What do yall think? www.natural-mother.com

[rotting_fly]

http://www.natural-mother.com

 

Give me all your comments! I can take it! I think! :P

[Guest]

Ah, 'Mystery Meat' navigation on the front page.

 

I really like the logo, I don't like the fact that you have to rollover an image to see where it will take you. Keep the rollover if you want but put text near the image to let your user know where it will go.

[Guest]

Navigation when within the shop is very confusing, having the main page scroll and then the products and stuff with the page scroll also. When looking at a product I had to scroll the main page down and then the products info page within it just to see the 'Reviews' and 'Add to Cart' buttons.

 

Some of the colours (yellow in particular) are difficult to see on the white background.

 

Don't like the text on the left.

[rotting_fly]

Thank you, What do you mean "Mystery Meat"? I dont like the yellow either, the wife overode that decision though! The main Page isn't supposed to scroll. We actually made it for 1024x768 res. Should I lower it to 840? Please keep the comments coming!

 

RF

[burt]

Really very poor implementation. Your splash page adds nothing - when I worked out how to move forwards from there...you've got the shop inside a (i)frame ?? And the shop is just boring old Oscommerce Grey.

 

Then I put a "Maya Wrap" in my cart, and get some message "please choose fabric from previous page". So I go back to prevcious page - which is "Maya Wrap", go to the options and see "please choose fabric from previous page"...back again. I now choose Maya Wrap Fabric 39. Great. Add to cart. Now I have two lots of Maya Wrap in my cart.

 

Confusing!

 

Anyway, I recommend a total makeover from scratch - your site design is flawed, as is the logic to how you have your products presented.

 

hth

[Guest]

Thank you, What do you mean "Mystery Meat"? I dont like the yellow either, the wife overode that decision though! The main Page isn't supposed to scroll. We actually made it for 1024x768 res. Should I lower it to 840? Please keep the comments coming!

 

RF

I'm running at 1024x768.

 

I first heard the term "Mystery Meat" in an article on poor navigation, apparently it came from when kids went to summer camp and had a plate of some kind of meat placed in front of them, no one knew what the meat was. Know one knows what the links are until you move over them.

[rotting_fly]

Your right I am actually running at 1280x1024. opps Thanks for all the comments. It looks as though I will be going back to the drawing board! Should I design for a lower res? What is the "average" shopper running?

 

RF

[Guest]

personally I design for 800x600

[rotting_fly]

So everyone agrees I should completely redo it?

[tim_o_boy]

I'm using Mozilla Firebird as my browser and the site doesn't work at all. I get this <%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> at the top of each page and the menu system doesn't change anything. Works fine for me in IE.

 

Maybe you don't care about my obscure (but fantastic!) browser, but I think you should look at cross browser compatibility generally. You would probably have problems with standards as well if that bothers you.

 

Good luck.

[rotting_fly]

I downloaded Mozilla Firebird .07 and I recieved the error at the top of the page as well. The navigation still work though. How many browsers do most ppl cross-develope for, and what are the major ones? I am not for sure that our demographic that we are going for would be using Mozilla (stay at home Mom's who buy diapers) I could be wrong though. Nevery really thought about it!

[Tariq]

Design wise, it's cool, Implimentstion wise, its confusing :<

 

You wanted to have it different enough to make you stand apart, though ended up standing on a different street :(

 

I think maybe a little...less snazxzy stuff, and a little more familiar layout?

 

I am using Netscape right now, and have an error at the top of each cart page as well,

<%@LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> .

 

 

And BEING Female, the colors and graphics appealed to me, but trying to decide what they DID, on the splash page, almost left me lost. Moused over, back and forth a few times before I went.. ummmm? and just clicked something. If you want to have direct access splash page, make it a little more information filled as far as what you ARE going into, along with directions to choose where the customer would like to go. Then, once you get inside, you have to click again to make another jump. Putting the categories into a more familiar setting, in the center, or with images for the categories, would make navigation a lot easier. Also, giving directions as to the colored balls STILL being navigational for categories once into the store would be a great help as well.

 

I think you have some wonderfully novel ideas, though just need to work on the implimentation of those ideas. Things that work awesome on the drawing board and in theory, dont always work the same in practice.

 

Also keep in mind, that you built it, so you KNOW how it works. Look at it from the point of someone whom has never been to your store before, or assume that customers are just a teeeeeeny bit dense, and give good directions. That way if they dont read, which most customers dont, unfrotunately, its not your fault, because they DID have the directions there :)

 

I really do like the graphics tho, as they are clean and well presented, though, as was said, the yello IS a little difficult to see on the white bg. Also, like the rollover of the category group, B for Baby, M for mom in the side category. Nice touch!

 

Keep your intention, and just try it with a different approach!!

 

I know, as you obviously have skills I dont :):), that you WILL get it done right!

 

OH!!!

And dont forget your OSC copywrite!!!

[rotting_fly]

I would like to thank everyone for all the comments and suggestions! I will be working hard to make some changes. Thank you again! I really appreciate it!

