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Could you please provide input on my website?


secretuser

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My website is My Webpage

 

I have been using OsCommerce since July of last year. I don't know PhP or MySQL so I have been somewhat limited. I use OsCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2.

 

I have read these forums and have made a number of changes based on critiques of other websites. However, I have run out of ideas on how to improve the website and make it look more professional.

 

I have installed about 30 or so contributions including the new PayPal module, enhanced login, categories on front page, additional images, a FAQ module, scrolling best sellers, and a bunch of others that benefit me in the admin but are not seen by people.

 

I have also modified the code to remove most of the cheesy stock images, I have modified the customer sign in so that it is logical and doesn't ask for information that is too personal, I finally changed the color schemes today, I removed all references to newsletters from the coding (people hate spam), and I did other changes.

 

Hopefully, you can provide me with some guidance where to go from here.

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It opens so slow for me I almost didnt bother waiting - I'm on 5mb cable.

 

Left info box corners - please drop them.

 

Scrolling bestsellers - part of the slow load time - I'd personally loose it.

 

Buttons dont work for me either - too big and they dont fit somehow.

 

The simple look is good but there is nothing inspiring about the site - I cant say i'd buy from you.

 

HTH.

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It opens so slow for me I almost didnt bother waiting - I'm on 5mb cable.

 

Left info box corners - please drop them.

 

Scrolling bestsellers - part of the slow load time - I'd personally loose it.

 

Buttons dont work for me either - too big and they dont fit somehow.

 

The simple look is good but there is nothing inspiring about the site - I cant say i'd buy from you.

 

HTH.

 

1) I noticed my site operating very slowly on my end. I pinged it and it appears to time out on my end but I don't have these problems with any other site. I complained to my webhosting company who informed me my site is operating normally and that the problem is on my side. Is anyone else noticing real slow loads on my website.

 

2) I thought the darker blue left corner boxes might add some nice contrast. I guess it can also be visually distracting and I have removed them.

 

3) I have replaced all of the buttons with a new set. The old set were the XP button set contribution which left a visually unpleasant white gap between the button and the blue background. This new set has all square corners so that there are no more gaps between the buttons and the background. In addition, the buttons are smaller.

 

4) I tried the regular bestseller and my site still loaded slowly on my end so I put back the scrolling bestseller unless there is a known problem with this.

 

5) My site is monochromatic and perhaps uninspiring. I am not sure what I can do to make it inspiring as I am not a web designer or an artist. I could put a backgroup image of washed out watches, but that might make the site look busy.

 

Any further comments would be appreciated, especially on the speed the site is loading.

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I would change the background of your product pages to white so the images don't appear in a big white block.

The images themselves also appear "washed out". Were you provided with them?

 

Site was a bit slow, especially the index page which took a good 4 or 5 seconds to appear - not really acceptable.

 

Change the background color (outside the main store) from white to make it "pop out" a bit more.

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I would change the background of your product pages to white so the images don't appear in a big white block.

The images themselves also appear "washed out". Were you provided with them?

 

Site was a bit slow, especially the index page which took a good 4 or 5 seconds to appear - not really acceptable.

 

Change the background color (outside the main store) from white to make it "pop out" a bit more.

 

1A) I haved changed the background images of my product pages to pure white code FFFFFF.

 

1B) I had to take all the images myself. Although I use a light cube with a perfect white light, the cameras initial pictures show the white velvet material the watches sit on. Without modifications, these photos would appear on my website as light dirty gray squares.

 

I have been having too much trouble filling in the images in white because my software has difficulty determining where the watch starts and the shadows end. Thus, I brighten the images to the point that the white velvet dissappears. On some images this becomes too washed in which case I manually fill in the white to avoid having an excess washed watch image.

 

On the main page, I have the photos in the categories and my site looked like a circus with all the different color dials. So I deleted the colors to have uniformity. But then some category images were real dark compared to others, so I washed the category images on the dark ones to make them uniform with the light ones.

 

Any suggestions on how to take better photos would be appreciated. I have all the original unaltered digital negatives.

 

2) My site is slow to me and my host says it isn't and it is on my side. Without more feedback, I can't confirm this. My friend had no problem on her office computer. In the end, I might need to seek out a new web host.

 

3) I am not sure how to add a background to the outside of the store without it going inside my store. I use the center shop contribution but there is another one that puts a border around my entire store and I think that one might stop the background from entering into my store, but I am not sure. Perhaps I might use a darker blue textured background outside my store. I will look into this tonight.

 

4) After doing more research, it appears that it would be to my advantage to add the contribution "purchase without account". I have avoided it because of the continual changes in that contribution and it appeared to buggy. It now appears to have been finished with the bugs worked out in Nov. of last year, so I will probably try this contribution out.

