Lets try for some more feedback, again. ;)

[everyth5]

This is My Store. It has been about a month since I last posted here and have tried to heed the advice of PRO's here :D

 

Hope to get some more feedback. I am trying to integrate 2Checkout but am having some troubles with it. If anyone knows of some easier ways to integrate it into my "3rd party shopping cart" (as 2CO puts it) I would be eternally greatful.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Andrew Yuen]

The search icon needs to be a gif with a transparent not white background. I do not like your header, it is very pixilated and needs to be re-done. Also, when I click a category the main page changes to a light blue/default osCommerce color. I suggest that you change that to reflect the green/brown color scheme of your site. Your buttons also do not match the color scheme of your site. Other then that I suggest obtaining an SSL cert to secure the account sign up page etc.

[everyth5]

The search icon needs to be a gif with a transparent not white background. I do not like your header, it is very pixilated and needs to be re-done. Also, when I click a category the main page changes to a light blue/default osCommerce color. I suggest that you change that to reflect the green/brown color scheme of your site. Your buttons also do not match the color scheme of your site. Other then that I suggest obtaining an SSL cert to secure the account sign up page etc.

 

Thank You Andy. All great information. Would you have any suggestions about the 2CO integration? I have also been thinking about only accepting Money Orders and Cheques. Is there anyone out there that is doing this successfully? Please let me know.

 

Thanks again

[tastar]

Who are you, where are you - I couldn't find this info on your site. Are you in the U.S., if so, on the east coast, west coast? What is your phone number if there is a question or a problem? Or, if you are in Thailand, please let people know that as well. I think that all of this stuff is important to a potential customer.

 

Re. shipping - don't be ambiguous and say that you will email back with shipping charges. If you don't want to add a contrib that calculates shipping (I just noticed a DHL module pop up a couple of days ago in the contrib area), then pick some absolute amounts - 5.00 up to a 20.00 order, 10.00 up to a 50.00 order, etc.). Or, add a rough cost of shipping into your prices, or ask people to request prices for shipping for the bigger and heavier items but not everything. I don't like paying shipping charges in general and I especially wouldn't want to trust that you will be fair in applying charges when so many people make most of their money on excessive shipping charges. Even if you lose a few dollars on shipping, you won't be chasing away customers by making the ordering process more difficult than it needs to be.

 

Your photos are really good. I just checked out a wooden dragon that had a natural wood photo, but was available fully painted as well as natural. I've never seen a real dragon, so does that mean that it would have fiery eyes, green tinted scales or what exactly? And what size is extra large - 6 inches, 3 feet, or life size? Maybe a more pics contrib and attribute pull downs would be helpful.

 

I don't want to be too picky, but I think that this stuff needs to be addressed before your site can be really effective. The design is very clean, the photos are great, the selection is very good as well. If you keep building on what you have, you should be in great shape.

 

Re. the previous comment about your header image - you could add a small collage of your great photos to the header to add some balance and power to it.

 

Tony

[abra123cadabra]

The site changed quite a bit since I last saw it.

 

Let's get to some nitty gritty picky things:

 

1. On the index page is a bit too much text for my liking before I see the pictures. I personally would make them a bit bigger as they are your main means of getting people interested in buying a product.

 

2. I agree with the logo comment above. It's too pixelated and doesn't give any hint on what you are selling.

 

3. You got rid of the requests since but added another counter. Maybe loose that one and use the log files that you most likely get from your webhost. Not sure if I really need to know the date when I reach the bottom of the page.

 

4. You added some address and email but no phone number. Even if it's a mobile number in Thailand, add it so people can phone you if they have questions. Actually the contact information should be added to the contact_us page and not only on the about_us.

 

5. Your conditions of use are empty.

 

6. Shipping. Are you really shipping all orders 24 hours after receiving them? No weekend for you?

 

7. In your shipping conditions you mention that shipping is included in the price. When I go to checkout, the shipping module tells me that the shipping rate cannot be determined at this time. Will you charge me once you realised how much you got to pay for shipping?

 

8. When selecting cheque/money order, I can complete the checkout without any information on how I have to pay.

 

9. The breadcrumb font is too big. When I'm viewing an order in the account details, the breadcrumb breaks and makes the whole line too big.

 

10. I'm not sure about the brown theme on the tiled background. I personally don't like brown too much.

 

There are still a lot of things you can do to improve the site. Change the buttons to match the overall theme, get rid of the cartoonish icons, add SEO urls, add a redirect so that all hits to your site either go to www or non-www but not both as this causes duplicate content in search engines which they don't like. Maybe add a few pictures of yourself on the about us page to make the shopping experience more personal.

