Flags and Kites

[Wallyr41]

Firstly let me thank all the people who contributed to osc. My installed contributions include, Ultimate SEO, CDynamic Meta Tags, Easy Checkout, Heater Tags, Best Sellers, Link Manager II, Sitemap, About Us and one or two more that I probably missed. Just a simple store with simple layout, Where to improve is the next step so tell me what you think.

This is a live site.

Walt

http://www.flagsandkites.com

[♥geoffreywalton]

Saw at least 2 broken images.

 

Colours differ between bread crumb bar and box title strips.

 

Inconsistent rounded boxes.

 

Very deep page, can't see what you are selling without scrolling down big time.

 

No product reviews, do one even if you sign it your self.

 

You have replaced most but not all stock osc images, see home page.

[Obewanz]

Quick check and I see the following;

 

Reduce the number of featuered items being displayed on the index by setting in [configuration] [maximum values] [product featured maximum display] and set to a value of 3, 6 or 9 but no more than 12. (I think 6 is a good number for this setting personally.)

 

Fix the colors - the purple/fuschia is ok if that is the main color that you want to use, but get rid of the cyan, it shouldn't be used as a contrast color with anything but certain shades of blue and other very limited colors. It is so very 1980s especially when the proper design/color rules are not followed. This happens to be one of the few colors that was available to novice users so it has that stigma attached to it as well amongst computer savvy folks.

 

I'll come back later and check deeper into the site, but this should give you some things to think about.

[Zews]

Check your scrolling new products compatibily whit firefox and other browsers like opera and/or safari. When i find a website that is broken for firefox i usually dont take the time to open ie and research the site, i just leave, and that's a lost sale.

[Wallyr41]

Saw at least 2 broken images.

 

Colours differ between bread crumb bar and box title strips.

 

Inconsistent rounded boxes.

 

Very deep page, can't see what you are selling without scrolling down big time.

 

No product reviews, do one even if you sign it your self.

 

You have replaced most but not all stock osc images, see home page.

[Wallyr41]

geoffreywalton

 

Thanks for the review, Couldn't find the two broken images just yet but will work on that, I took out the ugly breadcrumb color and just left it white for now, problem with the rounded corners in my info boxes, I was able to change the left side but when I changed the right side corners, I lost the arrows pointing to more info in the Shopping Cart, Review box and Specials Box.

No more scrolling down, I limited the amount of Featured Products to 6. For some reason and I don't know why, my customers can't leave a review anymore; I can't seem to find the location or a good post on reviews. I will work on the other oscommerce images later. Thanks again Walt

 

Obewanz

 

Thanks for the information. I reduced the number of Featured Products to shorten the scrolling. I set the max values to 6 and it seems to work. As for the ugly color, I'm working on a completely new logo and it wont be the purple/fuchsia and yes I'm a novice. Thanks again Walt

 

Zews

 

Thanks, I really don't understand what you’re telling me, are you referring to the scrolling Best Sellers?

"Check your scrolling new products compatibly whit firefox and other browsers like opera and/or safari. When I find a website that is broken for firefox" Could you put this in laymen terms.

Thanks again Walt

[Guest]

First glance impressions:

 

I don't like that the info box title lies flush with the box border. A 1 pixel padding would look better.

 

It's fine if you want the top level of your breadcrumb to be labeled "Home", but renaming it to "Flags and Kites" is a good branding opportunity.

 

I don't know if the gray header works with the fuchsia...the color of the word "guest" (Welcome Guest!) is certainly hard to read on a white background.

 

I find the scrolling bestsellers a little annoying.

 

The cyan horizontal rule above the footer needs to be a different color (perhaps fuchsia?).

 

Your payment logos look stretched. Check to make sure they aren't being set at a bigger size than they actually are.

 

Hope that helps.

[Obewanz]

Ok,

Another quick visit - as promised...

 

The product images are too small. I'm viewing at a screen res of 1280x1024 on a 17" monitor using IE7.0. Most other items are very comfortable for me to view with these settings. However, your product images are not very good quality and are too small for me to see much.

