Feedback Need For My Site

[Guest]

Hi Everyone,

 

I have just completed surgery on my website. I'm sure you've all been at this stage - having spent countless weeks fiddling with code, never being sure of the overall look and feel of your site.

Please be patient if things are a little slow at the moment. I am planning to increase bandwidth very soon. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks

 

David

Business Digest

[usernamenone]

Looks professional but takes forever to download and there is a warning about your ssl certificate. Says it is from a not trusted

[abra123cadabra]

Your index page took a whooping 56 secs to load on a 4 Mbps uncontented dsl connection and according to Firefox its 1.26 MB. Sorry, but that's way too big.

 

A look at the source tells me that you load your stylesheet 3 times.

 

Clicked to go here: http://www.businessdigest.co.uk/showroom_302.php and again, it takes 38 secs for 1.1 MB.

 

Why do you have to load the movies up front? Honestly, I don't like sites wasting my download allowance for something I'll not even watch.

 

Otherwise, I don't really get what your site is all about. There is a shopping cart almost hidden on the page but I haven't got a clue what you are selling and, you guessed it, I'll not dig any further with these massive pages and load times.

 

Maybe start by switching on GZIP compression in your admin.

 

abra

[♥FWR Media]

Adding to what abra said

 

Connection Rate Download Time

14.4K 1130.15 seconds

28.8K 568.87 seconds

33.6K 488.69 seconds

56K 296.25 seconds

ISDN 128K 96.00 seconds

T1 1.44Mbps 15.27 seconds

 

That is HUGE!! No-one will wait for it to load.

[eitai2001]

Hi.

 

In the middle there is a yellowish picture that says "Small business and contractors get a quote in minutes" ... simple change really ... just add an 's after business so it reads "Small business's and contractors get a quote in minutes"

[Guest]

Adding to what abra said

 

Connection Rate Download Time

14.4K 1130.15 seconds

28.8K 568.87 seconds

33.6K 488.69 seconds

56K 296.25 seconds

ISDN 128K 96.00 seconds

T1 1.44Mbps 15.27 seconds

 

That is HUGE!! No-one will wait for it to load.

Now that I have more info about it, you need to be aware how that tool you're using really works. Because you mentioned it elsewhere.

 

It does not compute download times. It merely parses the html code calculating each image's size and html size for each resource included and then makes a calculation how long it would take to parse the page and to show the results.

 

In my opinion this is alchemy. Browsers don't work like that, they won't download the same thing over and over again and they will utilize their cache.

 

If you run some more tests with your store, like placing a simple php script without using osC, that does

<?php
sleep (10);
echo 'Hello World';
?>

which injects a delay of 10 seconds as you can see, that computation will show "excellent performance" a 200mSecs response which of course is false. And that's when I noticed that SSL pages were coming with the same timings as NON-SSL pages that I mentioned the previous time when you posted similar results.

 

So the timings shown are totally irrelevant with what really happens.

[♥FWR Media]

I find it a very good basic judge of page size and spotting problems with page size for dial up users.

 

If you choose not to use it then that's fine Enigma but the coders of the "development tools" for Firefox seem to think it's valuable and I imagine they are as knowledgeable as even you Enigma :D

 

and please don't use posts where I'm trying to help to try to show how clever you are .. no-one is interested.

[usernamenone]

I for one am interested in what Enigma1 has to say, and there is no need for your attitude Robert Fisher aka Babygurgles.

We can all post and should be able to without being treated like that.

 

 

I find it a very good basic judge of page size and spotting problems with page size for dial up users.

 

If you choose not to use it then that's fine Enigma but the coders of the "development tools" for Firefox seem to think it's valuable and I imagine they are as knowledgeable as even you Enigma :D

 

and please don't use posts where I'm trying to help to try to show how clever you are .. no-one is interested.

[Victor Wise]

Now that I have more info about it, you need to be aware how that tool you're using really works. Because you mentioned it elsewhere.

 

It does not compute download times. It merely parses the html code calculating each image's size and html size for each resource included and then makes a calculation how long it would take to parse the page and to show the results.

 

In my opinion this is alchemy. Browsers don't work like that, they won't download the same thing over and over again and they will utilize their cache.

 

If you run some more tests with your store, like placing a simple php script without using osC, that does

<?php<BR>sleep (10);<BR>echo 'Hello World';<BR>?>

which injects a delay of 10 seconds as you can see, that computation will show "excellent performance" a 200mSecs response which of course is false. And that's when I noticed that SSL pages were coming with the same timings as NON-SSL pages that I mentioned the previous time when you posted similar results.

 

So the timings shown are totally irrelevant with what really happens.

I don't suppose anyone can translate this into english for me.... Is caching the only issue throwing off the accuracy?

 

Can the tool mentioned be used as an estimation, or is it completely untrustworthy? Are there any other tools online that can be used instead?

 

Sorry for my lack of knowledge regarding programming.

