I need people to give their honest review on my site!!

[Guest]

I need for people to do a total review of my website. I need to know anything that needs to be corrected!!

 

Thanks a lot guys!!

Billy

[♥Vger]

Well, you probably need a new hosting company - because I get a 'Cannot find server' error when I try to follow that link - unless the link is wrong.

 

Vger

[♥peterpil19]

Hi, I love the logo, I couldn't get over it! It really SHOUTS the store title out. I like it!

 

Anyway, you notice how your black info box headings have white spaces on some of the corners? You ar going to have to open up classes/boxes.php and replace EVERY image (except images which the words "arrow" in them!!!!) with "pixel_trans.gif". This will get rid of those white corners.

 

Next, I don't think black really suites your infobox headings, but that's your choice...

 

One last thing, your images are pretty large (kilobytes not cm's), which means that dialup users are going to suffer and your site is going to eat up a lot of bandwith. Try using a thumbailer. I recommend the the On the Fly Autothumbnailer, but you can only use it if you have a GD library. Ask your hosting provider if you don't know how to check this.

 

Have fun!

 

--Peter

[Flyer5]

I need for people to do a total review of my website. I need to know anything that needs to be corrected!!

 

Thanks a lot guys!!

Billy

 

 

Are you serious?

 

this must have took under an hour, whilst there is nothing wrong with using a stock osc, you have made it look awful.

There are spelling and grammar mistakes, your shipping , privacy and conditions of use are worthless.

 

 

I doubt you will have much success with this, maybe take a look in the live store section and see what others are doing.

[♥peterpil19]

Hi, don't be offended by previous post. Some people take criticism too far to the point of bullying. I think the previous post was a little rude. Not everyone is an expert web designer and nor should everyone be expected to be.

 

Make sure that you do check over your grammar and spelling though because it was a valid point; spelling mistakes and the like can easily turn a customer away.

 

Good luck with your site! Make sure you keep working at it!

 

--Peter

[sarafina]

I think the categories box looks messy. Perhaps consider taking out the number of items or the arrows or something. It looks scattered.

 

I hate the logo. It looks really cheap.

 

I don't like the images at the top right corner. They look like stock oscommerce images. Also, its hard to see your product images. The boxes are small and I can hardly tell what i'm lookingat.

[Flyer5]

I need for people to do a total review of my website. I need to know anything that needs to be corrected!!

 

Thanks a lot guys!!

Billy

 

Tates, I appear to have upset you with my 2 line review, I won't apologise (as you asked me not to in your PM) but I have taken 5 mins to look at your site again.

 

1. The logo: This does little if anything to enhance the catalog. It seems amatuerish and takes up an awfull lot of the screen area. Also, is this logo centered? It doesn't look it on my screen.(In firefox)

 

2. the 3 icons in the header look out of place, maybe they are causing an illusion that makes the big logo look off center?

 

3.The corner on your category box has the wrong coloured background.

 

4. Information Box:

4.1 "Shipping will be done the Mon-Fri."

Grammar is incorrect

"Items ordered after 2:00 PM EST will be shipped the following bussiness day."

business is spelt incorrectly

"Returns for defect of an item will be dealt with by the respective company."

Grammar is loose and doesn't make sense

"Returns for a no longer wanted item will cost the shipping amount and a 10 dollar re-stocking fee."

Badly worded

SUMMARY;

According to your shipping policy, as it's interpreted, if I have a faulty product it will be dealt with by the manufacturer, how do I do that? Do you supply me with details for the service department of the manufacturer? Also, when I have had a product for say 15 months, and I am tired of it, i can send it back to you, pay $10 dollars and whatever my original shipping fee was and then get a refund. Finally, some of what you state belongs in your trading terms and conditions, and not in a shipping guide.

 

4.2 Privacy Notice:

"No E-Mails will be sold or given away."

That reads just like a random statement

"No Credit Card Information is stored"

So does that.

 

SUMMARY: The privacy policy may as well not exist, there is nothing of any substance in it that would inspire customer confidence.

 

4.3 Conditions of Use

"No photos or descriptions are to be used from this site without the expressed written consent of Choice Auto Enhancements."

 

SUMMARY: Not a lot said here either really, considering the images are supplied by the manufacturer or dropship company, I think you would be hard pushed to enforce these conditions.

 

4.4 Contact Us

 

SUMMARY: You have not provided your physical address. This should stop (at a guess) 99% of people from placing an order. There is no accountability on your part for your end of the deal. A quick search shows the domain registered by godaddy but thats all.