 

abra

[Guest]

Hey there,

 

Perhaps use the fixed width contribution (super easy to install) so that you can use the greenish background you have more as a border and have the store itself with a white background .... It's just that it's hard to read words on a background such as that, but think the background is appropriate to the site, so it is needed...

 

I think the bright green font for the page headers (contact us, shipping/returns, etc) is awful ..... perhaps just a nice black.

 

You need different buttons, they don't match the overall design of your site. If you can find "wood" buttons or even just plain brown/tan/etc with a nice font ....

 

I agree that you need more pizazz in your header - the product collage is a great idea - I had that at one time (but am using the space for somethign else) ....

 

I love your site overall, great products and such. Just need to make it cleaner, all elements work together .... Keep going! You're doing great!

[Guest]

Big development since the first time that I looked at this site, but there is still a lot that can be improved. Here are a few things that I think you need to work on:

 

You have a postal address and email address on the 'about us' page, but you don't have it on your 'contact us' page, which is where most people would look for it. I would suggest copying it to both places.

 

Given the nature of what you are selling, I think that you should include the weight of products in the description. A solid marble coffee table must be bloody heavy, I'd want to know just how heavy before I ordered it. I'd also really want to know the shipping price of something like that before I got too far through the order.

 

Your right column seems to vary in width depending on the page viewed, the result of this is that on some pages the search box and the search button (which should have a transparent background) are split over 2 lines, which just looks wrong. Fix the width of this column so that they stay on one line.

 

Get rid of the 'tell a friend' box on information pages. I'm reading your 'about us' and I have a box which says 'tell a friend about this product'. Seems a bit odd.

 

Your conditions of use is empty.

 

Due to the colours of some of your images and the background colour of the sideboxes, some of them get a bit lost in i.e. 'what's new'. It would look better if you put a 1 pixel border around these images in a colour that fits.

 

The bright green colour that you use for the product name on the product_info pages doesn't really fit with anything else in your colour scheme and is a bit painful to read on the background. I would suggest changing this colour.

 

I would lose the date in the footer, and also the statcounter.com icon on the front page. Neither of them need to be there and don't help you to look like a serious business.

 

As stated by others, the buttons don't fit the theme, and the header needs work.

[everyth5]

Thank you all for all the great advice. I will definitely be working on the lot of it. I appreciate all the time it took to check out the site thoroughly and if you can think of anything new , I will gladly like to hear about it.

 

Thanks again everyone.:D

[everyth5]

The site changed quite a bit since I last saw it.

 

Let's get to some nitty gritty picky things:

 

1. On the index page is a bit too much text for my liking before I see the pictures. I personally would make them a bit bigger as they are your main means of getting people interested in buying a product.

 

2. I agree with the logo comment above. It's too pixelated and doesn't give any hint on what you are selling.

 

3. You got rid of the requests since but added another counter. Maybe loose that one and use the log files that you most likely get from your webhost. Not sure if I really need to know the date when I reach the bottom of the page.

 

4. You added some address and email but no phone number. Even if it's a mobile number in Thailand, add it so people can phone you if they have questions. Actually the contact information should be added to the contact_us page and not only on the about_us.

 

5. Your conditions of use are empty.

 

6. Shipping. Are you really shipping all orders 24 hours after receiving them? No weekend for you?

 

7. In your shipping conditions you mention that shipping is included in the price. When I go to checkout, the shipping module tells me that the shipping rate cannot be determined at this time. Will you charge me once you realised how much you got to pay for shipping?

 

8. When selecting cheque/money order, I can complete the checkout without any information on how I have to pay.

 

9. The breadcrumb font is too big. When I'm viewing an order in the account details, the breadcrumb breaks and makes the whole line too big.

 

10. I'm not sure about the brown theme on the tiled background. I personally don't like brown too much.

 

There are still a lot of things you can do to improve the site. Change the buttons to match the overall theme, get rid of the cartoonish icons, add SEO urls, add a redirect so that all hits to your site either go to www or non-www but not both as this causes duplicate content in search engines which they don't like. Maybe add a few pictures of yourself on the about us page to make the shopping experience more personal.

 

abra

 

Thanks Abra for the helpful tips. Although I am not sure what you mean bye add SEO urls, add a redirect . As you know, I am fairly new to PHP and although I am having fun with it, I am struggling with some things. I did find the SEO contribution but don't know what to look for with the redirect one. Please let me know where I can find it. Or is it included in the SEO mod?

