AWWWW.WAHWAH Posted March 16, 2004 Share Posted March 16, 2004 Let's do it! Give me the good and bad. Things I already dislike. The logo on top. The stock colors. Suggestions needed are what I should do to make it more of a themed high performance aftermarket site. Like I said, give it to me hard and straight. I want the harshest criticism! www.ByunMotorsports.com FYI, most of my customers are generally broadband/dsl users with no money to spare always wanting discounts (18-30 years of age, either single or newly wed parent(s)), barely making the payment on a car they cannot afford and internet saavy. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chance Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Broadband or not, I am on a commercial 3x3 mbit connection and it took a full minute to load all 140 images on your index page. While it looked cool when it was done (I am a car nut myself) you would have lost my business right there. Thats almost worse than waiting for flash I could not click through. Your catalog is very stock. You are right, you need to change the stock colors. With all those logos, you would think you could pick one with colors you like and adapt it to a site color scheme. After all, those companies paid untold ammounts of money to match up a color scheme- use it to you advantage. Other than that, you need to customize your catalog before most will comment on your site. Stock does not produce feedback. My advice comes in two flavors- Pick the one that won't offend you. Hard and Cynical: How to Make a Horrible osCommerce Site Warm and Fuzzy: How to Make an Awesome osCommerce Site Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 More basic than that, why didn't you enable the link to your site when you started this thread by using the html button? You lost me by my not being able to click on it to go there... Not reallly, but I'm sure there are others who may feel that way. Charles We stand in ignorance only for questions not asked. Plug up the leaks in your knowledge base and open up a flood of understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 OK, I'm back now after waiting forever for all of those logos to load, and for WHAT?!? They all took me to the same place, the stock OSC welcome page! Are you selling logos or products? Even if you went into photoshop and combined them into one image that sampled at 72 dpi for a timed introductory splash screen it would take too long to load. If you want a logo page, why not take the customer to the welcome page first and make the logo page a link. Then make each logo link to that company's products. Color scheme? Pay attention to your vendor logos. Number one color used? RED. Number two color used? Blue or Yellow. Why? Red and yellow are HOT like the flames from a rail taking off. Appearance? slick and clean. This is the racing business. These people spent a lot of money on logo developement to entice their customers with those concepts. What is your logo? Fragmented and black. Hmmm... did your stock car crash and burn? Make Your logo a stylized rail. Make the letters BYUN larger to form the cockpit and the word Motorsport smaller in front like the chasis. Front end red fading to orange to yellow at the cockpit in back with flames coming off the back. Now we're talking a racing logo! Use yellow and orange color scheme in the box header bars and frames with red text all on a white background. Logo is too wide so left column gets pushed off the page. Make it all fit. I don't have a problem with the stock look if you customize it a little with the color changes and move some of the links around to eliminate redundancy and facilitate navigation. And move the Quick Search to the top of the right column There are so many makes and models out there, make it easy for the customer to search for their own info. You already use way many images and you complicate it by using flashing, multiple view images. Very distacting. If you only offer in one language why display the language box. It is redundant. That's all for now. Good luck, Charles We stand in ignorance only for questions not asked. Plug up the leaks in your knowledge base and open up a flood of understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtual1 Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 reading this post put me off going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Connection Rate Download Time 14.4K 544.29 seconds 28.8K 286.24 seconds 33.6K 249.38 seconds 56K 160.91 seconds ISDN 128K 68.84 seconds T1 1.44Mbps 31.73 seconds TOTAL_OBJECTS - Warning! The total number of objects on this page is 141 - consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your external objects. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests. TOTAL_IMAGES - Warning! The total number of images on this page is 140, consider reducing this to a more reasonable number. Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics. Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests. TOTAL_SIZE - Warning! The total size of this page is 665874 bytes, which will load in 160.91 seconds on a 56Kbps modem. Consider reducing total page size to less than 30K to achieve sub eight second response times on 56K connections. Pages over 100K exceed most attention thresholds at 56Kbps, even with feedback. Consider contacting us about our optimization services. HTML_SIZE - Caution. The total size of this HTML file is 63862 bytes, which is above 20K but below 100K. With a 10K ad and a logo this means that your page will load in over 8.6 seconds. Consider optimizing your HTML and eliminating unnecessary features. To give your users feedback, consider layering your page or using positioning to display useful content within the first two seconds. IMAGES_SIZE - Warning! The total size of your images is 602012 bytes, which is over 30K. Consider optimizing your images for size, combining them, and replacing graphic rollovers with CSS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtual1 Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 You love ani gifs - i'd try and get past that love as its very annoying on the main catalog page - once you can get there. Its a fairly unimpressive site dude. All the logos, the wait to get in and nadda, zip, zilch. Disappointing. Get your header size down - the world doesnt work on 1100+ pixel resolution. The majority of websites still cater to 800 pixel widths - ever wonder why? And your demograhic report you included... let me point out that you have had very little traffic - 30414 requests since Wednesday 30 July, 2003 Has it occured to you that that number could be increased DRASTICALLY with some good design, usability and promotion? Forget about 18 - 30 year olds - i know plenty of over 50's that spend TONS of cash on pet projects - thats who you SHOULD be going after - and they my friend are NOT web savy peeps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 That is by far the worst use of a splash page (there's a good use?) I've ever seen. Absolutely horrible. And then, to my surprise, once I get past that, I'm treated to a.........STOCK install of OSC with a logo(?) that looks like it was created by a 3-year-old. Oh joy. :rolleyes: You want harsh...you got harsh. Go back to the drawing board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dburchm1 Posted March 17, 2004 Share Posted March 17, 2004 Well, what is truly impressive is the amount of catalog content and the number of product and logo images you have. You have done a lot of the hard work. With that product line and OSC you should be able to start a great business. Beyond that you have a long ways to go with OSC. Keep working at it. I agree with the above post on the "entry page"...horrible!!! Do something different...anything...you couldn't do more to confuse and run me off then that page. Your Banner doesn't work at 800px width. Get creative (or pay someone else to create a logo banner and color scheme for you). Get rid of the animated product gifs. All that blinking back and forth bugs my eyes. If you want more then one image I would suggest you install the mopics contrib http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1114. You could use the Header tag controller on the products pages so that you unique titles and meta tags http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,207 That's a good thing for search engines. Now the fun part starts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWWWW.WAHWAH Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 Thanks for all the harsh criticism. That is what I wanted. Most everyone who don't have an online store or use another brand of e-commerce software gave me thumbs up. I've done practically no advertising whatsoever except for a couple of auto boards. Actually most of the customers have come from doing a search on the internet. I actually had the bright idea of creating an index.html file that you click to get to the catalog since I had a hard time of getting the robots to index the catalog. The logos were added to show potential customers what I carry along with the spyders picking up the ALT tags of the company branded names. I agree, the Byun Motorsports logo stinks and I've been through several of them already. There are only few animated gifs because I decided that instead of creating two products line of the similiar item, I could just animate both the product images and have the user select the item via drop down box. i.e. There is a suspension kit with part number 3334 and 3335 from the same company. The only difference is that one is a weld on and the other is a bolt on kit. I animated both parts and called the part number 333X and then added the Models 3334 and 3335 as attributes. When I did a search on the catalog for 3334, it showed up under 333X and I was able to click that product. Also the front page is not flash. It's simple HTML, not even using tables! In my meta tag keywords I added all the keywords used to get to my site with AWSTATS and added those. Oh, this whole site was created under 56K dialup. I wanted to make sure that the site is somewhat somewhat with dial up. KEEP THE COMMENTS COMING, I WANT TO HEAR MORE AND I'LL ADD THEM TO MY 'TO DO LIST' FOR CHANGES. As for the Virtual 1's comment ... you probably drive a Honduh. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AWWWW.WAHWAH Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 If you want a logo page, why not take the customer to the welcome page first and make the logo page a link. Then make each logo link to that company's products. You're right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 That's because I drive a Ford. :lol: Charles We stand in ignorance only for questions not asked. Plug up the leaks in your knowledge base and open up a flood of understanding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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