RFC - Request For Critique

[goaty]

Your critique is requested. All comments welcome. We sell antiques and collectibles.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

MyThangs.com

[HSMagic]

Ads by Goooooogle

 

Not a good Idea.

[goaty]

I discussed this with the boss (wife) and we agreed to see how things work with the ads.

 

Do you have statistical information on how these types of adds help or harm a website?

 

Ads by Goooooogle

 

Not a good Idea.

[Kerosene]

Wouldn't it be best to try and keep people on your site in the hope of making a sale?

[BearHappy]

- First off, lets do the Adds by Goooooogle. It looks like you have spent some time on your store trying to present your products in a way that would make someone want to buy them. That in itself is quite an investment in time. Lets say that you spend some more time and maybe even some hard earned cash for advertising. After all of that, do you really want to give your customers the option of going somewhere else.

 

Add 1

 

Add 2

 

There were many more. Besides its taking up valuable space on your site that you could be using to display more products. Anyway, that horse is dead.

 

- If your going to use the google search you may want to default the "search where" option to your site. Otherwise customers wanting to search for something may be taken to the web without even knowing it.

 

- I like the way you have listed your products on the main page. Good way to keep customers focused and keep changing content for search engines.

 

- I'm not to sure about the Account, Cart and Checkout buttons in the upper left hand corner. They look lost and way to small to be noticed.

 

- Your product images enlarge option; sometimes the enlarged images are the same size as the product image or so large that you have to scroll to see the image. Also some of your images are 500K in size! Your dialup customers are going to hate you. You might want to think about a thumbnail contrib to help reduce the size and decrease page load times.

 

- You have an object that is breaking your SSL. This usually happens when an object from a unsecure location is being used on a secure page. Sorry, but it happens to be the Adds by Gooooogle.

 

- In your "Shipping and Returns" you state that you ship USPS or UPS but you don't give me the option at c heckout?

 

- Site requests in the lower right hand corner really aren't needed and only tell you the number of page requests, not visitors. The number will be highly skewed once your invaded by spiders.

 

 

 

Great start, keep improving to make it better than your competitors. :thumbsup:

[goaty]

Excellent comments.

 

Be back in a bit with updates.

 

Thank you very much for your time!

[goaty]

- First off, lets do the Adds by Goooooogle. It looks like you have spent some time on your store trying to present your products in a way that would make someone want to buy them. That in itself is quite an investment in time. Lets say that you spend some more time and maybe even some hard earned cash for advertising. After all of that, do you really want to give your customers the option of going somewhere else.

 

Add 1

 

Add 2

 

There were many more. Besides its taking up valuable space on your site that you could be using to display more products. Anyway, that horse is dead.

 

I understand about the adds. It is the topic of much thought.

 

- If your going to use the google search you may want to default the "search where" option to your site. Otherwise customers wanting to search for something may be taken to the web without even knowing it.

 

Done

 

- I like the way you have listed your products on the main page. Good way to keep customers focused and keep changing content for search engines.

 

- I'm not to sure about the Account, Cart and Checkout buttons in the upper left hand corner. They look lost and way to small to be noticed.

 

Thanks! I specifically setup the front page to randomly select categories with random item selections for each. So far it works nice.

 

I had concerns about the buttons and the centering of the main logo. The current setup was decided upon to maintain centering on the logo witout having the buttons interfere. Granted, I have not touched html in at least 7 years and I'm learning PHP as I go so my thoughts on web design might be a bit antiquated.

 

- Your product images enlarge option; sometimes the enlarged images are the same size as the product image or so large that you have to scroll to see the image. Also some of your images are 500K in size! Your dialup customers are going to hate you. You might want to think about a thumbnail contrib to help reduce the size and decrease page load times.

 

I spent alot of time with the image displays. The problem that I have is that the products that we sell require that we have a large amount of detail in our pictures. Until I find something better I will have to keep what I have. However, you did point me in the direction of a major problem in my picture displays. Which I am now working on. More to come on this tomorrow.

 

- You have an object that is breaking your SSL. This usually happens when an object from a unsecure location is being used on a secure page. Sorry, but it happens to be the Adds by Gooooogle.

 

Fixed (I think).

 

 

- In your "Shipping and Returns" you state that you ship USPS or UPS but you don't give me the option at c heckout?

 

The shipping information should now be clearer.

 

- Site requests in the lower right hand corner really aren't needed and only tell you the number of page requests, not visitors. The number will be highly skewed once your invaded by spiders.

Great start, keep improving to make it better than your competitors. :thumbsup:

 

Requests are gone.

 

Again, thanks for your input. More to come....