Please Critique Me!

[Guest]

Well this is my first site and considering just 8 months ago I was still computer illiterate, I don't think it is too bad. But I would like to have some input from people who have been around, good or bad. I just keep staring at it and I can't see anymore! Also I would like to know if there are any instructions available for the Gift Voucher Contribution, it is very confusing to me. I've already installed some other contributions and I don't want to screw them up.

 

I guess I should tell you what my site is!

 

http://www.scrapbookingmagic.com/catalog

 

I want to thank all of you for the great information in these forums, I have spent countless hours seaching for this and that, and I have usually always found the answers. If it were'nt for all of you I never could have gotten this far.

THANK YOU!

Ckiel

I guess I will hear from you guys later.

[jrwrestling]

I think the site looks good. It suits your customers taste of colors, and should sell relatively well.

 

I find the top banner pretty busy, you may want to remove:

 

"22142 requests since Wednesday 06 August, 2003 " nobody really cares..

 

Same as the # of items in each catagory, which also should be on one line whenver possible, and "This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 10 August, 2003. " should also probably go.

[mikes]

You seem to be going for a rather whimsical theme on your site and I think you've done a good job with that via your background and color scheme.

 

I do have a few suggestions though. Try not to take them personally. These are just my observations. :)

 

1. The logo doesn't look very professional. Anything that makes customers question the professionalism of your site will make them uneasy about buying from you.

 

2. The buttons are jagged. The need to be smooth all the way around. Photoshop is the best for this. There are also various graphics programs that will anti-alias as well. I think jasc still offers 30-day trial downloads of printshop.

 

3. I'd get rid of the category product counts (in admin|my store) and the "->" before the counts (Comment the following lines in includes/boxes/categories.php):

 

if (tep_has_category_subcategories($counter)) {

$categories_string .= '->';

}

 

4. Widen the left column so that category names don't word-wrap. Click on each category to ensure sub-cats don't wrap either.

 

5. I'm not sure how useful it is to display the paypal and CC logos. Customers already expect you to take CCs so you aren't really telling them anything. I certainly wouldn't put em up top though.

 

6. The logo is so wide that it creates a left-right scrollbar in 800x600.

 

7. The buttons look too big in 1024x768. In 800x600 they are huge. I'd cut the size in half.

 

8. You have lots of links that really don't do anything to help you make a sale. I'd suggest removing them and possibly putting them into a links page.

 

9. Check and recheck and check yet again that it is absolutely ok to display the disney products on your website. Disney is very funny about that and has in most of their agreements that their products may not be advertised at the consumer level via websites. They have no sense of humor in this regard.

 

10. Give serious thought to eliminating many infoboxes and consolidating the remaining ones on the left side so you can expand the center column.

 

11. Disable mfg column from product listings. All the ones I looked at were blank anyway.

 

12. Search infobox uses standard magnifying glass with white background. It should be replaced with one that matches the background of the infobox.

 

13. the animated gif on the login page also looks unprofessional. Animated gifs may be cute but imo really have no place on a for-business site. Give the theme of your site and your target audience, this may be an exception to that rule.

 

14. There are some contributions to enhance the login page as well as a thread in the tips and tricks section on how to reduce account creation anxiety.

 

15. The date and # of hits at the bottom could be removed. Some people think they look ok and others think they look unprefessional but no one has said they thought they were beneficial to making a sale.

 

16. Consider using a graphical header for the infoboxes. Little things can make big improvements in the overall look.

 

Hope there was something there you could use. Good luck ith your site. You have some really interesting products.

[Guest]

These are all very good suggestions and I will consider each one. Thank You, because I could not see what you see! This is why I asked you! I knew that you would be honest.

 

Thanks Again, and any more suggestions would be appreciated also!

 

ckiel