New to OSC, need some feedback on my first shot

[angryquaker]

Hi there. My wife and I have a tanning salon in a little podunk town in Ohio, and we've recently added some natural wellness products and services to our offerings. I thought a nice new website would be a good thing to have to help market the new stuff, and decided OSC would be a good platform for it.

 

http://www.utopiawellness.com

 

Our salon is called Utopia Tan®, we've been in business for 6 years now, and we have a nice logo, theme to the store, and all that sort of thing. I borrowed elements of that to incorporate into the new site, so there would be a certain level of familiarity for our existing customers, while still being new and different.

 

I realize I still have work to do, still adding content and products, and so forth. And I am no coder, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a hobbyist, at best. ;) I was feeling pretty confident about this, then I spent a little while looking at some of the sites in this particular forum, and WOW! I guess I have more that I can do than I realized. You guys are simply awesome. I've been working on this for a little over a week now, basically looking for feedback on general look, feel, useability, that kind of thing. I'm trying to end up with something that looks great, feels calm and friendly, and is simple and easy to navigate and use. I started with a very simple template, made some adjustments, and started adding mods as things came up that I couldn't get going on my own. I realize I still have a lot I need to do, like SSL, which I'm going to be doing over the next few days.

 

Anway, go ahead and give it to me straight, lord knows I need the help. LOL And pointing me to contribs you suggest would be greatly appreciated. Oh, and thanks to all of you who share contributions and post on these forums. I'm sure I've spent as much time reading and learning here as I have actually coding and implementing stuff.

 

Namasté,

Russ

[burt]

"give it to me straight"...

 

OK. It's fairly standard oscommerce layout that does not look nice in my opinion. I'd expect to be seeing tanned fit people, not boring palm trees and a layout that's been done to death.

 

Make it "sexier"? More welcoming? More fun? More heart. More soul. More ...

[germ]

Bump past porn spammer.

 

Sorry.

:blush:

[lindsayanng]

move the categories box above the "other" box.. that is where it should be.. Get AWAY from the basic oscommercec look!!! That new products box is very standard.. do something to that.. maybe install Spooks' Product Listing Thumbnals Enhancements contribution.. it gives you a LOT more control over how your products look when listed.

 

your hover effect makes the text almost disappear

 

People can really buy a session for tanning online?? thats weird

[angryquaker]

Thanks fo

[angryquaker]

What the heck? I got some error message when I went to "quick reply" and typed a few letters, and then I wasn't allowed to edit my post. LOL Anyway...

 

Thanks for the input. Perhaps I wasn't totally clear in my first post, tho. This site is only for the wellness part of our business. The tanning salon has had its own site (utopiatan.com) just about since we've been open. I'm in the process of updating that one, too, couple pictures and things on it need to be finalized, but it's been a flash site since a few years ago. There's no shopping cart involved, and we don't sell tanning online, altho if I find a good gift certificate contrib, I may eventually do online gift certs for tanning. But it is much more "sexy," and has a couple obligatory tanned fit ladies on it. heheheh We decided to launch a totally NEW website for the new wellness products and services, and to make more information available to interested parties. I could have gone nuts with the flash again, but I think I want this site to be more laid-back, not so edgy, y'know, just kinda more simple, calm, clean and serene. Back to basics, in line with getting back to natural alternatives for improving one's well-being.

 

I will continue working on it, harder. I didn't realize until today just how far away from the "standard" look one can get with this. I guess that is why I chose an open-source solution, so I can really get under the hood and do what I want. Thanks for reminding me. :) I will certainly take a look at the Spooks contrib, that big ol' honkin' new products thing is one of the things I wanted to change or remove. I may look at putting a dynamenu across the top, too. And I'm thinking about incorporating some happy, smiling, fit looking people, maybe up in the header with the logo banner, and have a few different "scenes" of people, that would load randomly with each page, like a random banner rotation type thing. I don't want to get too busy with it, tho, I'd like to keep the focus more on the content, and the overall theme of feeling better naturally.