[♥FWR Media]

http://www.websiteoptimization.com

 

Is a part of the developers toolkit for firefox.

 

No-one is suggesting that the page load times are accurate as they are not but it can be a good indicator of a number of "page size" factors.

[♥FWR Media]

I find it a very good basic judge of page size and spotting problems with page size for dial up users.

 

If you choose not to use it then that's fine Enigma but the coders of the "development tools" for Firefox seem to think it's valuable and I imagine they are as knowledgeable as even you Enigma :D

 

and please don't use posts where I'm trying to help to try to show how clever you are .. no-one is interested.

 

 

Hmmm I could have been more diplomatic here, apologies Enigma, must have been in a bad mood last night.

 

Suggesting that I don't know how it works though was rather rude of you as I am fully aware of how it works and still maintain that is is an excellent tool for a snapshot of page size leading to load times (first time load especially).

[abra123cadabra]

The load times I gave were the ones I see in Firefox statusbar (also an add-on). The first number is seconds until the first bit of a page is displayed, the second gives the seconds till the page was complete. The third gives the KB or in this case MB loaded from the server, not adding the images and files taken from cache.

 

This speed for every individual visitor depends on lots of factors like your internet connection (speed and contention rate, meaning how many people share this line), distance from client to server, the route from me to the server, the server speed etc. The analysis by above mentioned webservice is quite helpful as it shows you potential areas of trouble like number and size of your images and all other scripts called when loading your page.

 

From what I read up on the last days, a good way should be to cache as much as possible on the client side (images, stylesheet) and to serve the rest (php file generating the html) compressed using GZIP (in your admin panel, compression level 6 is default on most servers but level 1 should do the trick using less computing time). Like this I could reduce my allprods.php (a listing page with 25 products) from 53 kb to 5 kb and my stylesheet from 15 kb to 4 kb. Another source of long load times is the number of requests made to the server. So combining images into one and then using css and positioning reduces overall image size and server requests.

 

Sorry for drifting away from the main point of this thread: feedback for Business Digest. As stated earlier, the size of the pages and with this the load times are going to drive potential customers away. For my liking, there is too much going on on the index page and I haven't got a clue of what it is all about or, more important, where I should go from here.

 

I guess a lot of your visitors probably know the print issue of your magazine.

 

In the left column is a navigation with these points:

ENTERPRISE DISPATCH

MOTORING SHOWROOM

LATEST MOTORING NEWS

ACCOUNT INFORMATION

MOTOR INSURANCE

CONTACT INFO

LATEST PRESS RELEASE

AUTO SHOWROOM PLUS

ADVERTISING RATES

First of all, capitalised text is very hard to read and the navigation is something a quick glance should tell me where to click. In between this list is the contact info and the account information. Either sort this list by areas of interes or A-Z. Like this I wouldn't spot the contact info link. I wouldn't look in there for it.

 

Hm, you are using osC, so it's some kind of e-commerce, meaning, you sell something which I can put in my cart. I saw the shopping cart on showroom_01 (now the logo says Business AUTO). I have no clue where I am on the site and apart from the product on the left, I can't find a listing with your products.

 

I think it's not a good idea to change the logo within the site without indicating in some way that the visitor will swith to a different department when following a link. Your site is so complex that you definitely should think about putting the breadcrumb back in. Or at least highlight the navigation link that brought me to the page I'm on now. I AM LOST!!! - after 1 click.

 

So now I put this auto cd player in my cart. Three buttons: "update", "ok" and "checkout". "ok"??? Hovering with the mouse reveals, it's the continue shopping button, bringing me back to the product page I came from. It's not a good idea to invent new names which are, like in this case, meaningless to the visitor. I would expect it to mean "yes, that's what I expect to be in my cart" but then again, why should I confirm this?

 

Now I'm back on the product page and would like to shop some more... but where are the other products? Following through to shipping and return, gives another product offer in the left column. "Motor Show Stand", curious, I click and am now confronted with an offer to buy 1sqm show stand space for an exhibition. "buy" (where do I select more than 1 sqm?). Now I have a cd player and 1 sqm exhibition space in my cart. Now I could change the size but hey, that's not really clear to the average customer.

 

Best of all, while I was on the show stand product page, there was another auto player on the left. Maybe that's a better one? How do I get there? Again, you lost a potential customer. My observations over the last year are: if you think it's obvious and clear how to navigate and use your site, make it even easier and clearer as 20% or more of your visitors still get lost.

 

Oh, and by the way, the infobox that shows me these different products is called "auto pick of the week". I would expect it to show one item for a whole week and not random products.

 

I'm on the shopping cart page now and want to see this other player but now I can only pick the allow wheel. Not quite what I was looking for right now. So I'll click on this offer of the week until I see the player again. Had to click about 20 times until the player came up. In between where cars and a phone and several times the show stand. The product info tells me the player is no longer available but there is still the buy button. and guess what, it still adds the player to the cart. On the cart page is no message that this item is not available.

