Any feed back is great

[eddieburroughs]

This is my first OSC site and I am learning as I go. I am building this for a friend.

 

My main concern is the load times. I have dsl and it loads fine for me but I have had folks with dial up tell me different.

 

Can you help me with the over all look and feel of the site as well as the load times?

 

Thanks All

Eddie

 

Holy Land Treasures

[gillamb]

Hi,

 

As you forecast, I found the load times painfully slow - and i'm on a relatively fast connnection.

 

The header looks a little odd as it covers the centre only, yet the rest of the site covers the whole page - maybe consider fixed width?

 

There are lots of little things that need doing - it still looks very stock.

 

Remove requests since at the bottom of the page

Consider changing the buttons - i dont think the standard blue fits your site too well

I'm guessing you have a shared SSL certificate. This brings up a warning when going to checkout. You can get basic certificates now very cheaply, mine cost ?14, and these are recognised by the browser, so you get no offputting warning popping up.

It wasn't clear what postage cost would be

 

All in all a good start, but like me, I'm sure you'll keep finding things to tinker with.

[eddieburroughs]

Thanks Ben - I found some advice last night about how to change the images so that it could load faster so I will be working on this today.

 

I also found a topic telling me how to fix the header last night and will be working on that tonight.

 

I think I will go to fixed width.

 

I had not really lookined into adding a lot of stuff but I believe I will be working on making it "not so stock"

 

I do have a sharred ssl so I will be getting my own soon.

 

I haven't seen anything so far (and I haven't looked) about removing the server requests but I agree it needs to go.

 

Thanks Ben

Eddie

[Guest]

Painfully slow, you need to optimize the images and install a thumbnail contribution.

[abra123cadabra]

I have to agree about the images. They are HUGE. 350 kB for each little image on the index page is way too much. There are good thumbnail contributions out there that are pretty easy to install. You can choose to either create the thumbnails on the fly or you can store a resized version in the cache for future use (imagemagic). I prefer the last one so that the server has a little less workload.

 

abra

[eddieburroughs]

I made the images smaller and then added a few contribs such as PageEditor - Basic Design Pak

Is it any faster or is it still painfully slow?

thanks everyone for the help!

[Andrew Yuen]

You might want to change your link to http://www.holylandtreasuresonline.com/. I don't link how you have made the text go over the brown background. Black over brown is hard to read in my opinion. I also did not link the yellow rollover over the brown background. Consider changing your background for the text to white.

[Guest]

I also agree that the color choice is not the best. Sowwy!

 

Also, why not have all your infoboxes on one side and free up that space to spread out your main text area bit. Gives a more "freer, open air" feel to the site. Both a left and right column kind of constricts the feel of a site, in my opinion. Plus, you have two "Information" boxes!

 

*waves to you from Alexander County NC* *grins*

 

If you don't change the overall color design, at least change the mouse over link color of yellow to something else, because it's hard to see in the infoboxes cause of the white background.

 

Ditch the visitor count at the bottom, not needed, visitors don't really care.

 

I have this problem also as I see you do: You make buttons to be text and not images...and you make your button's background white, yet when placed on the white pages of Osc, they have a faint pinkish look to them. Can anyone explain why??????????????????

 

Am on the Wreath Shaped Nativity product - your enlarged picture really isn't all that enlarged...since the product has unique details, the customer would want to see a larger image... more like 200x200 at the very least I believe.

 

Same product - what is it made out of? What is it's dimensions (inches, mm, feet)? If it's a natural wood, what special care instructions are there to help keep the wood in good condition years down the road? You say "very heavy", well, just how heavy (especially in terms of shipping! oh vey!)?

 

Crucifixes - all the crucifixes have the same product name ?!?!?!?! Not very good when it comes to SEO and such. Same problem with the crosses. If your supplier doesn't give good product names, create them yourself. Use an unique feature of the cross to differentiate it from the others.

 

Just picking out various products randomly...all have the same 'problems':

> you have dimensions, but no reference of it's feet, inches, mm

> Nearly none of the products mention what they are made out of

> a good selling point to have a link to a page (if not stated on the product page itself) on how to care for the various mediums your products are made of (natural woods, ivory, alabaster(ite), etc.

> need larger "enlarged" pictures

 

I realize your store's main page mentions the olive tree as a material, but customers may come from a search engine directly to a product's page and if that medium isn't listed, they won't know to go to the main page to find out.

 

I know it's a pain, but put as much detail about a product on that product's page. Even if half your products have nearly the same description. You just never truely know where your customer is coming from to that page.

 

Very nice site overall, unique product selection....great start!

 

edited: so sorry - didn't mean to write a book! Didn't realize until I submitted it! LOL

[eddieburroughs]

Andy you are right I moved the store to the root directory and for got to make the change in the link.

Holy Land Treasures Online New link or see Andy's post.

 

Thanks for the info on the color scheme.

I was thinking last night that is was hard to read I just thought i was tired.

 

The roll-over yellow showed up after I switched to the "basic Design Pak" contrib

I had not even noticed it.

 

Moonlight thank you for all you help as well. Those are just the thinks I need to know.

 

Salute from Wake County, NC!

 

Thanks I will be working on it off and on today and will post when I have made the changes to let folks know to look at the site again.

 

Thank You for all your help

Eddie

[eddieburroughs]

OK, I have made some considerable changes to the design and would like any and all your feedback.

Thanks for all preveious feedback.

Eddie