 

Thanks again, I do appreciate the tips. More are welcome, and I'll post to this thread again after I've had a chance to make some significant changes.

 

Namasté,

Russ

 

PS - And if you're in Ohio or planning on passing thru, I will sure as heck sell you sessions on our wellness equipment online. Buy your sessions, and book an appointment from the site! They're awesome! ;)

[lindsayanng]

you are a little further from "serene" than you think.. in my opinion..

 

That tiled palm tree background is bad.. I think you should def. get rid of that.. maybe nix the trees all together..

 

Wanna see how far you can get.. Look at these.. let them inspire you

www . clubosc . com/hot100/

 

i LOVE the ONO tea site.. talk about SERENE

 

you CAN do flash in a nice way..

[angryquaker]

*DING DING DING!!* Round two...

 

I still need to do something with that confounded products menu, I can hardly take it anymore. I'd like to replace the text links with image buttons, to match the other infoboxes, but the coding is beyond my meager capabilities at this point in time. If someone could direct me to a contrib to do it, or a nice tutorial on how to add a field to the categories table and call it from that infobox, I would be one happy individual. Perhaps that's too much to ask without financial remuneration, and I understand that such things are forbidden here, anyway. Hell, I'm broke like everyone else, too! heheh I have put in hours searching here, and it seems that even the cool contributions like Dynamenu continue to rely on text links for the products menu, even if you can add a background image. And I don't want drop-down flying TEXT links, I want buttons, for the love of Pete! Ah well, at least I'm having a ball doing this, I love learning, and doing that thing with the product menu could definitely be a long-haul learning experience.

 

Anyhoo, take another look, hopefully it doesn't hurt your eyes. Suggestions and criticisms welcome, and a "Hey, that's really nice!" wouldn't hurt my feelings, either. Be honest, tho, no need to lie on my account. LOL ;)

 

My Little Timesink, Round Two

 

Namasté,

Russ

[Guest]

When I clicked on spa sessions I got this error:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '%' in /home/utopiawe/public_html/index.php

on line 305 however I only recieved that once. I was able to go back and get the spa sessions area.

 

When I did a search for weight, it came up with no results. Need to fix that. I think there's a fix in the tips and tricks area of this forum.

 

I like it okay, but the green background has got to go. The green buttons are fine. Use a complimentary color but neutral for the background.

 

Just my 2c

[lindsayanng]

PLEASE do away with teh free background.. and did you check out the site that i linked you to.. LOTS of inspiration there.

 

and to me, personally, that carousel is very gimmicky and does not fit well in most stores..

[angryquaker]

Thanks for the input, ladies. I'm still tweaking around (and making plenty of coding mistakes), thus the error you got, webbydeb. I will look into the search thing, I only have a few products listed now, but we'll be adding more, and several of them will be geared toward weight loss. As for the background, do you mean the background on the infoboxes and such, within the main body of the layout, or the outlying areas, on either side? I can try some different color combinations, my wife really likes the green tho. heheh

 

Lindsay, I'm not sure what you mean by the "free background." I don't have any background images anymore, just color.

 

Namasté,

Russ

[lindsayanng]

i meant green but i was typing and talking at the same time and green came out free

[Guest]

Thanks for the input, ladies. I'm still tweaking around (and making plenty of coding mistakes), thus the error you got, webbydeb. I will look into the search thing, I only have a few products listed now, but we'll be adding more, and several of them will be geared toward weight loss. As for the background, do you mean the background on the infoboxes and such, within the main body of the layout, or the outlying areas, on either side? I can try some different color combinations, my wife really likes the green tho. heheh

 

Lindsay, I'm not sure what you mean by the "free background." I don't have any background images anymore, just color.

 

Namasté,

Russ

 

Yeah, I meant the green in the background of the infoboxes etc. It's really awful.

 

I would look at your logo and maybe use a shade from there to tie in the colors of the site.

[angryquaker]

Getting any better yet?

