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What do you think?


Kroggers

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Posted

I know we still have some work to do, but any feedback would be really nice - www.coolcavaracing.com/catalog

 

We have hit one problem which we are working on. The ISP we are using will not support SSL, so we have to change ISP :blink:

 

We will also replace the current hosted forum with our own phpbbs version which will be integrated with the shop in the future.

 

Thank you...

Posted

You've got to have Powered by OSCommerce featured on your store before you can get any feedback on this forum. Please do that, then you can get feedback.

Posted
You've got to have Powered by OSCommerce featured on your store before you can get any feedback on this forum. Please do that, then you can get feedback.

 

Sorry, it is fixed...

Posted

It's a nice looking site, just a few things:

 

You still have at least one default oscommerce icon (write review) that needs to be changed out.

You need SSL

Your subcategories are quite deep, and I thought that I was going nowhere. This was on the first car model. (don't know anything about cars so maybe it's just me) Without any pics to let me know, I thought I was just clicking for no reason. Maybe a trail of some sort would be helpful?

 

Your About Import page inferred it was about your company. It really isn't. It would be nice if it was about you guys, or make it clearer that you are talking about imports in general. When you click on the Manufacturer or on the About Us pages, might be nice to have a back button.

 

When you click on the Forum, it shifts the whole website left.

 

That's about it. Good luck with the site!

Posted

OMG those subcategories DO go on forever. i had no idea what i was looking at either.. You should have some kind of flyout menu to help organize that better.. i was confused about it too.. although i am not into cars that much either.

 

The look fo the site is pretty nice. I like the top navigation bar, the logo and header

 

I might get rid of the information box and move it to the footer as a linear menu like this

 

shipping and returns | Privacy | Terms and Coditions | Site Map | Contact Us

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

Posted
It's a nice looking site, just a few things:

 

You still have at least one default oscommerce icon (write review) that needs to be changed out.

You need SSL

Your subcategories are quite deep, and I thought that I was going nowhere. This was on the first car model. (don't know anything about cars so maybe it's just me) Without any pics to let me know, I thought I was just clicking for no reason. Maybe a trail of some sort would be helpful?

 

Your About Import page inferred it was about your company. It really isn't. It would be nice if it was about you guys, or make it clearer that you are talking about imports in general. When you click on the Manufacturer or on the About Us pages, might be nice to have a back button.

 

When you click on the Forum, it shifts the whole website left.

 

That's about it. Good luck with the site!

 

Thank you Debora

.- Yes, there are still some images that we need to change, but that is low priority at the moment.

.- I know we need SSL, it is in progress. We have to change ISP to get SSL - First time I have heard about an ISP that will not support SSL :(

.- The reason for the deep subcategories, is due to the large number of products we will have (once they are all uploaded). We are trying to avoid having very long lists of products - maybe not a good solution in the end.

 

Good point on the "About Import" - We have a button on the top navigator for "About US", and did not consider the confusion in the way you mentioned it - Will have to consider changing that.

 

The reason the Forum page moves, is due to the fact that it is currently not under our control - it is externally hosted, and we do not have full control of the HTML. We plan to migrate to our own hosted forum once the shop is completed.

 

Yes, back button is missing from some pages - that is on the to do list as well.

 

I was just starting to get a bit blind working on the site, and worried I could not see the errors any more having worked on it for so long. Getting some fresh eyes on it is good - thank you :)

Posted
OMG those subcategories DO go on forever. i had no idea what i was looking at either.. You should have some kind of flyout menu to help organize that better.. i was confused about it too.. although i am not into cars that much either.

 

The look fo the site is pretty nice. I like the top navigation bar, the logo and header

 

I might get rid of the information box and move it to the footer as a linear menu like this

 

shipping and returns | Privacy | Terms and Coditions | Site Map | Contact Us

 

Good comments Lindsay,

 

As I said above the deep subcategories is a way to prevent very long lists of products, but I am not 100% sure it will give the result we are looking for, so we might have to change it in the end anyway. I can understand how you can get confused if you do not know the various car part's and their location and use - this site assumes you have a rather good understanding of car parts etc.

 

I like the idea regarding the information box, and will include it to the list.

Posted

Hey Paul,

 

Hope you don't mind feedback from someone who has been into cars for many, many years.

Also keep in mind that the following ideas are just that, my ideas or opinion. :)

 

First I'd like to say I think you are off to a great start and actually almost there.

 

I would try to shorten up some of the disclaimer(s) info in the footer. Maybe add that to a policy page or something similar.

Also lose the page request counter in the footer bar. Maybe replace it with something like "Powered by osCommerce" or "Designed by CoolCava".

 

The breadcrumb trail and navigation links... Why have -

Welcome Guest! Would you like to log in? Or create an account?........ My Account | Cart Contents | Checkout

Why not simplify it -

Home > Catalog...........................................................................Log In or Create an Account

The thumbnail images are a bit too small I think. Maybe make them a half size bigger or double.