 

The mouseover color for your links should probably be changed (check the stylesheet.css file) to something else, probably the fuschia color or a little darker would work with the site colors well.

 

Get rid of the stock osc images for things like "Write A Review" and "Notifications", they really should be updated in the core package, but it hasn't happened in 7 years so I don't look for it anytime soon.

 

The navigation bar at the time, some call the breadcrumb bar or header bar, should probably have a color behind it. I think the same color that you use as a background on your infoboxes would work ok for this purpose. The information kinda gets lost in the site and doesn't get picked up very well by my eyes. :blush: (Another thought might be to put a thin fuschia colored line just below it or above and below.)

 

These things will probably keep you busy for some time. After that, try a few contributions. Oh, you should probably check out the Secret Questions contribution and use it (found here: http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/5781). (Plug not intended!) :shifty:

[Andrew Yuen]

Site Review for: Flags and Kites

 

It is important to make sure that each product info page contains unique Meta descriptions and keywords for each product. Although what you place in the Meta keywords tag and Meta description tag does not give any weight in the ranking algorithms of Google, it may affect what appears in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). For more information please visit the link below:

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/2714

 

Consider your Title Tag as a representation of your core keywords of the most important services and offerings. Make sure that your core keywords stand out in the title of your index page before anything else. Always remember to utilize the title tag on each individual URL for its specific keyword(s) and keyword phrases.

 

Alt tags are important because:

Some of the web users cannot see images, be they blind (convert text to speech or Braille output), color-blind, low-sighted etc. The alt attribute gives them an idea of what's on the page.

Search engines do index alt attributes as well. Make sure each image on your store contains relavent alt tags.

 

Acceptable forms of payment should be clearly displayed on your store to let customers know exactly what forms of payment are accepted. This may include displaying credit card, Google Checkout or Paypal logos. This information should preferably be displayed in the footer. However, under certain circumstances when site pages are too long this information should be displayed within an infobox. See the following module for instructions on how to create a Credit Card Payment Logo Box:

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/5413

 

Check your link rollover/hover colors. They should match your color scheme.

 

Sometimes simpler is better. Presenting lots of information to users often leads to confusion. I suggest that you reduce the number of infoboxes located within your store. For example, often the currencies and language infoboxes can be removed if only US dollar and English are being offered as options.

 

The standard format for US addresses is: Street Address, City, State, Post Code, and Country. I suggest that you move the Post Code field below the State/Province field on both the signup and address book entry edit page. (create_account.php, address_book_process.php).

 

A Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. The main purpose of CAPTCHA is to prevent spam. I suggest installing this module. In addition, if your contact us page contains email addresses, consider removing them. For more information please visit the link below:

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/4960

 

I suggest switching to an Amazon style login example here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/sign-in.html This form of login in my opinion is very familiar to many online shoppers. For more information please visit the link below:

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/2073

 

 

Comments:

 

Make sure the product pictures on your home page contain alt tag information. Also you have layout issues with the static products on your home page. I would consider centering the top row of products. For your product video demos, consider integrating a built in video player so that users don\'t have to download the video onto their local commuter to view the demo. I would also consider removing some of the unnecessary info boxes on your site to make the overall appearance of your site less cluttered.

 

 

Andrew's Overall Score:

64/100 = 64%

[Zews]

Zews

 

Thanks, I really don't understand what you’re telling me, are you referring to the scrolling Best Sellers?

"Check your scrolling new products compatibly whit firefox and other browsers like opera and/or safari. When I find a website that is broken for firefox" Could you put this in laymen terms.

Thanks again Walt

 

Open you store in a firefox browser, you'll see what i'm talking about. Yes, i'm referring to the scrolling Best Sellers, but i see that you fixed it already.

[Wallyr41]

Thanks for all the feedback, WOW it will take me a while to sort through all this. It sure made me feel good to know that I built it myself, took me almost a year to get this far. Thanks again for the advice, I'll keep working and trying to improve.

Walt