magicsenses Posted March 30, 2006 Posted March 30, 2006 Hello! Here is my website: www.magicsenses.com Please, have a look and tell me what you think. :D Any suggestions are more than welcome! Thank you for your time! Simone P.S. Please, be gentle... :blush: This is my first website.
dynamoeffects Posted March 31, 2006 Posted March 31, 2006 Looks good. Only suggestion I can make is to put the search box back because when I clicked on one of your categories, I just saw a bunch of similar looking bottles. If I want peach flavored whatever, I don't want to have to sift through page after page after page. Maybe break them up into additional categories to make it a little easier to browse. Also, your site would do well with the product listing in columns contribution. Please use the forums for support! I am happy to help you here, but I am unable to offer free technical support over instant messenger or e-mail.
magicsenses Posted March 31, 2006 Author Posted March 31, 2006 Looks good. Only suggestion I can make is to put the search box back because when I clicked on one of your categories, I just saw a bunch of similar looking bottles. If I want peach flavored whatever, I don't want to have to sift through page after page after page. Maybe break them up into additional categories to make it a little easier to browse. Also, your site would do well with the product listing in columns contribution. Thank you for visiting my website :) A search box is on my To Do list... as well as: SID Killer and Product listing in columns... ;) One question: did you see any SID during your visit? Thank you! :)
tastar Posted April 1, 2006 Posted April 1, 2006 Should you split your shipping and returns section into different sections, like shipping and returns and payment methods? I think that people look for payment methods and they are clearly defined on the shipping and returns page, but are disguised by the page title. Your Create Account button type overflows the background color in Firefox on a PC (but not in IE 6). Your images look too large in the product listings and featured products. I guess that it is a way to make a few products take up more page area, but I don't know that it really makes it look like you have more products. I don't think that it is a bad thing to have smaller number of focused, quality products, but I don't know that there is value in trying to make it look like you look bigger than you are. Maybe others could comment on this, too. I like uniformity. All of the images on my web site are square. And, even when they really should be rectangular I make them square (I just fill the rest of the space with air). If your images were a uniform size, then your home page and product listing pages would look more uniform. And, your images would work very well with a uniform format. I like the fixed width design, but the empty space at the top of the page is a waste of web real estate. Overall, you have done a great job. Like the friendly URL's (or whatever they are called). And, your shop by scent vs. shop by product stuff is really nice. And, you have a nice, clean layout. And, your products do seem to be of good quality, too.. And, I don't know what an SID is. Tony
magicsenses Posted April 1, 2006 Author Posted April 1, 2006 Should you split your shipping and returns section into different sections, like shipping and returns and payment methods? I think that people look for payment methods and they are clearly defined on the shipping and returns page, but are disguised by the page title. Your Create Account button type overflows the background color in Firefox on a PC (but not in IE 6). Your images look too large in the product listings and featured products. I guess that it is a way to make a few products take up more page area, but I don't know that it really makes it look like you have more products. I don't think that it is a bad thing to have smaller number of focused, quality products, but I don't know that there is value in trying to make it look like you look bigger than you are. Maybe others could comment on this, too. I like uniformity. All of the images on my web site are square. And, even when they really should be rectangular I make them square (I just fill the rest of the space with air). If your images were a uniform size, then your home page and product listing pages would look more uniform. And, your images would work very well with a uniform format. I like the fixed width design, but the empty space at the top of the page is a waste of web real estate. Overall, you have done a great job. Like the friendly URL's (or whatever they are called). And, your shop by scent vs. shop by product stuff is really nice. And, you have a nice, clean layout. And, your products do seem to be of good quality, too.. And, I don't know what an SID is. Tony Hello, Toni! Thank you for visiting! Now about some of the suggestions and critics you made: 1. I will change the "shipping& returns" name of the page into "store policies"... what do you think? ;) 2. I will dig into the Create account button problem on Firefox. I, personally, use I.E. so I had no idea that was happening... 3. The intention was never to make the store bigger than it is but to display a picture that is not too big, not too small so that everybody can see the design of the soap without necessarily having to click on enlarge image... Anyway, our design for the bottles has changed and I will have to replace some of the pictures... I'll try to make them look all the same size :D 4. Wasted web real estate: if you are talking about the header where the logo is... that white empty space will be taken by a flash banner... as soon as I find out how to put it up there :D hehehehe Thank you very much for all your comments. My TO DO list is now even longer :D :blush: FYI: SID is Session ID... that is: the "oscsid=#########...." part that sometimes appears in the address bar after the name of the page you are visiting... try and read about this... it's quite important... Simone :thumbsup:
magicsenses Posted April 3, 2006 Author Posted April 3, 2006 hi! Here is an update: 1. search box is up 2. I changed the name for the shipping&returns into Store Policies 3. Installed Column product Listing If anyone has any other suggestions, please do not hesitate to leave a message. Thank you!