 

I also think the category/product navigation needs some serious help. There is nothing wrong with bringing back the category infobox. As a matter of fact I think you need it. Having it will greatly help with organizing and making it easier for customers to search for products. Take for example - Shop » 996/997 » 1998 - 2004 » Exhaust » Exhaust Upgrades » Performance Mufflers. That's a heck of a lot of clicking to find out the one perfomance muffler is actually by M & K which was the other final option. What is the need for both categories - Exhaust & Exhaust Upgrades? Exhaust is empty, you could just list all the Exhaust Upgrades products under Exhaust. Having both categories I was expecting stock exhaust parts to be listed under Exhaust and aftermarket parts under Exhaust Upgrades.

Having the categories infobox you could simply list something like this -

 

Porsche 996

...Brakes

...Exhaust

...Interior

...Tools

...Books/Manuals

 

Porsche 997

...Brakes

...Exhaust

...Interior

...Tools

...Books/Manuals

 

That would reduce the number of clicks down from 6 to 3 to reach a specific product.

To help balance out the left and right columns, you could lose the "Reviews" infobox (products have buttons anyway) and replace it with the "What's New" infobox.

 

Well, just some thoughts. ;)

- :: Jim :: -

- My Toolbox ~ Adobe Web Bundle, XAMPP & WinMerge | Install ~ osC v2.3.3.4 -

Posted

Hi Jim, lots of good feedback - thank you :)

 

Good point on the disclaimer stuff. I will look to reduce it all and clean that part up. Might sounds strange, but with all the work I have done (and I am not a developer - this has been some hard education at times), I had not noticed the "page request counter" until you pointed it out! i think I will do as suggested by Lindsay and replace it with the information box content - that would give more space on the left for me to put back the category box - as you have suggested.

 

I like your idea on the breadcrumb trail - I will make some more changes there as well.

 

The product listing page is one of the parts that I am just not happy with, but I am lacking the skills to alter it to something we like. I am still looking at the contributions to find one which will work better for us. I have found one contribution that I might try - Product Listing Enhancements, Thumbnails & Manufacturer Headings V1.8

 

Again on the product side, we have to date only uploaded 20% or so of all our products, and as such what you expected is still to come ie. in the Exhaust section - the Upgrades will be aftermarket and the other category will be OEM. The main problem I wanted to avoid is having several pages of products for a user to view threw. For example, we have a lot of Exhaust parts from different vendors - the option is to either list everything in a very long Exhaust product listing, or have additional categories - like we have done. Another thing we did was give multiple navigation routs to some products - so that a user will (hopefully) find what they are looking for easier!?!

 

Removing the Review box is a good idea as well - I have included that to the list...

 

Again, I am new to web shop development and as such testing as we go :)

Posted

Hey Paul, you are very welcome.

 

You can still work out easy searching through the category infobox. You could do something like this -

 

Porsche 996

...Brakes

......OEM (or Factory Replacements)

......Performance (or Upgrades, you get the idea LOL)

...Exhaust

......OEM

......Performance

...Interior

...Tools

...Books/Manuals

 

To get an idea of what I am trying to explain, take a look at my learn-as-I-go work in progress site - Hande's Hobbies.

Let's use my Paints+ link as your Porsche 996 link. Under that let's use my Enamels+ as your Exhaust link. I have 4 more categories under that, but you could have something like OEM and Performance.

 

Just an idea.

- :: Jim :: -

- My Toolbox ~ Adobe Web Bundle, XAMPP & WinMerge | Install ~ osC v2.3.3.4 -

Posted

I do agree with you Jim, the number of subcategories at the moment are a bit long, and maybe we should do something about that. I have today done some of the other updates that you suggested, including bringing back the categories box on the right hand side.

 

What we really would like to do with the categories is have more of a heading and listing feature - I did post in the forum for some help but have not had any reply yet (http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=314007). I would like to mirror the category navigation as one of our equivalent companies in the US, but do not know how to do this in osCommerce:-

Level 3 (Porsche 911) - http://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/shopca...11M_catalog.htm

Level 4 (Exhaust) - http://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/shopca...11M-Exhaust.htm

Still looking for a contribution which will give us this feature...

Posted

Wow, even THEIR site is insanely hard to navigate and kind annoying.

 

I think the you COULD make a much better, more professional site than that!!! There is a guy on here with an amazing car parts shop. I will see if i can find it.

 

On another note, you can DEFINITELY do a LOT with a flyout menu. this way people CAN go through all of those sub categories without having to click a million times. In my research, i have found that the least clicks it takes to get to the product, the more likely the custoemr is to purchase multiple products. you NEED to make your site EASY to get to.. if someone is at the 5th sublevel of main category for Porsche parts and they add the one product to cart, but then they decide they want the same type of product for their Chevy, they basically have to start over.. by adding a flyout, the customer can just hover and show all subcategories.

