Please I Need Your Feedback On My First Store

[Guest]

Hello everyone,

 

First I would like to thank everyone for the help to the problems I have had while trying to build my site. Also to all the other people that have had problems and posted in the forums how the problem was fixed. I spent many of hours searching the forums for answers to my problems since my php knowledge is ……well I would say zilch.

 

I have added a lot of add-ons and great contributions from all of the Oscommerce family and friends. I think I am ready for some constructive criticism. I will list most of the add-ons so you will know what to expect:

 

STS, Category Descriptions, Admin Specials by Categories, AWStats, Must Agree, Product Listings Columns,All Products, All Manufactures, Individual Boxes for Products, Header Tags, All Manufactures, Specials on Index and Categories, Login Box, Dynamic Sitemap, Searching 404 Page, PayPal IPN, Easy Populate, Percent Rate Shipping, Free Shipping

 

As anyone who has made a site they know you get tunnel vision when creating a new site and you don’t see some of the problems. If you like (I know I would like you to :-" ) you can create a username and password check out the website. I have even created a way to complete the purchase without you paying anything and me being able to cancel the sale once I receive the order. When you are completing the payment of the checkout process choose “This is for testing purposes only and products will not ship and no charges will be accessed.” The only thing I will not be able to test right now is the PayPal and Credit card purchasing, I will test this later. Unless someone would like to purchase an Item that is.

 

I would like to have as much criticism as possible from the colors to not liking where something is located (you might think it would look better over here rather then there.)

 

I would like to thank everyone for their help and feedback.

 

 

Larry Forbes Jr

Link: Fireflyminimall.com

[Guest]

Nobody has any suggestions or criticism? Please I would like your feedback the problem with the security certificate has been corrected now.

[PD_Steve]

Heys

 

Nice site, but there are a few things I would do.

 

Firstly, your obviously highly competent at adding contributions, so put in one to create better thumbnails. Your using the stock system which does create poor quality representations of the image. Find one that uses the GD library (if your host has included GD) and you will notice an immediately quality boost.

 

Second. Remove the hits counter. Its not something I would recommend because it may give a negative impression of your store if your hits are low as no one will now when your shop opened making your store look unpopular.

 

Third. Centralise the bottom copyright notice. Its aligned a bit too much to the left currently.

 

Personal Opinions. The font you have used for the footer and header I am not overly keen on but this is my personal taste. Is it a standard font or something that others will not see (I have 3,200 fonts on this PC, so I generally see the site with the chosen font showing over defaults).

 

Dynamenu implementation is nice but I would include a border line at the top of the drop downs.

 

Overall though, nice site and good design.

[Guest]

Hello,

 

The basic layout is good.

 

I agree with everything listed above. Especially changing the font on the bottom nav and using a better thumbnailer.

 

Also,

 

The aquamarine used as the top background behind "fire-fly" minimall clashes with the green hues in the trees and the firefly gif.

 

I am not crazy about your patterned background stopping at the top of dynamenu. I would either nix the background or try to expand it into the header image.

 

I would put the stores box above the login box in your left nav, get rid of the arrows and enlarge the font a little bit.

 

Try to find category heading title images that match the colors you are using (brown, grey, green). You have some pink and purple that look out of place. Maybe an image with some brown in it to tie in your buttons.

 

Finally, I have never been fond of the "this product added to our catalog" on the product info page.

 

Good Site, I wish you the best.

[madcrazygirl]

I get a warning about your security certificate :(

 

.......IE 6.0

[Jaide]

I like the layout. What did you do/use for the FAQ page? Was it just coding or is that a contrib? It looks nice and neat.

[♥Vger]

Well, I'm not getting any warning about the Security Cert.

 

Overall - a very good looking website (check my posts - I don't often say that).

 

One very small thing - I don't think that the brown colourof the 'Continue' button matches the general colour scheme of the website.

 

Vger

[Guest]

Sorry has taken me so long to respond. I would like to thank all of you for your gracious thoughts and opinions. If I have not already I will be making most of the suggested changes.

Better thumbnails Find one that uses the GD library (if your host has included GD) and you will notice an immediately quality boost.

I will be looking into the different options that are available and figuring out what exactly GD library is. :blush: Like I said before most of this is new to me but more than willing to learn new things.

The aquamarine used as the top background behind "fire-fly" minimall clashes with the green hues in the trees and the firefly gif.

I will be seeing what looks better, I am thinking about Catherine idea and removing the background on the top banner completely and just using the same background for the rest of the site.

I don't think that the brown color of the 'Continue' button matches the general color scheme of the website.

I will also be looking at a different design (color) that will better match the colors and design of the store.

Try to find category heading title images that match the colors you are using (brown, grey, green). You have some pink and purple that look out of place. Maybe an image with some brown in it to tie in your buttons.

I never even thought about this I will look into some different images.

I get a warning about your security certificate .......IE 6.0

I don't like this I fought with my host for almost a week about this, are you or is anyone else getting this warning?

I like the layout. What did you do/use for the FAQ page? Was it just coding or is that a contrib? It looks nice and neat.