magicsenses Posted April 11, 2006 Author Posted April 11, 2006 Hi Simone,well done i think you've done well for a first site. The soaps look lovely and colourful. The only thing I would say is try to edit some of the pictures so that the are a bit brighter to see the products better. In return, I would really appreciate your feedback on my site - Iv'e had this site up and going now for a while. Im getting heaps of traffic but am not getting orders, not sure why and its driving me nuts! I would really appreciate if you could click on some products and go all the way through the cart to the paypal page as if you were a purchasing customer. let me know if you have any problems or anything else you can think of that may deter customers from ordering, any feedback will be appreciated...thankyou - www.naturalbodyskincare.com Cheers Timon Hello, Timon! :) Thank you for visiting my website! I am working on the pictures... :D Your website looks very good! there are some changes that I would make... like taking off the category counts... from Configuration-->category count FALSE... but we'll talk about that in a couple of days when I come back home. I will test your store for PayPal then. I have to go now! Keep up the good work! Simone P.S. Try listing on Froogle, Google Base, Superpages.com, naturalhealthyellowpages.com, somuch.com, iOffer.com, livedeal.com, craigslist.com or snap.com. Read and see if any of these fits your website.
chooch Posted May 10, 2006 Posted May 10, 2006 Nice use of colours adn well done being imaginative enough adding a fixed width and removing the column right. I would further reduce the width and subsequently the images size to make it all fit in better and give it a more compact look Upon receiving fixes and advice, too many people don't bother to post updates informing the forum of how it went. Until of course they need help again on other issues and they come running back! Why receive the information you require in good faith for free, only to then have the attitude to ignore the people who gave it to you? There's no harm in saying, 'Thanks, it worked'. On the contrary, it creates a better atmosphere. CHOOCH
chooch Posted May 10, 2006 Posted May 10, 2006 whoops, and a search bar in the navigation.. thats good too Upon receiving fixes and advice, too many people don't bother to post updates informing the forum of how it went. Until of course they need help again on other issues and they come running back! Why receive the information you require in good faith for free, only to then have the attitude to ignore the people who gave it to you? There's no harm in saying, 'Thanks, it worked'. On the contrary, it creates a better atmosphere. CHOOCH
swtnhpy Posted May 10, 2006 Posted May 10, 2006 Reduce your image sizes of small images to 160 or 170 vs 200 where they are right now. This image size of 200 makes your page out of the boundries and makes me maximize the page to see it all. As far as looks are concerned..good use of your stylesheet but I would take out the My Account | Cart Contents | Checkout and search bar and put them in your header stacking each other to use up some of that white space. SEO...Your seo contributions are working great but it really will not do you any good as far as getting your pages high up in the search engines because your store is too far back in your directory. You should have your store showing as magicsenses.com/catalog or even better yet, have a permanent redirect from catalog to your main root. If you have access to your ftp space, copy everything into your root and remove the folders for store and catalog and then go to your configure and reconfigure that to point to the root.
magicsenses Posted May 10, 2006 Author Posted May 10, 2006 Thank you, Aleem, for your message! I am trying to keep it simple... I have changed the size of the pictures... Hopefull, it looks better now... I personally like the larger pictures... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thank you, Jen! I followed your advice and I changed the pictures to 170 instead of 200. The white space up there should be replaced by a banner as soon as I find out how to publish a flash banner... About the Catalog being in the main directory... when I installed oscommerce, I wasn't allowed to install it in the root directory... and I redirected so it points to the store instead of the html front page of the website... now, I created a redirect from /store/catalog/index.php to magicsenses.com but I don't know exactly what to change in the configure files... should I change all of these in catalog/includes/configure.php: define('HTTP_COOKIE_PATH', '/store/catalog/'); define('HTTPS_COOKIE_PATH', '/store/catalog/'); define('DIR_WS_HTTP_CATALOG', '/store/catalog/'); define('DIR_WS_HTTPS_CATALOG', '/store/catalog/'); Are there any changes in admin/includes/configure.php? Thank you so much for your suggestions! I really appreciate it! hugs, Simona
swtnhpy Posted May 10, 2006 Posted May 10, 2006 Do you have access to your server space? If so, you can move all the files within OSC to your root directory. Do you have a control panel that will give you access to your files and folders. It is actually much better to have everything in your root than use the redirects. With the redirect being 2 directories in, I'm unsure if the se's will even parse some of the deeper categories in your site.