 

Thanks

[abra123cadabra]

SEO urls basically change the url displayed in the address bar of the browser. The url I see right now for the forum is http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...mp;#entry909724 which is pretty meaningless. Adding SEO urls changes these into something containing the product name etc. When these pages are indexed by search engines they will be listed with these more descriptive urls instead of the above one resulting in better positions in search results.

 

The Ultimate SEO URLs by Chemo has good installation instructions.

 

For the redirect bit this is done in the .htaccess file on your server. You can add a rule in there that requests for www.yourshop.com should be redirected to yourshop.com so that when search engines index the pages, they will only list non-www pages (or vice versa depending on how you set the rule). Information on how to set rules like this can be found easily on google. Just search for .htaccess redirect and see what you find for permanent redirects.

 

abra

[IndiaStarker]

Hi,

Bigger thumbnails would look great on my screen (1024x768 I think); they're too small to appreciate much and I have to click to get the big picture to have a clue what it is (espcecially the lovely painted vases and fantastic dragon incense holders.)

 

Maybe this would penalise slow connections though so be careful taking my advice, I'm no expert. We have adsl.

Don't do any extra work in PhotoShop though : I use On The Fly to generate my thumbnails and am quite happy with it.

Best regards,

India

[everyth5]

SEO urls basically change the url displayed in the address bar of the browser. The url I see right now for the forum is http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...mp;#entry909724 which is pretty meaningless. Adding SEO urls changes these into something containing the product name etc. When these pages are indexed by search engines they will be listed with these more descriptive urls instead of the above one resulting in better positions in search results.

 

The Ultimate SEO URLs by Chemo has good installation instructions.

 

For the redirect bit this is done in the .htaccess file on your server. You can add a rule in there that requests for www.yourshop.com should be redirected to yourshop.com so that when search engines index the pages, they will only list non-www pages (or vice versa depending on how you set the rule). Information on how to set rules like this can be found easily on google. Just search for .htaccess redirect and see what you find for permanent redirects.

 

abra

 

 

Thanks Abra:

 

That information lays it out nicely for me. I do appreciate it alot and will integrate those mods tomorrow. Today I finally got the Easy Populate working. YAHHHHHHHHOOOOOOO :D :D :D Very very productive day. :D

 

Anyway, thanks again.

 

Kelvin

[everyth5]

SEO urls basically change the url displayed in the address bar of the browser. The url I see right now for the forum is http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...mp;#entry909724 which is pretty meaningless. Adding SEO urls changes these into something containing the product name etc. When these pages are indexed by search engines they will be listed with these more descriptive urls instead of the above one resulting in better positions in search results.

 

The Ultimate SEO URLs by Chemo has good installation instructions.

 

For the redirect bit this is done in the .htaccess file on your server. You can add a rule in there that requests for www.yourshop.com should be redirected to yourshop.com so that when search engines index the pages, they will only list non-www pages (or vice versa depending on how you set the rule). Information on how to set rules like this can be found easily on google. Just search for .htaccess redirect and see what you find for permanent redirects.

 

abra

 

Ok, so I have installed the SEO contribution, and it is working fine. So how do I make it do what you say it will do above???

 

Also regarding the .htaccess file. I have it up on my editor right now and it looks like this:

 

# $Id: .htaccess,v 1.3 2003/06/12 10:53:20 hpdl Exp $

#

# This is used with Apache WebServers

#

# For this to work, you must include the parameter 'Options' to

# the AllowOverride configuration

#

# Example:

#

# <Directory "/usr/local/apache/htdocs">

# AllowOverride Options

# </Directory>

#

# 'All' with also work. (This configuration is in the

# apache/conf/httpd.conf file)

# The following makes adjustments to the SSL protocol for Internet

# Explorer browsers

<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>

<IfDefine SSL>

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \

nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \

downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

</IfDefine>

</IfModule>

# If Search Engine Friendly URLs do not work, try enabling the

# following Apache configuration parameter

#

# AcceptPathInfo On

# Fix certain PHP values

# (commented out by default to prevent errors occuring on certain

# servers)

#

<IfModule mod_php4.c>

</IfModule>

 

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://everything-asian.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://everything-asian.com$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.everything-asian.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.everything-asian.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

 

What am I suppose to modify for it to work right? Or is it set up correctly as indicated in the blue code?

 

Thanks for your help. My site is now starting to look and run GREAT because of the help of everyone here. So sooooooo much appreciated.