This is not a contribution it is coded in HTML it is a menu I found a couple years ago and modified to work the way I want it to. If you would like a copy you can email me and I will be more than willing to share everyone else has been more than helpful and did not think I would be able to return the favor but would love to. You can email me at admin at fireflyminimall.com.

 

Sorry about be so long winded but I prefer to respond to everyone that has been gracious enough to take there time to critic my site. Thanks again for the feedback and I would love to hear more ideas or suggestions.

[Jaide]

This is not a contribution it is coded in HTML it is a menu I found a couple years ago and modified to work the way I want it to. If you would like a copy you can email me and I will be more than willing to share everyone else has been more than helpful and did not think I would be able to return the favor but would love to. You can email me at admin at fireflyminimall.com.

 

Thank you!

[Guest]

Can I have your suggestions on the color of the BACK button on this page please?

 

Product page

[georgec]

Can I have your suggestions on the color of the BACK button on this page please?

 

Product page

 

 

Hi,

A few observations

- Your "Add to Cart" button on the product_info.php - make it different from other buttons.. add a little shopping cart to it or something. Right now it blends in with the rest of the buttons

- Your little grey shopping cart button on most of the product buttons - took me a few clicks around to figure out that it is an actual button. I suggest you change it adding something like "buy now" to it, unless you're keeping it for decoration purposes.

- "more info".. change it to "click for more info" or "click for more"... tell your customer what to do!

- Buttons in general - the pseudo-3d-woodenblock style doesnt match the rest of your site. I like the style you have for your Back button more. Search the contrib site section of this website - there're some green buttons that may fit your style. Just stick to a flat theme.

- "Your cart has: ..." I actually had to look around your site to find that mini shopping cart. Imagine someone is on 800x600 resolution - they'll never see it!. The user is used to look in the top right corner for their items mas they're shopping (amazon, ebay, etc). If you want to sell, learn from the success of others. Make things visible, make your design guide your customer in the right direction, calling for action, etc. If you want to keep it on that side, fine. Move the visa/mastercard box down to the bottom of the column, put a 1px border around your menu boxes or at least border-bottom to the cells holding the box headings.

- your top banner (https://www.fireflyminimall.com/store/catalog/images/minimall.jpg) is overcompressed. Makes it look a bit smudged.

- you're mixing serif and sans-serif fonts (arial and times new roman?) Which is not necessarily bad but try to stick to two fonts. e.g. use Serif for headings, sans-serif (arial) for the content

 

my $0.02 (actually more like $0.07) :rolleyes:

[Jaide]

The links on rollover (the blue), I would change that, and take out the -> in the links as well. The color for the back button looks nice.

 

- Kids Corner - the background is a bit too chaotic for me. Also, Puzzles, Mazes has no apostrophe.

- I would take out all of the osCommerce stock images in the corner of the pages

[Guest]

Hi,

A few observations

- Your "Add to Cart" button on the product_info.php - make it different from other buttons.. add a little shopping cart to it or something. Right now it blends in with the rest of the buttons

- Your little grey shopping cart button on most of the product buttons - took me a few clicks around to figure out that it is an actual button. I suggest you change it adding something like "buy now" to it, unless you're keeping it for decoration purposes.

- "more info".. change it to "click for more info" or "click for more"... tell your customer what to do!

- Buttons in general - the pseudo-3d-woodenblock style doesnt match the rest of your site. I like the style you have for your Back button more. Search the contrib site section of this website - there're some green buttons that may fit your style. Just stick to a flat theme.

- "Your cart has: ..." I actually had to look around your site to find that mini shopping cart. Imagine someone is on 800x600 resolution - they'll never see it!. The user is used to look in the top right corner for their items mas they're shopping (amazon, ebay, etc). If you want to sell, learn from the success of others. Make things visible, make your design guide your customer in the right direction, calling for action, etc. If you want to keep it on that side, fine. Move the visa/mastercard box down to the bottom of the column, put a 1px border around your menu boxes or at least border-bottom to the cells holding the box headings.

- your top banner (https://www.fireflyminimall.com/store/catalog/images/minimall.jpg) is overcompressed. Makes it look a bit smudged.

- you're mixing serif and sans-serif fonts (arial and times new roman?) Which is not necessarily bad but try to stick to two fonts. e.g. use Serif for headings, sans-serif (arial) for the content

 

my $0.02 (actually more like $0.07) :rolleyes:

 

Very Nice and through thoughts and opinions I would like to thank you. I will be making most of these changes buy the beginning of next week. Thank you for taking the time to compile this list.

 

Jaide S. I will be changing the rest of the buttons to match the back button. I have been fighting with taking out the images in the corner or not I will remove them and see what it looks like and the kids corner I will be sooner or later converting all the pages into information pages within the store so that they better match the site and are smoother. I will correct the spelling problems also thanks. I will also take a look at the blue links.

[Guest]

I wont repeat what others have said here so onto my comments:

 

I am not quite sure how the kids corner fits in with your site? It might be a good thing for kids and I have no doubt they might like it but I am not sure it fits with what you are selling?

 

I personally would introduce a separate home page to explain what you are selling. Because at the moment I am not sure why I would buy from you or what I might buy?

 

Please please get rid of the clip art category images, come up with some simple icons to represent your categories instead.