 

5. A lot of pages are corrupt. (In terms of the layout.) For example have a look at this product Cobra GPSM3000 Mobile GPS and you will see the user now has to scroll horizontally, and if you look at this one Magellan RoadMate 300 GPS you will see the boxes on the right side have doubled in size, and the product text flows over the image. these are normally caused by copying and pasting the text into the products when entering them into the catalogue, and copying in odd formatting. If you imported the product descriptions from Excel or something it may be that the formatting was imported. Either way, errors like this make the catalogue look unprofessional.

 

6. It's good to see you will trade in Euro as well as dollars.

 

7. I would remove the date and request count from the footer, they are not needed.

 

8. Registration:

I should not need to supply my D.O.B

I can register in the UK, so shouldn't I be able to select UK Pounds as my currency?

 

9. Your category images look like blurred text, would re-do them.

 

10. Payment:

i would never pay using paypal, but that is my personal choice based on personal experience.

 

 

If you are serious about making a go of your online venture then you really must take a proper look at what your competitors are doing. Heres an example http://www.extremeautoaccessories.co.uk/ although I'm sure a search of google would bring many more to look at. Have a look at thier terms and conditions, privacy notices and shipping details, and try to incorporate thier ideas into your site.

you need to build customer confidence and present a professional image in order to be successful in retail. (or sell drugs where it maybe doesn't matter ;)

 

Good luck, and i wont respond to your private message to me, I am short of time.

 

F5

 

Hi, don't be offended by previous post. Some people take criticism too far to the point of bullying. I think the previous post was a little rude. Not everyone is an expert web designer and nor should everyone be expected to be.

 

Make sure that you do check over your grammar and spelling though because it was a valid point; spelling mistakes and the like can easily turn a customer away.

 

Good luck with your site! Make sure you keep working at it!

 

--Peter

 

Hello.

I may have been off hand but I'm not a bully. I am a helpful person :) honest!

 

incidentally Peter, i like your site. The header looks great and the nav works well. i spent a while looking at nice images of interesting products that clearly have a niche market.

i'd guess you are doing well with it.

 

regards

f5

[Guest]

First of all, thanks for the more efficient review of my website Gav. I just fixed the corner of the box being white and also the images being out of proportion. I was just getting ready to ask, "What should I put in my notices", but now I think I can fix them on my own. I'm so glad you did not take my pm so harshly and decided to do a better review (I knew you were a kind hearted person). Thanks again for the help guys and if there are any other suggestions PLEASE post them.

 

Thanks again guys!!!!

[julianpuje]

Love the feedback, this is a really friendly atmosphere.. lol

 

Well the truth is, you are spending too much time adding stock to a very stock osCom site. Spend more time on it and you might have a site worthy of a review. Flyer5 was right first time around.

But as this is a really nice place going off all the apologies and nice stuff flying about heres some of my input.

Your images are OK, but too big (ie, as i 20000k) use an image contribution.

Get rid of the category counts they slow the site down.

Add Ultimate SEO url's or one of the others

Cache contri to speed the site up.

Header tags

Maybe use centre shop with css (this has more scope to use images etc than the others)

The black box headings don't go with anything, change of colour would be wise, or even use an image instead to add some depth.

The logo is massive!!!!!!!!! nice image but far too big.

Images with a white background don't look right on a grey page background. I would stick with a white page background so the images fit better.

Not really ready for a review, more like info on what you need to be doing.

Have a look around the other sites on here to get some ideas, and on what others are saying about theirs. It will definitely help. You offer Euros and GBP as price options, nothing anywhere actually says you ship to these areas! if you do, chances are that 99.9% of customers in the UK will NOT pay by Paypal. It's widely used in the US but generally in the UK only by people who had to register to buy something off e-bay.

OH and your corners box images are missing.

I'm definitely no expert but you have a lot of work to do. I've submitted sites in the past that have been slated, but thats what you submit them for. You think it's OK, then wallop!! it turns out its crap.

 

HTH

 

Julian

[♥peterpil19]

Hello.

I may have been off hand but I'm not a bully. I am a helpful person :) honest!

 

incidentally Peter, i like your site. The header looks great and the nav works well. i spent a while looking at nice images of interesting products that clearly have a niche market.

i'd guess you are doing well with it.

 

regards

f5

 

Hey Flyer5, I didn't mean to try and accuse anyone of being a bully, I just didn't want Tates to be turned off by some heavy criticsm and stop working on his site...

 

Thanks for your kind words about my site. Feel free to make any critisms about it in my own thread. I can take criticism so no need to hold back!

 

 

 

Kind Regards,

 

Peter

[moonlitsun]

Here you go, in no particular order:

 

PROS:

Great product focus!

Good Category Name Strategy

Nice use of custom osC nav buttons

Effectively integrates X-Reference Selling Tool

Color Contract is clean, easy to read

 

CONS/OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT:

Site seems too "out of box" - ie too similar to default osC installations

Not enough customized layout/coloring

Try experimenting with stylesheet.css to build a flowing color theme

Infoboxes tell the world you havent given site a unique graphical theme

More Discernable/less complicated logo (remember: KISS method!)