 

Kelvin

[usernamenone]

This is My Store. It has been about a month since I last posted here and have tried to heed the advice of PRO's here :D

 

Hope to get some more feedback. I am trying to integrate 2Checkout but am having some troubles with it. If anyone knows of some easier ways to integrate it into my "3rd party shopping cart" (as 2CO puts it) I would be eternally greatful.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

First - your My Account link does not work and should be addressed as soon as possible.

 

I am not a fan of grey I think it is a depressing color and one that I would not associate with Asian decor.

This is a link to a color picker that is free to download and has saved me lots of time trying to choose a color for a web site.

http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

I would brows my products and draw color from some of the items and change the color pallet.

 

Your buttons have been addressed before and perhaps you do not know how to make them match. You need to flood fill the white border to match the grey of the background. The grey color is bdbdbd.

 

You can change the thumbnail width in your admin area look under configuration and then images. Images should be at least 100 PX wide and height should be a 0 or your images could look squashed.

 

2co is just a matter of installing the module and configuring the hook up on their side.

 

In closing I want to say that you have some great products in your catalog. I plan on doing some shopping with you in the near future. :thumbsup:

[Tsuri Japan]

I like those buttons.........what are they?

 

http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

what a great little program I've been wanting something like this so I could find colors on the net.

 

The only thing I'd say about the site is add borders around the boxes......they look like they're floating in space and not jelled together giving it a solid feeling.

 

Also what currency is this??? I tried finding your currency section but there's nothing........

Ab Son Half Body / On Stand

[F252] $294.37

that's pretty expensive stuff if we're dealing in USD currency (most common) or are we dealing with BAHT?

 

My 2 cents....

 

Nigelman :thumbsup:

[usernamenone]

I like those buttons.........what are they?

 

http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

what a great little program I've been wanting something like this so I could find colors on the net.

 

Nigelman :thumbsup:

 

Glad you like pixie. http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

 

I have been using her for about 4 years, heard about it on Screen Savers a Tech Tv show. I don't think it is aired anymore or maybe I just miss it.

[Guest]

Hi, I just viewed your site... it's definately comming along! :)

 

Though, I would like to see a better header banner - it is really pixilated.

 

The grey texture background makes reading small black text really hard. I definately could read the text in Bold, which was nice. I'd suggest either making all the text bold, or bigger, or using a different font perhaps, or just change the background....

 

The cart doesn't seem to be working right either. I know someone addressed that above. I'm getting 404 not found errors for "My Account" and "My Cart". Got to get that working!

 

It's good you have the "no image available" image instead of nothing but pictures are very important along with good descriptions that include dimentions.

 

It'll get better! Keep up the good work!

[abra123cadabra]

I'm not sure which SEO URL contribution you installed. I'm using Ultimate SEO urls (originally developed by Chemo). Once you followed all the instructions for the installation your url should change once you view a product (product_info.php). For the htaccess file there are also instructions as to what you need to put in there for the ultimate seo urls to work.

 

Just a link to one of my product_info pages to show you how the url changed:

http://www.finefoods24.com/catalog/maggi-f...-suey-p-95.html

It used to be something like this: ...catalog/product_info.php?products_id=95

 

abra

 

Ok, so I have installed the SEO contribution, and it is working fine. So how do I make it do what you say it will do above???

 

Also regarding the .htaccess file. I have it up on my editor right now and it looks like this:

 

# $Id: .htaccess,v 1.3 2003/06/12 10:53:20 hpdl Exp $

#

# This is used with Apache WebServers

#

# For this to work, you must include the parameter 'Options' to

# the AllowOverride configuration

#

# Example:

#

# <Directory "/usr/local/apache/htdocs">

# AllowOverride Options

# </Directory>

#

# 'All' with also work. (This configuration is in the

# apache/conf/httpd.conf file)

# The following makes adjustments to the SSL protocol for Internet

# Explorer browsers

<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>

<IfDefine SSL>

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \

nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \

downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

</IfDefine>

</IfModule>

# If Search Engine Friendly URLs do not work, try enabling the

# following Apache configuration parameter

#

# AcceptPathInfo On

# Fix certain PHP values

# (commented out by default to prevent errors occuring on certain

# servers)

#

<IfModule mod_php4.c>

</IfModule>

 

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://everything-asian.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://everything-asian.com$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.everything-asian.com/.*$ [NC]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.everything-asian.com$ [NC]

RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

 

What am I suppose to modify for it to work right? Or is it set up correctly as indicated in the blue code?

