Hound101 Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Hi everyone, Some of you may have viewed this store a few months ago and now I have made some changes to try and seperate from the standard stock osc store! Please take a look and let me know what you think, Until Dec 04 I had Zero knowledge of php, osc, htm,l I aqquired a site template based on vedeo games. This is how the site looked when I aqquired it: Click Here This is how I the site looks now using only help from contributions and help from you guys on here and lots of trial and error!!Click Here Feedback again would be appreciated on the new look and I dont mind how harsh it is!! B) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasabisam Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 I have to say that I am impressed that you have come so far in such a short amount of time. Not knowing how to code at all in Dec 04 and being able to alter your site as much as you have since then is pretty impressive. I am curious to know what the process was like for you - was it a complete pain the ass or did you find it fairly easy to change things around and modify the layout and code? The main reason why I am asking is the fact that I am about to do a couple of online shopping carts myself, and while I know HTML pretty well I am not so versed in PHP. I want to make both sites unique and not look like the default osCommerce layout and template. Just want to know how easy or difficult you thought it was for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasabisam Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Oops. Accidentally posted twice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user001 Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Screenshots on the right looks good. Colors are nice. Didnt find any problems. Cheats zone didnt had any cheats tho :blink: VB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bad_lemming Posted February 24, 2005 Share Posted February 24, 2005 Catagory button images: -some of the words have dropshadows, some do not. -you may want to consider darkening the background as the letters seem to "blend" into the background. -The button "Puzzle" has obvious distortion from resizing (for me at least, in both FF and IE), the same problem seems to affect the other buttons to some degree as well. The info box header images are totally inconsistant with your site. The light blue and gold can be found nowhere else, and it looks like it should be part of something else, very distracting. If I were you I would give a thought to my overall color scheme and design details. these are all just my opinions, take it for what it's worth. Overall thought, not bad, just needs some fine honing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted February 25, 2005 Author Share Posted February 25, 2005 Bad Lemming: many thanks for your contructive critisism, I am glad you have pointed out the catagory buttons, these were the first ones i did, I am looking to improve these next time around, they will remain the same sort of design but will be alot crisper!! (Hopefully!) Info box headings I am happy with but agree the gold is not present anywhere else so I may lose that part. User001: Cheat zone will be populated soon, thanks. Wasabisam: Thankyou very much for your kind comments, when I first aqquired the site I had no idea how much work would have to go into changing things to move away from the standard layout. With no knowledge of osc, php, html what so ever I had loads to learn quickly, but its pretty straight forward. Of course its useful to have such a great forum here as loads can be learned from other people who are very very helpfull indeed. Quite a few contributions have to be instlled to get the most out of oscommerce and its alot of trial and error. At times its a complete pain in the ass and for my site there is still loads to be done. Thanks to all here who have commented so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarcS Posted February 25, 2005 Share Posted February 25, 2005 Hi 1. I like your images a lot. Nice and clear and crisp. That is really important to help sell a product. 2. I think your categories are far to bold. When I look at a page, my eyes keep getting pulled to the categories images, and the focus should be the products. I would tone them down a bit. 3. Change the copyright notice to your own. Keep the powered by notice intact. 4. Personally I think your payment process description is a bit over explained for your target audiance. Most people who buy computer games know how to purchase a product on the internet. :P 5. I think the cross sellers should be on one line. If you look at a product. Most of the page is taken up by "You may also be interested in....." Guests are more interested in the product they have selected. The cross sellers should be a bit more of a footnote. 6. Once again. Your image quality is excellent. Mark http://82.112.102.87/catalog/ (site still in progress) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted February 27, 2005 Author Share Posted February 27, 2005 Marcs: Thanks for your comments, I have changed the catagories since you looked but thay may still be too bold, but at the mo I am happy with them, cross sellers is a valid point, the contribution I installed just handles it this way, I would prefer if the products were just listed without pictures, I will look into this. Where can i ammend the copyright notice file?? Thanks again for your comments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted February 27, 2005 Share Posted February 27, 2005 The overall impression is very good. Now I'm going to pick it to pieces. So while I'm being rude please remember that I like it a lot. <_< It still needs a few tweaks to bring it all together. Load TIme: Very slow. I'm not sure gamers would have the patience. Is it your server perhaps coz the images didn't seem that large? Fonts: Rather blocky and some of the buttons the fonts appear stretched. There seems to be font variations than my eyes are expecting. Background colour. Try a dark grey instead of the black.It is too severe - too much contrast and creates a halo effect around the site. Tell a friend has a yellow and grey bar to thr right of it as do some other information boxes. Is that intentional? The blue and white looks great though. You are probably half way through changing the boxes to the new look. The box to enter the tell-a-friend email address looks too small. