My Account page you still have stock osC images in the three tables. They are fine, but do not match your site. Perhaps you can find images a bit more pertaining to your business and site. 12. I would remove the "This product was added..." line on the product description pages. 13. Since you only provide one option for shipping, or at least for the particular products I was testing with, create a statement or an "if/else" statement to have it read something nicer than the stock "This is the only method..." statement. The above are really simply me going through your site and offering hopefully helpful suggestions to increase your sales and whatnot. In general, I think you have an excellent site and wish you two the very best of success with it. Ruhl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 WOW!!! Thanks for all the great Feedback and Suggestions. You spent a lot of time writing that up and I really appreciate it. Everything you mentioned makes sense and are things that I would not have thought about. The only bad thing is now i have more work to do on it. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuck Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 WOW!!! Thanks for all the great Feedback and Suggestions. You spent a lot of time writing that up and I really appreciate it. Everything you mentioned makes sense and are things that I would not have thought about. The only bad thing is now i have more work to do on it. :) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You will always have more work to do. I'm going live really soon because I'm forcing myself. There are still loads of contributions that I want to use but there has to come a point when you say thats enough lets go for it. I suspect that my site will slowly evolve into something unrecognisable from todays site over the next few years. Goodness knows what the next version of osC will bring us in terms of goodies. You have certainly found a niche market with your products, well done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 16, 2005 Author Share Posted February 16, 2005 YUCK, I was the same way. There are other contribs I want to install like the coupon/voucher but I'm afraid of messing everything up that's working already. I told myself that I am going to go Live in February so I have 2 weeks left. Dakatone, I changed the page title as you suggested but where do I change the META tag? To be honest I'm not really sure what the META tag is or how it works. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuck Posted February 16, 2005 Share Posted February 16, 2005 YUCK, I was the same way. There are other contribs I want to install like the coupon/voucher but I'm afraid of messing everything up that's working already. I told myself that I am going to go Live in February so I have 2 weeks left. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just take a full backup of everything including your database before making any changes. If it all goes wrong just restore the whole thing and you are back where you started :) I'm doing a backup right now, I'm abaout to install the metatag controller. Unless of course my dinner is ready before I get around to it :) *fingers crossed* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dakatone Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 JUst glad I could help a wee bit :) I backup all the time, and actually have gotten fanatical about it by placing recurring backups of the database and entire site on CD-RW's. This creates a reusable format that is durable and archivable. I also do alot of work with seasonal promotions with my products, so I also keep permanent CD-RW's of all my holiday images, copywrite etc. so that it does not clog of the computer and it is always easily accessible. Storing the original layered Photoshop .pdf files on CD-RW's makes it easy to recap say last year's Mother's Day marketing tactic, improve and change a bit, and TA-DA! It is fresh, new and better than before! Ruhl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obaluba Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 Hi, Thats a great looking site! Did you use a template to create that look? How did you manage to achieve that look? Were you able to customise and choose the exact colours you wanted? thanks, any help would be greatly appreciated! Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 18, 2005 Author Share Posted February 18, 2005 obaluba, Thanks for the compliments. I Didn't use a template. I customized everything manually. You can change all the colors by editing the stylesheet.css file. The best way to figure out what something does is change one thing at a time, then look at your website to see what's changed. I changed all the other little things by finding where the code was and editing it. I spend A LOT of time searching the forums trying to find answers if I get stumped. I had no prior PHP experience and am learning new things everyday. If you need help with something then just post it to the correct forum and you will get an answer. :thumbsup: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obaluba Posted February 18, 2005 Share Posted February 18, 2005 thanks for your quick response! Are there 'contributions' that can be used to lay the site out like you have done? thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrdaniels0 Posted February 18, 2005 Author Share Posted February 18, 2005 obaluba, The only "appearance" contribution I used was the Center Shop contribution. The only thing it does is allows you to specify the width of the shop, the outside background color, and of course center it. If you give me an example of what you would like to do I can tell you how to do it. Send it to me as a PM so we don't clog up this post. Everything else I edited manually by finding the correct code and changing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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