 

RF

[rotting_fly]

Ok. I went back and made a few changes. Nothing huge but just subtle stuff. I will warn you that 1024x768 or greater is the audience I developed for. Knowing that, is it still difficult to navigate?

[Chad]

yes its difficult to navigate and it don't work in opera.

 

Why are you using an iframe?

[rotting_fly]

I choose to use iFrames so it wouldn't look like the "typical" oscommerce install. I just downloaded Opera Version 7.23, Build 3227 and all worked. Could you tell me what was not working? What did you find difficult while navigating. I appreciate all of yalls help.

 

RF

[Guest]

It is still *impossible* to navigate with Mozilla 1.4. When I click on the sub-category links (e.g. Baby Carriers), it doesn't do anything. I tried it in IE6 and got scroll bars on the center content (which Mozilla doesn't see at all). The links inside Attachment Parenting don't work for me in IE6 either.

 

You don't seem to be getting the thrust of the comments on the navigation system as I understand them. When I look at the splash page, there is nothing telling me what to do until I run the mouse all over everywhere looking for a link. I.e. I can't just look at the page and say "Oh, here is where I click to shop." As such, you lose a certain number of potential customers right there. What does it gain you? I.e. will there be any customers who say, "Wow, what a great page, I want to shop there." It doesn't feel that way to me. I.e. I don't walk away impressed.

 

Similarly, some customers (30%?) still use 800x600. You are essentially saying that you aren't interested in them. Again, does targetting 1024x768 gain you anything? Note: I'm not even asking if it will gain back the loss from the 800x600 crowd, but if it will gain you anything at all.

 

Why do the Cart Contents and Checkout links appear and disappear as I navigate the site? If I am looking at Mama > Books, shouldn't I be able to checkout if I want? Once in the site, why do you continue to hide the categories? The first principal of User Interface is to make it obvious. Your site is not obvious.

 

By using frames, you make it impossible for search engines to see multiple pages. As a result, you will only have one result on the search engine; everything else will be seen as dynamic, in-page content (as opposed to cross-page content, which search engines now handle well). I.e. the search engine will just think that your one page shows various things at various times, so it won't try to index it at all as it doesn't know how to categorize it.

 

Hth,

Matt

[rotting_fly]

Thank you that is the type of responce I "needed".

[EricK]

RF,

 

Great design ideas/graphics, however site navigation must be intuitive, simply "idot-proof" or people will get confused and just leave. And design for 800 x 600 screen resolution as many still use that and/or have smaller screens, ie., laptops. I think designing for 800x600 is more important than cross-browser considerations, based on your target market.

 

my 2 cents :rolleyes: hth

 

EricK

[theresasp]

I concur with the review of your site -- however the design is nice -- the architecture -- the way visitors would move through the site -- visitors expect to have information presented clearly and forhtrightly -- For your main menu instead of mystry meat navigation maybe a blk a white pic of a baby or newborn mom with words BABY, MOM etc... and the roll over makes it color.

 

Also, I'd make the product navigation clearly different then the sites other information -- this will also allow for more flexiablity in growing the site. I Move the catagory links Baby stuff , Mommie stuff to the left menu. I really have to pause and think about your site navigation -- how do I get here -- how do I get back etc... The don't make me think rules --- that book is a classic -- and online shoppers have little patience for badly laid out ecommerce sites.

 

Also the iframes in the content are annoying and take away from the clean design of your site.

 

I really like the way os commerce is set up -- it is fairly easy to navigate -- and update -- as a full time professional designer I'd stay with its basic layout --its what the visitor expects -- a standard all know how to navigate. I just started helping my daughter out with a os commerce site rebelsunglasses.com I just started today -- my plan is to change the images the images I can but keep the basic layout of the site. The ugly clip art on the pages was the first things I changed. I like os commerce and the price is right we use another cart also -- won't mention it here.

 

I'd do some thinking.... have Imade any sales, why or why not? The site really should be fixed -- then you could possibly sell the business on ebay or market the site more aggressively to get better placement in the search engines, as now I would not recommend any money on marketing until the site is perfect (no red x's etc...) and laid out better to an ecommerce standard.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best Success

Theresa

[innerfire]

So, I am thinking of my wife looking through the site. It is refreshing, and she would love the graphics, design. It is very unique and the concept visually checks out. I agree about the navigation issue, although it is so out there I actually found it fun to discover what was actually there. I would investigate some of the threads on web safe URL's and search engine optimization though. Your wife's site will be competing with a lot of companies in that market. I have two friends that have launched similar sites in the past year (both powerful mothers of two year olds).

[Chance]

Just because its my thing, I thought I should post.

 

Your site does not do anything in Mozilla/Firebird/Firefox/Netscape. No products, no annoying iframe like everyone else is talking about, nothing.

 

The dot thing is nice. I actualy like the style of the one page I can see. However I would heed the suggestions of other people who have commented and put text lables (even if they are pretty image text labels) that say what the buttons do.

 

My two cents. Good luck.