 

Thanks.

 

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

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I love the site. Its the one of the best Ive seen for a while. Looking at the watches and products also. Damm good job on that one 9/10 :D

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I love the site. Its the one of the best Ive seen for a while. Looking at the watches and products also. Damm good job on that one 9/10 :D

 

LOL..I am sorry..i just had too replay to this one....

 

This shop is basically stock look with some few extra boxes, a center contrib and a unprofessional logo.....

 

So if you have not seen anything better, you have not seen much.....

 

 

On the positive side....

 

The product pictures are mostly nice, and there is a size difference between listing pictures and product pictures, last but not least descriptive product text.

 

 

For me personaly, i would never buy at this site...it does not give me the required sense of seriousness which i feel is esential to leave payment details at any site.....

 

 

On the other hand, if this site offered delivery with a payable check included in the pack, so i could pay it after i already recived the merchandise...i would order..lol

 

 

Final conclusion. greate potential but need to do some polishing of details....

 

:lol:

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Thank you for your feedback.

 

This shop is basically stock look with some few extra boxes, a center contrib and a unprofessional logo.....

 

I thought the original logo was OK. However, I can see that it did look unprofessional as there really was no logo per se, just my company name in reflective writing.

 

So I have made some major changes to my logo.

 

1) I made a logo out of my company's initials and put that to the left in my header.

2) I added my company name without the "LLC" in plain professional writing and put that to the right of my new logo

3) I added the tag line from my business cards and did it in white so it stands out as it is smaller than my company name

4) I tried to make 1) - 3) above in an attractive color scheme

 

For me personaly, i would never buy at this site...it does not give me the required sense of seriousness which i feel is esential to leave payment details at any site.....

 

OK, was it the unprofessional logo or something else that made you feel that way?

 

On the other hand, if this site offered delivery with a payable check included in the pack, so i could pay it after i already recived the merchandise...i would order..lol

Final conclusion. greate potential but need to do some polishing of details....

 

What is a payable check, is that like COD?

 

Any other comments would be greatly appreciated as I am making every effort to incorporate the good suggestions onto my site.

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OK, I hated the awful very light blue course background on the main page. Despite what the color wheel program told me, I think it looked hideous and didn't work and made my site look less than professional.

 

I have therefore dropped the very light blue, and created a new background which is a darker blue with a more professional texture and I redid the background on the sides of my site to make it a gorgeous royal blue texture that I think works better with the new logo I created.

 

I will still look into creating purchase without an account.

 

Let me know what you think.

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Its getting better!!!!

 

 

One small suggestion, make your header slightly "higher" atleast 90px , try a few different heights and see how you like it....

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When you say make the header higher, I think you mean to increase the size of it. I had it at 800x75 when you looked at the site. I thought that took enough real estate given the header doesn't do anything other than look nice.

 

However, in looking at other OSCommerce sites, I see there is a trend to big headers. I have increased the size to 800x100. On an 800X600 screen, the header now occupies about 17% of the screen. I hope that isn't too big.

 

The original file header is 2252x371. So an undistorted header (not squished) would be 800x134. I think the distortion is not too bad at 800x100. Unless given a good reason, I am reluctant to increase it further.

 

One advantage to increasing the height from 75 to 100 is that now my tag line tooks pretty crisp and clear.

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

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At 800x600 resolution, I have to scroll horizontally to view your site. You might want to fix that by reducing the width of your header image to around 770 or so.

 

I don't mind the blue background color you use on your left/right columns and category boxes, but I don't think they go all that well with the dark green-ish header/logo color.

 

I have to say that I'm not too fond of your logo either. (Sorry...) :(

 

Have you considered how it will look in print format? If you intend to put your logo on your invoice and other print material, it will not fair too well with the gradient spotlight behind the initials.

 

Go study the logos of some big name companies: IBM, Apple, Chanel, Pontiac, etc. See how simple the lines are in the fonts that they use? The jaggy, hand-written kind of look that are in your company initials look sloppy and amateurish.

 

Your shipping section says you ship only to the US, but on your front page you give a toll-free number for US/Canada as well as a non-toll-free number for international customers. Why?

 

Your product images and descriptions look good, but I'd suggest making the text in the descriptions in non-bold text. It's almost like an 'eye attack,' since bolded text is meant only to provide emphasis to key areas.

 

Ditch the 'pen in hand' reviews icon that comes stock with osC. It really doesn't go with your site.

 

Overall, I think you've made a good start on customizing the site and making it your own. A few little things to fix and you'll be good to go.