 

Thanks for your help. My site is now starting to look and run GREAT because of the help of everyone here. So sooooooo much appreciated.

 

Kelvin

[everyth5]

Thanks Abra:

 

Well I downloaded the Ultimate SEO URL you suggested "Ultimate_SEO_URLs_v2.2.2.tar.gz" but am unsure how to install it as it is a .tar.gz file. What do I do with this one?

 

I'm not sure which SEO URL contribution you installed. I'm using Ultimate SEO urls (originally developed by Chemo). Once you followed all the instructions for the installation your url should change once you view a product (product_info.php). For the htaccess file there are also instructions as to what you need to put in there for the ultimate seo urls to work.

 

Just a link to one of my product_info pages to show you how the url changed:

http://www.finefoods24.com/catalog/maggi-f...-suey-p-95.html

It used to be something like this: ...catalog/product_info.php?products_id=95

 

abra

[everyth5]

Thanks for the feedback. It is both appreciated and helps me alot in getting my site to perfection.

 

The My Account link and Shopping Cart link problems are because of incompatability of my new server with the osCommerce shopping cart. My server is rectifying the problem as I write this.

 

Looking forward to serving you in the future. Thanks :D

 

First - your My Account link does not work and should be addressed as soon as possible.

 

I am not a fan of grey I think it is a depressing color and one that I would not associate with Asian decor.

This is a link to a color picker that is free to download and has saved me lots of time trying to choose a color for a web site.

http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

I would brows my products and draw color from some of the items and change the color pallet.

 

Your buttons have been addressed before and perhaps you do not know how to make them match. You need to flood fill the white border to match the grey of the background. The grey color is bdbdbd.

 

You can change the thumbnail width in your admin area look under configuration and then images. Images should be at least 100 PX wide and height should be a 0 or your images could look squashed.

 

2co is just a matter of installing the module and configuring the hook up on their side.

 

In closing I want to say that you have some great products in your catalog. I plan on doing some shopping with you in the near future. :thumbsup:

[everyth5]

Thanks Nigelman.

 

Where would I add the borders you were talking about? I have been looking in my code and must be looking it square in the eyes and not recognizing it.

 

Thanks

Kelvin

 

I like those buttons.........what are they?

 

http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html

what a great little program I've been wanting something like this so I could find colors on the net.

 

The only thing I'd say about the site is add borders around the boxes......they look like they're floating in space and not jelled together giving it a solid feeling.

 

Also what currency is this??? I tried finding your currency section but there's nothing........

Ab Son Half Body / On Stand

[F252] $294.37

that's pretty expensive stuff if we're dealing in USD currency (most common) or are we dealing with BAHT?

 

My 2 cents....

 

Nigelman :thumbsup:

[abra123cadabra]

I'm using Ultimate SEO URLs v2.1d which is just a normal zip archive. Once I've got a contribution installed and running properly I usually don't see any reason to upgrade to a newer version. I decided on the 2.1d because it's coded by Chemo himself and from my experience his contribs just work.

 

abra

[everyth5]

Thanks abra. i knew I could count on you for a response ;) I will give it a try.

 

Kelvin

[andesigns]

Thanks for the feedback. It is both appreciated and helps me alot in getting my site to perfection.

 

The My Account link and Shopping Cart link problems are because of incompatability of my new server with the osCommerce shopping cart. My server is rectifying the problem as I write this.

 

Looking forward to serving you in the future. Thanks :D

 

I just checked out your site and I got the following error. Thought you would like to know.

 

"Warning: tep_href_link(includes/classes/seo.class.php) [function.tep-href-link]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 79

 

Warning: tep_href_link() [function.include]: Failed opening 'includes/classes/seo.class.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 79

 

Fatal error: Class 'SEO_URL' not found in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 82"

[everyth5]

I just checked out your site and I got the following error. Thought you would like to know.

 

"Warning: tep_href_link(includes/classes/seo.class.php) [function.tep-href-link]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 79

 

Warning: tep_href_link() [function.include]: Failed opening 'includes/classes/seo.class.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 79

 

Fatal error: Class 'SEO_URL' not found in /home/everyth5/public_html/includes/functions/html_output.php on line 82"

 

Yes I know about that error. As you can see I was trying to integrate the Ultimate SEO URL contribution and was having some troubles with it.

 

It is now working fine and all links are working.

 

Please check my site again and see if there is anything new you think I should address.

 

Thanks again everyone for the GREAT replys and the fantastic response. :D :D