 

Namasté,

Russ

[angryquaker]

Still pluggin away (obsessing) on this thing. I've moved the category menu to the header, and made some other changes. In fact, thanks to the suggestions I've received thus far, this site is much different from when I first posted here, about a month ago. My "to-do" list still includes SEO stuff, thinking about adding a blog, and I've just about got my SMS/text msg feature ready to replace the "What's New" infobox. I'm also considering buttonizing my infobox headings and buttons, not sure tho. Today, I think I'll either continue working on the category menu, try to get it standing out a bit better, or try to get the SMS/txt thing finished up and implemented. I'd appreciate any further feedback, comments, suggestions, what have you.

 

---Utopia Wellness---

 

Namasté,

Russ

[gretchenwf]

I know others have said it, but I'll add my opinion... that green color for the infoboxes is just awful. It completely clashes with your logo. If you care at all about branding, you should build your site design to complement your logo, that will help people remember your brand no matter which part of the site they are looking at.

 

Secondly, I am dizzy after watching those new products spin. They spin FAST, too fast to see what they are. I'm not a fan. What if you just had a few nice close up shots of the products instead of flying them by. Or don't have them move unless someone mouses over that area. Also, with the specials box on the right sliding products past, it's just way too much movement. I tend to think that flashy websites look cheap.

 

It took me awhile to find the actual products you have for sale. The main navigation (the top left nav is the most obvious) is just informational. If the site is meant to be an e-commerce site, I would put more emphasis on the products menu than the info. I would also suggest making more appealing, creative images for the products. The spa sessions and gift certs look very boring.

 

You do have good info on some of your product pages. Your white add to cart button kind of gets lost though. I would make that the most obvious thing on the page.

 

Good luck and happy coding!

Gretchen

[angryquaker]

Thank you, Gretchen, I appreciate your input, and will take your suggestions under consideration.

 

Regarding the colors, I'm not a visual artist, so I often rely on tools to pick matching or complimentary colors. In my logo banner, aside from black & white, there are basically two colors, a slightly dark green, and the dark yellow in the daisy. I put the dark green color into a few different color scheme tools, to find complimentary colors, and the light green that's now on my site showed up. I liked it, and still do. However, I am always open to suggestion. Now, having heard the suggestion to pick a color to "compliment my logo" more than once, I'd be very interested in what you consider to be complimentary to said logo. I chose green for the text in the logo to represent the "natural" theme. I want the complimentary color to be subdued, light, calm and relaxing, not highly contrasting or bold. Give me some suggestions based on this, and your own personal preferences. I asked, and continue to ask my wife for a female viewpoint, but she generally just says, "That's very nice." I think she honestly likes the light green, but she could just as easily want to avoid being critical. One never knows about such things. So help me out. Suggest some colors.

 

Namasté,

Russ

[gretchenwf]

Thank you, Gretchen, I appreciate your input, and will take your suggestions under consideration.

 

Regarding the colors, I'm not a visual artist, so I often rely on tools to pick matching or complimentary colors. In my logo banner, aside from black & white, there are basically two colors, a slightly dark green, and the dark yellow in the daisy. I put the dark green color into a few different color scheme tools, to find complimentary colors, and the light green that's now on my site showed up. I liked it, and still do. However, I am always open to suggestion. Now, having heard the suggestion to pick a color to "compliment my logo" more than once, I'd be very interested in what you consider to be complimentary to said logo. I chose green for the text in the logo to represent the "natural" theme. I want the complimentary color to be subdued, light, calm and relaxing, not highly contrasting or bold. Give me some suggestions based on this, and your own personal preferences. I asked, and continue to ask my wife for a female viewpoint, but she generally just says, "That's very nice." I think she honestly likes the light green, but she could just as easily want to avoid being critical. One never knows about such things. So help me out. Suggest some colors.

 

Namasté,

Russ

 

 

Russ,

I am at work now, but I will certainly put some thought into it and get back to you asap.

Gretchen