 

HTH,

 

Terry

Terry Kluytmans

 

Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like:

 

Add order total to checkout_shipment

Add order total to checkout_payment

Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.)

Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module

Better Product Review Flow

 

* If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. *

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Thanks for your comments.

 

At 800x600 resolution, I have to scroll horizontally to view your site. You might want to fix that by reducing the width of your header image to around 770 or so.

 

Yup, it took me some time to figure it out, but the page width is best set at 779. As the page has a banner around it that is 2 cell thick, I had to adjust the image to 775 by 100. I noticed that Netscape gives the most horizontal web space so that some of the royal blue shows up in 800x600. Mozilla gives less horizontal web space so a little of the royal blue shows up. Internet Explorer gives the least, and my site fits perfectly for that browser, no more little left and right scrolling (I hope).

 

I don't mind the blue background color you use on your left/right columns and category boxes, but I don't think they go all that well with the dark green-ish header/logo color.

 

I never really noticed this being a clash, but once I changed just the header category from the old color which had greenish tint in it to the newer color, I can see the improvement. I still would like to stick with darker colors though for the header and footers, but that green will be out. My logo is still in that green and I will need to change it tomorrow.

 

I have to say that I'm not too fond of your logo either. (Sorry...) :(

 

Have you considered how it will look in print format? If you intend to put your logo on your invoice and other print material, it will not fair too well with the gradient spotlight behind the initials.

 

Go study the logos of some big name companies: IBM, Apple, Chanel, Pontiac, etc. See how simple the lines are in the fonts that they use? The jaggy, hand-written kind of look that are in your company initials look sloppy and amateurish.

 

I thought it looked pretty cool, but yes, corporate logos are very plain. I can see your point regarding this showing up on the letterhead, especially since I use a B/W laser printer. I will try something different tomorrow.

 

Your shipping section says you ship only to the US, but on your front page you give a toll-free number for US/Canada as well as a non-toll-free number for international customers. Why?

 

I sometimes sell on eBay and other auction sites in which I sell internationally. I feel more comfortable selling internationally when I can see a persons feedback whereas with my site, I have zero information and it is hard to research this on a case by case basis. I generally send out a standard form with my products which includes my website to promote it. If a foreign eBay customer goes there, I want them to have a number they can reach me at.

 

Also, I have removed all countries from the OSCommerce database except for the United States. I have a comment in my create account about changing the country first, then the state. I no longer need this and I will take that out.

 

Your product images and descriptions look good, but I'd suggest making the text in the descriptions in non-bold text. It's almost like an 'eye attack,' since bolded text is meant only to provide emphasis to key areas.

 

Yup, that was also resulting from eBay mentality. All bold text has been changed to normal in my ad listings.

 

Ditch the 'pen in hand' reviews icon that comes stock with osC. It really doesn't go with your site.

 

The only one I see is that one is in the review box itself. I have gone into the coding and removed it.

 

I have two other stock images I use which I think is OK and that is the 3 stacked boxes in my accont information and the file with the book in my account information. You will not see these as this is only when the customer checks on their account information.

 

Overall, I think you've made a good start on customizing the site and making it your own. A few little things to fix and you'll be good to go.

 

I hope so. The sales on my site have been terrible, I mean really bad and this is in spite of receiving a good volume of traffic for people that are actually looking for the precise stuff I am selling.

 

I am not sure why but my first guess is that my site has been a total piece of trash that has been detering virtually all customers. Thus my posts here.

 

Another question:

 

When you make negative disclaimers on your products at the bottom of your product description, how do you recommend I do this. Right now it is in the same font and size as the regular description. I suppose I could use smaller text but that might be viewed as trying to hide or deceive something.

 

I will remove all negative disclaimers from my category listings and put in some positive information about the watches in those categories. I don't really see the need for more negative disclaimers there as it would be redundant as the relevant product listings have the negative disclaimers.

 

Thanks.

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I looked around for a new logo. I went to various logo design sites looking for existing logos and couldn't find anything decent. Many focus on some form of swoosh or orbs.

 

In any case, I noticed many companies simply use their initials like I did, not not in that cartoonish style I used.

 

I redid the heading in the new colors and changed the logo initials to something more professional.

 

Considering where I started 5 days ago, I think everyones suggestions have improved my site tremendously and I thank each and every one of you for the great suggestions.

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Are you dead-set on keeping the initials in your logo? I think you'd have more logo design possibilities open to you if you ditched the initials and focused on the actual store name with your tag line under it.

 

The colors definitely look better.

 

Terry

Terry Kluytmans

 

Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like:

 

Add order total to checkout_shipment

Add order total to checkout_payment

Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.)

Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module

Better Product Review Flow

 

* If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. *

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