 

Let's continue to checkout. Ups, my browser doesn't know the issuer of your SSL certificate and asks me to decide if I trust you. I can also see your certificate details. Hm, www.businessdigest.co.uk issued the certificate to www.businessdigest.co.uk. Somewhere in between Verisign is mentioned (I know them). Not very trustworthy, issuer and issued to being the same. Let's trust you for the sake of this review (I wouldn't in real life).

 

Make the link to Terms and Conditions (which I have to agree that I have read them) underlined. This

Register at businessdigest.co.uk and Subscribe to Business Digest Magazine!

is not good. I want to purchase 2 players (one not available) and 1 sqm show stand and I definitely don't want to subscribe to the magazine! Another point to have potential customers abandon their cart. I'll not give you my details on the following page as I'm not sure what if I already commit to something I don't want.

 

Ok, I'll leave it for now. I'm convinced that the site as it is now, is absolutely useless to any potential customer.

 

abra

[Guest]

Ok, to respond to some of the comments:

 

I don't suppose anyone can translate this into english for me.... Is caching the only issue throwing off the accuracy?

The issue is, that thing does not take into account the server's response and uses a poor way of calculating the html page sizes by making all kinds of assumptions. In general with sites that create pages (dynamically like osCommerce) it gives totally false results as it was proven.

 

I find it a very good basic judge of page size and spotting problems with page size for dial up users.

 

If you choose not to use it then that's fine Enigma but the coders of the "development tools" for Firefox seem to think it's valuable and I imagine they are as knowledgeable as even you Enigma

If you knew, why didn't you explained how it worked, especially when you mentioned that my store was "taking too long" and you posted similar results. The only hint I had at the time is when a script does not run on the server end (external) has no way of calculating the server response, sql queries etc and therefore cannot be trusted in terms of timings, speaking of osc stores.

 

In contrast, using the basic osc download time switch gives far more accurate results for someone who tries to do speed optimization (osc Admin->Configuration->Logging). And then there are plenty of contributions that are much more effective. In fact the osC with contributions have far more advanced ways for calculating response and page load times than that thing.

 

No-one is suggesting that the page load times are accurate as they are not but it can be a good indicator of a number of "page size" factors.

Good indicator? Well I just pointed earlier a script that takes 10 Seconds to load, shows up with 200 mSecs there. You find this a good indicator?

 

All and all, there is nothing personal here, just post some technical info when you mention this kind of results, so people aren't left in the dark

 

Sorry for drifting away from the main point of this thread: feedback for Business Digest.

 

Unfortunately, in this particular case, none of us really helps, as this store does not meet the osc criteria for feedback in the first place.

In addition to the general forum rules, any stores discussed in this channel must have the "Powered by osCommerce" text displayed on the site. Not only is the osCommerce solution being used, but valuable feedback will also be presented from the osCommerce community.

 

Please note that new topics are held for approval before they are made public. If the site does not contain the "Powered by osCommerce" text the topic will be deleted.

[abra123cadabra]

enigma1, you are spot on. Didn't realize that this is missing.

 

Sorry, got to ask this question: These topics are approved manually by a team member. Why was it approved if the most important criteria is missing?

 

Again, I, we all, wasted our time trying to help.

 

abra

[Guest]

enigma1, you are spot on. Didn't realize that this is missing.

 

Sorry, got to ask this question: These topics are approved manually by a team member. Why was it approved if the most important criteria is missing?

 

Again, I, we all, wasted our time trying to help.

 

abra

Yes it can be approved as I understand when it had the osc info on, but could be that the store owner removed it afterwards.

[Guest]

Hello everyone,

 

A quick update. I am still looking around for a decent host as my site is still held locally... I hope this goes some way to explain the slow download speeds some of you were encountering. Anyway, thanks for all the comments. It will take some time getting things up to scratch by the looks of things.

 

I'm convinced that the site as it is now, is absolutely useless to any potential customer... For my liking, there is too much going on on the index page and I haven't got a clue of what it is all about

 

Abra123cadabra, whilst I'm in your debt for pointing out some of the more glaring irregularities, such as navigation, you've missed the whole raison d'etre of the site. We mainly sell off-line advertising space - not Booze! Though I wish we did sometimes...

 

Cheers anyway ;)

[abra123cadabra]

Do you think your visitors will see the link to your rate sheet at the bottom of the page and realize that this is the main purpose of this site? I doubt it.

 

abra

[Guest]

Do you think your visitors will see the link to your rate sheet at the bottom of the page and realize that this is the main purpose of this site? I doubt it.

 

abra

 

Hello again Abra,

 

You are clearly a man of genius - well spotted. However, the link you mention is purely a supplemental strapline as the main link is listed 2nd top left "Advertising Rates" so there are 2 links on every page... Never had an objection from a prospect on that issue as they always find the link once through with playing with the toys. :)

 

Thanx again

 

David