 

The "suggested upgrades" on their site is ok, but it can DEFINITELY be easier to read and better integrated into their cart. You can do the same, but take more care with forming it./

 

ok.. HERE IS THE CAR PARTS SITE I WAS TALKING ABOUT

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

Posted

As they are one of our main competitors as far as the European market goes, we thought it best to try and mirror their structure to a degree. But it is kind of nice to hear you say that their site is irritating - then we have space to improve :)

 

Truth is that I am quickly reaching my developer limits in php and SQL to be able to make the site more professional. But I will keep going.

 

I have already made a lot of the suggested changes that you an others have given here - the category box is now back on the left side, and I have implemented the fly out feature from one of the contributions. I will continue to look at shortening the number of subcategories, but as stated before, I am worried about having pages and pages of products for the shopper to scroll threw to find the correct part - as an example, there are a lot of parts in a car transmission, so having "Transmission" as the last category level, will give a lot of pages with product listings - this as well could make shopping very hard - could it not?

 

I have looked at the Australian site before, and even had some PM discussions with the shop developer. Lots of nice stuff there, but they focus on all brands - we only focus on Porsche. They have got a nice car selector search feature, which I would like to replicate - but i do not have the php and sql experience (yet)...

 

But all these comments are good, and will all help to make the shop better - thank you all for taking the time to help :)

Posted
I will continue to look at shortening the number of subcategories, but as stated before, I am worried about having pages and pages of products for the shopper to scroll threw to find the correct part - as an example, there are a lot of parts in a car transmission, so having "Transmission" as the last category level, will give a lot of pages with product listings - this as well could make shopping very hard - could it not?

 

Hey Paul,

 

Looks like you have installed a category menu contrib already. I was looking for something that might help and resemble Pelican Parts.

I found a couple that I think can be customized to work to your liking.

'Category Box as Nested Unordered List for EZ(er) CSS & Dynamic menus v 1.00 by irishfreakout 10 Jun 2008

 

CSS Menu v0.3 by fear4me 20 Nov 2006

- With update -

show all categories by d7recruitment 24 Feb 2007

 

I am not positive as I haven't tried either one yet, but I think you could configure them to work as fly-outs or expanded tree menu's.

 

Anyway...

 

I agree with Lindsay. Pelican Parts is hard to navigate and can't find parts easily. I think you are headed more in the right direction using the flyout. Personally I like drop down tree's which stay enclosed in the category box, but that's just me. Mod Your Car is a nice looking site with lots of custom programming, but browsing for parts isn't exactly easy either. I tried looking for brake pads for a 2000 Subaru Impreza Sport Wagon Outback. Way too many clicks not to find any. <_<

 

I "think" you might be a little too hung up on worrying about pages of parts for a customer to scroll through. First, sit down and think about, or better yet make a list, how many and of what parts you are going to offer. List them in a category style, example - Transmission Parts, list them per Year/Model. Is there "really" too many parts? What do you have - plates, gears, housings, clutches, bearings, etc...? But actually how many of each part for the specific Year/Model do you have? Don't forget a customer could sort the product listing table or do a search. So what if there are 50 to 100 products, I have searched through over 200 products per category. As long as the products are in the proper category LOL.

 

Let's take your new menu and go with the 914. To bad you couldn't find a contribution to combine a static sub-category under the main category (wonder if my first suggestion above would do it? uhmm). I think you could stop at 914 » 1969 - 1976 » Transmission & Clutch, unless you really are going to have tons of OEM and Upgrade options then I would go the one step further. Oh by the way, the Intermediate Plate large pic is way to big. I can't even stretch the box to view the entire image.

 

Don't forget... people searching for transmission parts will expect whatever parts are in a transmission to be listed there. ;)

- :: Jim :: -

- My Toolbox ~ Adobe Web Bundle, XAMPP & WinMerge | Install ~ osC v2.3.3.4 -

  • 1 month later...
Posted

It is a very well-designed site - good work.

 

There are still two things missing: Ultimate SEO URLs and cDynamic Meta Tags.

 

I see that you are using "Search Engine Friendly URLs" but they really don't do much.

 

Compare: product_info.php/products_id/57/cPath/36_37_161_162

 

to something like: 911-901-Billet-Intermediate-Plate-p-162.html.

 

...which is what you'd get with Ultimate SEO URLs.

 

Vger

Posted

Thank you for the suggestions Vger,¨

 

I have looked at the Ultimate SEO URLs, but I have one question before I install it. Will the current style URL's still work. ie. if we have posted a url on a forum to a product with the current URL, will that URL still find the product after I install the SEO contribution?

Posted
if we have posted a url on a forum to a product with the current URL, will that URL still find the product after I install the SEO contribution?

 

Probably not, but it's a worthwhile investment to make the change. Once Ultimate SEO URLs is installed you can try setting 'Enable automatic redirects' to true in Ultimate SEO URLs config, but whether that feature works or not is server-specific.

 

Vger

Posted

Thank you Debora, I think we implemented all your suggestions :)

The main problem is knowing when to say - that's enough for now. You can end up just installing contributions after contributions.

 

I think we will keep it like this for now and see how it runs...

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