First osCommerce store - comments?

[sucklebuster]

Hi There,

 

This is my first store (with a lot of help - THANKS Nick) using osCommerce. I am pleased...looking for feedback on general impressions and any specific SEO ideas/comments/suggestions?

 

www.sucklebusters.com

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

[lindsayanng]

i like to look and feel od the site. Nice and clean and pretty easy to navigate.

 

personally, right off the bat, the FIRST thing that jumped out was ALL THAT TEXT on your main page. NO ONE is going to read that,a nd that is PRIME realestate for getting people to buy something. I would move the text to an ABOUT US page or something, and use all that space to make a nice, eye-catching graphic to lure your customers to your gift baskets, or to another product.

 

the product listing and descriptions are pretty basic, but thats ok because the rest of the site matches it.. I would add a short description to show in your product listing. A short description can entice new customers who dont know your products to just add to cart without clicking to get more info.

 

i would consider a purchase without account option for your customers. My research tells me that many people will leave a website if they are FORCED to create an account. I thought it was odd, but i am not the only one who found this when asking around.

 

Another thing is the little grpahics like the KEYS on the create account/login page dont match your site that well.. they seem like basic, purchased graphics. I think somethign that matches your feel is a better idea.

 

I also think that your contact us would be better if you have the SUPER CONTACT US contribution which allows you to put all of your shop addresses, phone numbers, and departments. It makes your site seem more "real" Also, you shoudl add a visual verification image to stop spamming.

[♥FWR Media]

Generally simple but nice.

 

The images are WAY too big you need to ..

 

a) Reduce the image sizes (kb not px)

 

b ) Add an auto thumbnailer contribution which would take the thumb images from e.g. 69kb to maybe 5-6 kb with no loss of graphics.

 

Secondly if you look at the big food sellers there is more graphics and less text, perhaps some "mouth watering" graphics to replace bulky text.

[sucklebuster]

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

 

 

i like to look and feel od the site. Nice and clean and pretty easy to navigate.

 

personally, right off the bat, the FIRST thing that jumped out was ALL THAT TEXT on your main page. NO ONE is going to read that,a nd that is PRIME realestate for getting people to buy something. I would move the text to an ABOUT US page or something, and use all that space to make a nice, eye-catching graphic to lure your customers to your gift baskets, or to another product.

 

OK, I have a question here - I have received lots of advice on this item, mostly that the search engines are looking for 300+ words of relevent text to receive high rankings. So this is why the big text box ended up there...any comments on the affect of moving all the text and my ranking?

 

the product listing and descriptions are pretty basic, but thats ok because the rest of the site matches it.. I would add a short description to show in your product listing. A short description can entice new customers who dont know your products to just add to cart without clicking to get more info.

 

I agree 100%, but the text enty box is so tiny in the editing module - is that standard?

 

i would consider a purchase without account option for your customers. My research tells me that many people will leave a website if they are FORCED to create an account. I thought it was odd, but i am not the only one who found this when asking around.

 

hummmmmm, Ok you got me thinking.

 

Another thing is the little grpahics like the KEYS on the create account/login page dont match your site that well.. they seem like basic, purchased graphics. I think somethign that matches your feel is a better idea.

 

Totally agree, will happen soon.

 

I also think that your contact us would be better if you have the SUPER CONTACT US contribution which allows you to put all of your shop addresses, phone numbers, and departments. It makes your site seem more "real" Also, you shoudl add a visual verification image to stop spamming.

 

another good idea, thx.

[sucklebuster]

Generally simple but nice.

 

The images are WAY too big you need to ..

 

a) Reduce the image sizes (kb not px)

 

b ) Add an auto thumbnailer contribution which would take the thumb images from e.g. 69kb to maybe 5-6 kb with no loss of graphics.

 

Secondly if you look at the big food sellers there is more graphics and less text, perhaps some "mouth watering" graphics to replace bulky text.

 

Thanks - I will take a look at this. BTW, which file format is prefable - JPG, GIF?

[luckyno]

Thanks - I will take a look at this. BTW, which file format is prefable - JPG, GIF?

 

jpg for images/photos and gif for graphics that doesn't have gradients... ecc ecc...

 

You can compress photos with photoshop or acdsee pro, you can compress them with the contrib: on the fly auto thumbnailer.