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted February 27, 2005 Author Share Posted February 27, 2005 Radders: You have been viewing the site while I have been making changes :lol: . I have now finished the info boxes and all now should be back to normal apart from "tell a friend" which I am having trouble with becuase the button is making it stretch out!! Have put a gray background in, not sure what I really think though!! Which fonts exactly look blocky? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabazon Posted March 1, 2005 Share Posted March 1, 2005 I liked the banner in you first site better. The second site seemed like it had a busy look to it. Interesting colors, I liked them and I didnt like them. 11th week, how are sales going? Hi everyone, Some of you may have viewed this store a few months ago and now I have made some changes to try and seperate from the standard stock osc store! Please take a look and let me know what you think, Until Dec 04 I had Zero knowledge of php, osc, htm,l I aqquired a site template based on vedeo games. This is how the site looked when I aqquired it: Click Here This is how I the site looks now using only help from contributions and help from you guys on here and lots of trial and error!!Click Here Feedback again would be appreciated on the new look and I dont mind how harsh it is!! B) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cabazon Posted March 1, 2005 Share Posted March 1, 2005 opps, forgot to mention the slow loading time. I am on High Speed too. Hi everyone, Some of you may have viewed this store a few months ago and now I have made some changes to try and seperate from the standard stock osc store! Please take a look and let me know what you think, Until Dec 04 I had Zero knowledge of php, osc, htm,l I aqquired a site template based on vedeo games. This is how the site looked when I aqquired it: Click Here This is how I the site looks now using only help from contributions and help from you guys on here and lots of trial and error!!Click Here Feedback again would be appreciated on the new look and I dont mind how harsh it is!! B) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted March 7, 2005 Author Share Posted March 7, 2005 opps, forgot to mention the slow loading time. I am on High Speed too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hi cabazon, Took a while to get back to you, (sorry!) thanks for your comments, I have starterd using an image optimizer program so loading times should be slighltly better. (Even though I have some concerns about the hosts server!!) Sales, no sales at all at the mo, trying to SEO the site to appear higher in google etc, video games are very competitive to market. I have been live for 12 weeks now but the unique visitors are non existant... thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 7, 2005 Share Posted March 7, 2005 Looks very nice but there are some small things I noticed: 'Cart Contentshyhyh' - is this intended? I think that the font used for your categories still a bit heavy for the button size. Suggest you have a look at 'for New Cheap playstation 2 Games.' Capitalisation is a bit off and where it splits over 2 lnes isn't good. Not sure if it's a problem or deliberate - I'm seeing little purple squares on your blue heading bars. Some of the pages take a very long time to load - probably because your images are largish bmp files, change them to jpgs and save lots of loading time and server space! Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted March 7, 2005 Share Posted March 7, 2005 Here are some things to be working on. The font problem is improved. Your search box searches the internet by default rather than your site. There are purple squares in the corners of your info boxes. There are too many buttons squashed up together. The images take a long time to load still. (The old site loaded instantly). The text in the login box could do with some space between it and the edges of the box. What means 'Cart Contentshyhyh' in your header? Wot no SSL? I checked the price of one of your specials, it was much cheaper elsewhere.Just one example though (Futurama). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted March 7, 2005 Author Share Posted March 7, 2005 Some excellent comments here: OK, first off, have lost the "cart contentshyhyh", (not sure what happend there!!) Have changed the Cheap playstation 2 Games to lower case. I changed the boxes to blue (in stylesheet) becuase they were purple but seems to still have purple corners which I cant get rid of. Loading time is an on going issue, sometimes its OK and at other times of the day its real slow. Maybe its the images but I did not think that they were that large, they should all be jpg, I dont think I have any BMP files. I wonder if its the server the site is hosted on?? Will continue to look into the catagory buttons!! SSL?? I am new to this and am unsure how to go about it. Are all my pages supposed to be SSL or just the pages where customers would enter there details when creating an account?? Will also take a look at the login box spacing. I actually like the buttons I dont think they look sqaushed, however what would you suggest here!! Thanks again for your comments I really appreciate them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
