The little hardware store that could

[motorcity]

First I'd like to say thanks for changing the rules on posting to the "My Store" thread. Prior till now I thought I understood the oscommerce logo & @copy couldn't be removed, I took that off several months ago.

But I'm (we're) proud of our progress so far and very gratefull to oscommerce and everybody who has stopped thier own project for a moment to help us out. We have no plans to remove the "Powered by osCommerce" from our site.

Nothing, in my opinion proves the value of open source better than this forum & the osCommerce shopping cart system!

 

 

Remaining work;

1. Inbound links from manufacturers
   
2. List with more search engines
   
3. Set up a self reporting email link from error pages
   
4. Add more product detail / descriptions
   
5. Add more products (lots more to go)
   
6. Somewhere down the road~add full integration with a POS system
   

This is a live store so please plan on paying for anything you buy. :D

So here it is Fdsons.com

 

Any and all comments are welcome.

[matrix2223]

Nice clean layout, a little cramped but very clean. I would suggest srinking your left and right column widths. It your not sure how to do that contact me I I will explain how.

 

The images you have on the about us page detures your text I would put it at the top and then your text below it, or text image then more text. Also would have it clickable for larger view.

 

There needs to be other contact info in the contact us page. The stock looking contact page is ok but Thats one of the first things I chage.

 

For SEO stand point your logo is non clickable and the title should have at max 1-2 very brief setences having keywords you use. Also you have your main page then your index.php this can hurt a shop as far as goole is concerned for duplicate content. There is a tread in the tips and tricks section that explains how to remove the index.php from the logo and buttons.

 

With the buttons/tabs you use at the top I would be safe to say that you can remove the breadcrumbs trail. To me it was easy to navigate without using it and honestly if i didnt know it was there i wouldnt have seen it.

 

These are just some little changed and I hope I didnt come out the wrong way no harm intended. With these changes applied you will have an excelent osc store.

 

Hope this helps out, happy sale,

Eric

[ddp]

I think the header should be the same width as the rest of the site.

 

I would make the rest of it more narrow to fit under it. I find the scrolling specials distracting.

 

You might find you could get by with just the left column.

Do you really need the notifactions, tell a friend, manufactures as well as manufacturers info,

what's new is somewhat useless as well in my opinion.

 

You could move the search and or shopping cart into the header.

[motorcity]

Great comments, I really appreciate the input.

First thing, the "cramped" look is only a day old. I found out just after I posted here that in firefox the coolmenu obscures part of the text & pics. I can fix it like you first saw it here by changing the application_top width but it looks bad in IE. I spent most of my time today trying to find a solution - for now I changed it back. Sorry to those firefox folks! We'll fix it asap.

 

It's been a while (like 2 years) since I first laid out the basics and I forget - is it a relative layout? - you never get a bottom slider bar - the site will squeeze into any size browser window. So I guess you go full view if you get it too squished up.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the contact us page - it does need work!

Same for the main / index.php tip. I never would of thought of that. I read that thread and plan on it.

 

As for losing the breadcrumbs, it's been only a few days since we got rid of "lets see what...." and that really is the same thing. Looks like I could just delete the line <td class="headerNavigation">??<?php echo $breadcrumb->trail(' ? '); ?></td> and it would be gone.

 

As for the scrolling specials - I find them semi-annoying myself but its better now that its just a random 5 on any page refresh. They're from our published circulars - about 30 items per month. You're probably right about notifications, tell a friend, & what's new.

I really like the idea of moving the search into the header.

 

Again thanks for the help!

Joe