First site! Yay! feedback appreciated

[angelkelly]

Hi guys,

 

Well I'm finally there after long days and much appreciated help from the forums.

 

The site is 99% complete and currently live, just a few minor things that I want to do, but I'd really appreciate some feedback at this critical stage

 

Items on my google list are a plain background behind descriptions, how to get the site to open from the home page, how to add my address and phone number to the contact us page and waiting for my new header banner to be finished so I can start my advertising campaign.

 

A huge thank you to those who make the contributions, without whom many of us would have terrible sites and to those who answer questions in the forums, who guide and advise newbies. I hope to help here myself too, and give back to the community that has helped me so much.

 

All critisisms, praise, advice and comments truely appreciated - as always.

 

JewelleryFountain .co.uk

[angelkelly]

Anyone?.... :blush:

[abra123cadabra]

Honestly, I wouldn't know where to start with my feedback.

 

The logo/header section needs to be changed - but you say you are waiting for your new logo, so we skip that.

 

Background on your pages - it's on your list already - make sure to get that done asap as the current background makes the text on top unreadable and it doesn't even tile properly leaving some white lines at the bottom. I wonder how you managed to get that awful image in there in the first place.

 

Once you got around adding your text etc., bring the shop back for review.

 

abra

[angelkelly]

Thanks abra! Will do!

[♥FWR Media]

I agree with abra (as usual)

 

I'll give a very big positive for one very important aspect as I'm a speed monster.

 

The site is very fast (at least from the UK).

 

An aspect that virtually every site here gets wrong, well done.

 

Considering it looks quite stock you must have done a lot of optimisation work to get speed like that.

[sgolds]

The category counts dont add up. For instance, you have a count of 230 earrings but only 2 categories with 112 products and 6 products not in any category? Personally I'd loose the counts and find your missing products!

 

I was going to say that you probably want to display your products in multiple columns so that you can have more on a page or not have to scroll but some of the thumbnails are so large that it's probably impossible. The thumbnails should be much more uniform in size. You have many products with no images at all.

 

The background image is terrible but that has already been mentioned a few times. Why do you have a language box with only one language?

 

So that's my two cents for now.

[angelkelly]

"The category counts dont add up. For instance, you have a count of 230 earrings but only 2 categories with 112 products and 6 products not in any category? Personally I'd loose the counts and find your missing products!"

 

I see what you mean. I have 118 products in that folder and 112 items in 2 seperate folders(hoops and studs). I'll create a third foder and put the 118 items in.

 

Thanks for letting me know about the background image, er I thought it looked quite good, but I think I'll design something else to put in there as so many people dislike it - lol

 

Language box: I just figured how to take the other two out, so I'll be scouring the forums to see how to take out the box too. As I agree it does look poop.

 

Problem with my images is that I 'inherit' them from the manufacturer and they are all different shapes and sizes. I had to mod the width to be the same in all as I have some chain pics which throws the whole site out if left unchecked and creates some rather nasty looking white space at either end. But then if I specify a height and width, the images become skewed and quite bad representations of the product. Might try putting the chains in vertically then specifying the height to see if this helps.

 

Thanks for letting me know about the speed babygurgles, I've just checked this site for as much advice as possible and havent really done anything major to it to be honest. But its good to know its quick.

 

I really appreciate the advice guys, thank you!

[angelkelly]

just so I know: is it the actual picture you dislike or the fact that its so dark? I have lightened it up considerably so that its barely there - does this look better?

 

I'm thinking that 90% of my custom is going to be female - that in mind - how do you think it looks now?

[Guest]

just so I know: is it the actual picture you dislike or the fact that its so dark? I have lightened it up considerably so that its barely there - does this look better?

 

I'm thinking that 90% of my custom is going to be female - that in mind - how do you think it looks now?

 

For images use a thumbnailer and if you want to speed up things you could use some of the available cache modules. The cache HTML includes a cache thumbnailer so you can have significant performance improvement.

 

You shouldn't need to edit the manufacturer's images at all. The thumbnailer takes care of that with respect to image size and aspect ratio.

[angelkelly]

Thanks enigma!

 

I've resized the piccys, but will look in to the cache html mod, as I'm bound to have other images in future that dont fit the mould.

 

earrings are all in cats now and Im just going through looking for missing pics.

 

thank you for all the advice!

I'd appreciate any more views that anyone has

[compwhizmm90]

Thanks enigma!

 

I've resized the piccys, but will look in to the cache html mod, as I'm bound to have other images in future that dont fit the mould.

 

earrings are all in cats now and Im just going through looking for missing pics.

 

thank you for all the advice!

I'd appreciate any more views that anyone has

 

I'm looking at your site. Here are a few suggestions.

 

1. You need to make the grey bars from the stock design match your logo. Right now it looks like it doesn't belong. This can be done is stylesheet.css

2. You have no meta tags. Your site's title needs to be fixed

3. The yellow buttons don't match anything

4. The product information thumbnail is too small

5. Put your contact info above the conatct us form. Right now it is difficult to see down there

6. The yellow buttons don't match anything

7. As said before install the product listing in columns contribution

8. delete the language box (includes/column_right.php)

9. The background image doesn't tile correctly. Find a background image that tiles

10. Not a big fan of the logo. It is hard to see the site name.

 

There are 100's of things you could do. If you are wanting to get away from that stock design, look for the basic design pack contribution. That can help you get a start. http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contri...asic+for+design

 

Hopefully that helps!

[compwhizmm90]

I forgot to mention something. If you don't know how to change some of the colors. This can help you out.

 

You need to open stylesheet.css in the root directory. You can edit this with notepad if you don't have any type of editor.

 

This website will introduce you to css: http://www.csstutorial.net/introductionCSS.php

 

This shows you what to edit in your css: http://www.oscommerce.info/kb/osCommerce/C...n_and_Layout/54

 

That should help

[Victor Wise]

I think bigger thumbnail picture's of your merchandise would go a long way to make your items look more enticing.

 

Also, I'm not a big fan of the way the color's match on your site. I see what you were trying to do with the log - using purple as that color symbolizes royalty - but I don't think that piece of color psychology transcends into e-commerce. Sorry.

 

While we are talking about color's; I would recommend changing the text below your thumbnail pictures to either a blue, or underlined blue, hyperlink. After all, underlined blue hyeprlinks have higher clickthrough rates than others.

 

As babygurgles said; the site is very fast though :) That is definitely a plus.

[angelkelly]

Thanks for all that guys, all advice appreciated!

 

I've took on board what you have been saying and basically gave the site a whole new look

 

What do you think?

 

Still a couple of things, like thumbnailer, the white writing on top bar (cant seem to find that one out) and on my new featured products bar - but all in the process as of right now

[angelkelly]

Thumbnailer sorted - it looks about 100 times better now-lol

[Guest]

Thumbnailer sorted - it looks about 100 times better now-lol

 

I am getting a fatal table error.

[Philth]

same here.

[jdice]

I like the color you used...that green really makes the your silver jewelry stand out. And its original.

 

Maybe you could add a lighter shade of the green to your background.

 

Looks nice...so far.