magicsenses Posted May 10, 2006 Author Posted May 10, 2006 Do you have access to your server space? If so, you can move all the files within OSC to your root directory. Do you have a control panel that will give you access to your files and folders. It is actually much better to have everything in your root than use the redirects. With the redirect being 2 directories in, I'm unsure if the se's will even parse some of the deeper categories in your site. I do have access... I will try moving all the files... although I am afraid I might mix up everything... TY
swtnhpy Posted May 10, 2006 Posted May 10, 2006 What I would do then is this....if you have an ftp program such as ws_ftp or something like that. Download your whole catalog folder and put it onto your hard drive. That way you have a backup. Then upload the contents of the catalog folder including all subfolders to your root directory. Then go into your root/includes/configure.php and change everything to reflect the change by removing all instances of store/catalog/
magicsenses Posted May 11, 2006 Author Posted May 11, 2006 What I would do then is this....if you have an ftp program such as ws_ftp or something like that. Download your whole catalog folder and put it onto your hard drive. That way you have a backup. Then upload the contents of the catalog folder including all subfolders to your root directory. Then go into your root/includes/configure.php and change everything to reflect the change by removing all instances of store/catalog/ Hi! I did this yesterday and all my store got mixed up. :( I restored the files but not I keep getting some errors: 1. The catalog image directory is not writable :( 2. Graphs directory is not writable :( 3. Backup directory is not writable. :( All of them have permission 755.
swtnhpy Posted May 11, 2006 Posted May 11, 2006 HMMM that is odd. Are you setting permission within your ftp or your control panel? I have noticed that if you set permissions within an ftp program, they don't always listen to the commands. Now when you do move it, you will have to re-write your links that you have placed into code yourself to direct to the proper directory. Then change both the configure.php files in admin and includes.
magicsenses Posted May 11, 2006 Author Posted May 11, 2006 HMMM that is odd. Are you setting permission within your ftp or your control panel? I have noticed that if you set permissions within an ftp program, they don't always listen to the commands. Now when you do move it, you will have to re-write your links that you have placed into code yourself to direct to the proper directory. Then change both the configure.php files in admin and includes. Hi! I change permissions through my control panel. When I moved everything that was under the catalogue directory, there were two files I think that had to be overwritten... htaccess and account.php... I modified both configure files and deleted /store/catalogue/ Now, one big dumb question: by root you mean public_html directory, right? Because this is where I moved everything... Another question: what do you mean by links in the code? I really don't remember where I changed the links... Thank you for your time! Simone
swtnhpy Posted May 11, 2006 Posted May 11, 2006 Yes, by root I mean public_html. htaccess file would have to be overwritten to allow access to all files there. Links in the code that you wrote yourself, any links like in the index.php, files you created yourself.
magicsenses Posted May 11, 2006 Author Posted May 11, 2006 Yes, by root I mean public_html. htaccess file would have to be overwritten to allow access to all files there. Links in the code that you wrote yourself, any links like in the index.php, files you created yourself. Ok, Jen! Thank you very much! I'll be working on it... I'll try one more time... hugs, Simone
magicsenses Posted May 11, 2006 Author Posted May 11, 2006 Hi, Jen! :) I did it! Check this out: www.magicsenses.com I have one problem though: when I click on any category or product I get an error. :( Any idea why?:( Thank you! hugs, Simone
swtnhpy Posted May 11, 2006 Posted May 11, 2006 Ok..what you need to do is go onto your admin side, in your SEO Urls area in configuration, go to the bottom and click on reset SEO Urls Cache. Then you must go to your htaccess file and make sure that any instance of store/catalog/ are removed.
magicsenses Posted May 11, 2006 Author Posted May 11, 2006 hello, Jen! It works!!! www.magicsenses.com I am so happy! :) I have one more problem (please, bear with me): when I click from my vdeck to go to the osc admin area, I still get the old link with /store/catalog/... if I delete that in the address bar, everything is fine... do you know how I can change that too? Thank you so much for your time and patience! :) hugs, Simone
swtnhpy Posted May 12, 2006 Posted May 12, 2006 Happy to help. I'm not sure what Vdeck is but the best way to enter your admin is by going to magicsenses.com/admin But you must make sure that your admin folder is password protected.
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