 

Keep it up! ;)

[custodian]

For you privacy and conditions pages.. try this

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,396

 

I use it on my site, though I'm doing my own S&H page, or else I'd give that to you as well

 

 

Tables should be at a fixed size so that the layout looks exactly the same regardless of monitor size, resolutions, etc... When I resize my FF window down to 5 inches wide, the site shouldn't resize with it.

Play with these.. I think I have mine around 700px which would have it nearly full screen on a 17" monitor at a typical resolutions setting.

 

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but the logo is poor. My logo is quite large too, though its a vital part of my layout.

 

Personally I like you should look for something like the following.

 

If you like it you can use it, but its more for the purpose of presenting an idea of what you (IMHO) should have,

 

Your name Enhancements makes me think 'Fast'.. not speakers... I want to see somethings zoooming!

 

You can get nice stock photos from almost all car web sites, they have them available for publishing information and advertising.

 

You search box should be visible without having to scroll down. Put it at (or near) the top of the right column. And while you're at it, put the Information box over there too (at the bottom though). This will even out you box placement length on both side and take another 2 inches off your page length.

 

If you only plan on having one language, drop the language box, it serves no purpose

 

When you choose an image and the popup window opens, it's not set high enough, you need to code the box to be larger. I have my stylesheets in a different directory but this is my revised popup_image.php

 

<?php

/*

$Id: popup_image.php,v 1.18 2003/06/05 23:26:23 hpdl Exp $

 

osCommerce, Open Source E-Commerce Solutions

http://www.oscommerce.com

 

Copyright © 2003 osCommerce

 

Released under the GNU General Public License

*/

 

require('includes/application_top.php');

$navigation->remove_current_page();

 

$products_query = tep_db_query("select pd.products_name, p.products_image from " . TABLE_PRODUCTS . " p left join " . TABLE_

PRODUCTS_DESCRIPTION . " pd on p.products_id = pd.products_id where p.products_status = '1' and p.products_id = '" . (int)$HTT

P_GET_VARS['pID'] . "' and pd.language_id = '" . (int)$languages_id . "'");

$products = tep_db_fetch_array($products_query);

?>

<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html <?php echo HTML_PARAMS; ?>>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<?php echo CHARSET; ?>">

<title><?php echo $products['products_name']; ?></title>

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="/css/stylesheet.css">

<base href="<?php echo (($request_type == 'SSL') ? HTTPS_SERVER : HTTP_SERVER) . DIR_WS_CATALOG; ?>">

<script language="javascript"><!--

var i=0;

function resize() {

if (navigator.appName == 'Netscape') i=40;

if (document.images[0]) window.resizeTo(document.images[0].width +40, document.images[0].height+120-i);

self.focus();

}

//--></script>

</head>

<body onload="resize();">

<p class="smallText" align="center">

<?php echo tep_image(DIR_WS_IMAGES . $products['products_image'], $products['products_name']); ?>

<a href="java script:window.close()"><br><u>Close Window</u> [x]</a></p></p>

</body>

</html>

<?php require('includes/application_bottom.php'); ?>

 

Regardless of the photo the window resizes itself large than the photo so no one has to drag the window open.

 

On the search page, the image of the magnifying glass looks quite bad, if you dont have a replacement, then simply delete the image so it doesn't show up.

 

I noticed on this page

 

http://www.choiceautoenhancements.com/prod...&products_id=64

 

that the manufacture info (for Audio Pipe) on the right side has a logo WAY to large and throughs the site tables beyond my monitor.. and I'm on a 21" monitor

 

 

Well that's a start...

[Nanci]

Hey Flyer5, I didn't mean to try and accuse anyone of being a bully, I just didn't want Tates to be turned off by some heavy criticsm and stop working on his site...

 

Thanks for your kind words about my site. Feel free to make any critisms about it in my own thread. I can take criticism so no need to hold back!

 

 

 

Kind Regards,

 

Peter

 

Hi Peter, just looked at your site. Looks very nice!!

 

I'm wondering if there is a way to have 2 images in that top area. I have a logo that looks too big, so I will make it smaller...but I'd like to add a nice wide image next to it...to fill up all that white space. Is that possible??

[WebRat]

Custodian good job on the header pic. I like it, looks more professional.

Flyer5 I would like to see the web site with his header on it.

[Nanci]

I need for people to do a total review of my website. I need to know anything that needs to be corrected!!

 

Thanks a lot guys!!

Billy

 

I really like the look of your site!! And I appologize for asking my own question in your topic, but seeing your logo in the middle really looks great!!!

 

I like your colors and your logo has an immediate impact. I like the logo you have more than the one that is being suggested!!