radders Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 OK, forget about the buttons - it was just that there were too many of them for my taste (and of course they slow the site down). I was buying a PS2 game yesterday so tried your site first but got is faster, cheaper and more securely elsewhere (hopefully). You need to thing what is your unique selling point. ie why I should come to you instead of one of the several household names that sell them. SSL - try looking up starter ssl. You can get one for around ?50 but your host will beed to install it for you. Maybe sort out the hosting first :-) Just the cutomer details pages should be SSL. It didn't seem to be the image size. It could have been the number of images on the page but you sit and watch them coming up individually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted March 8, 2005 Author Share Posted March 8, 2005 OK, forget about the buttons - it was just that there were too many of them for my taste (and of course they slow the site down). I was buying a PS2 game yesterday so tried your site first but got is faster, cheaper and more securely elsewhere (hopefully). You need to thing what is your unique selling point. ie why I should come to you instead of one of the several household names that sell them. SSL - try looking up starter ssl. You can get one for around ?50 but your host will beed to install it for you. Maybe sort out the hosting first :-) Just the cutomer details pages should be SSL. It didn't seem to be the image size. It could have been the number of images on the page but you sit and watch them coming up individually. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Radders: Thanks for your comments regarding SSL, I will check it out. I have returned the category buttons back to their original format (Text Links) to check out the loading speed and I think its improved but need feedback to confirm this. Shame you got it faster, cheaper, more securely elsewhere, thats business for you!! As this site is still quite new its a long way of from competing against the big guns, will have to come up with some good ideas to encourage people to shop here. Range and price are obviously important factors!! (as well as security) Once again your comments are appreciated. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steff Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 I would have worked more with layout/design. Try mixing matching colors more, instead of using the same one all over. As mentioned, you could need an image contribution. Otherwise, good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
babylea Posted March 8, 2005 Share Posted March 8, 2005 I have to say great job considering you knew nothing at all about coding and have only been working on this since dec 04 however I do prefer the header on the first example you posted. It has more 'pulling power' if you like, I saw that header and I knew what the site was about and wanted to stay and look around, the 2nd example didn't have that effect on me. With regards to your infobox corners they are images and not part of the stylesheet, you can either edit these our or edit the images (images/infobox/) Personally for the nature of the site, I would, as someone else suggested think of another colour scheme. Something with a real dark background with a few accents of the colours from the PS2 buttons would work well, or silver and blue accents to tie in with the blue buttons you are using and the silver graphics.... the blue you have on your infoboxes and borders don't match the tone of your blue buttons, if you stick with those i would get the hex code from those buttons and use them instead of the darker blue you have now as it doesn't blend well. i think the animated ps2 pic you have on your page headings would work well as part of the header with a logo filling the rest of the space but thats just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mighty Mike Posted March 9, 2005 Share Posted March 9, 2005 Lee I like the header image you have at the top now, far better than the last one. Change the breadcrumb title, remove the "top" from it Developers should be Publishers, and the images are all out of proportion, use photoshop to resize them. If this is a LIVE shop i would not mess around with it making changes, make a test site and use that. If i was a customer and got this "Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ELSE, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /home/puregame/public_html/catalog/includes/classes/boxes.php on line 108" i would probably never return again. Are you only selling PS2 games? You need to put alt tags on your images on the right hand side of the main page. You have no images for sub cats in "Budget Zone" Some of the images have borders while others dont. Remove the "This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 07 December, 2004." from product info Where are you getting your images from? I hope you are not ripping them from other websites. I like the free advertising you are doing for Gamespot. I would consider removing the google search function, do you really want customers searching google for products? Do you really accept euros & dollars? Remove the stock images from privacy, contact us, terms etc... "If you would like to link to puregamerz.co.uk using a graphical image, please feel free to use any of the images below" hmm i dont think i would put one of those images on my site. get some better ones. Remove the date at the bottom. OMG you dont have GT4! last but not least, where do you get your stock from? Cheers Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hound101 Posted March 9, 2005 Author Share Posted March 9, 2005 Hey mike, thanks for your comments. As I have just been changing the header image, I assume you are refering to the picture one (PS2 Handset on far right). I too prefer this image and will keep it. Will change to "Publishers" Only selling PS2 Games. Also, there is alt tags on the images on the far right images, not sure why your not seeing these. Need to find some good images for sub cats!! Borders on images-- Have recently started to change how I do the images so they do differ. Most of my images come from the supplier of my games so its legit, sometimes others such as screen shots come from public domains which is also legit. If not then I would remove them quick.. Google - good point. Euros & Dollars, another good point.... :D GT4 - Not yet im affraid!! Where do I get my stock from? Thats telling... :P Thanks for your other comments that I will look into. Also thanks to others for there comments regarding the design and layout. I will have a play around with this. Thanks. (Anymore!!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 9, 2005 Share Posted March 9, 2005 How did you make the section for your recommendations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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