72 Mods and a Lot of Help From You!

[phooey04]

After a couple of months of development and many trips to these forums for advice, I finally launched my OsCommerce powered site. I want to thank all of you who take the time to respond to questions in this forum and create contributions - your assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

;)

 

My site is now live at www.oglebox.com. Any feedback you have is welcome.

 

To help others who are working on their own site, I've compiled a list of the modifications and contributions used on my site. See link below.

 

List of Modifications (PDF Format)

[phooey04]

:ph34r:

 

Bump for comments - particularly server response time.

 

Thx,

Jay

[OceanRanch]

Server response time seems excellent. I'm on a cable modem.

 

A very clean and nice site.

 

I commend you on the PDF and the excellent description of what you did and what threads/contributions you used. Newbies as well as those of us with "grey mustaches" :P can learn a few things from it and get a real appreciation for what it takes to do it right.

 

Tom

[Guest]

I always read the privacy pages first, they seem to be the most interesting;

We collect only the domain name, but not the e-mail address of visitors to our Web page, for aggregate information on what pages consumers access or visit.

If you don't collect email addresses how do you notify people of shipments, orders, etc. I know you are right but I am not sure most people will know what aggregare information acctually is.

The information we collect is used to improve the content of our Web page, not shared with other organizations for commercial purposes.

Isn't shipping and CC processing a commercial purpose that you share with other companies.

If you do not want to receive e-mail from us in the future, please let us know by sending us an e-mail at the above address.

It's too hard to find the "above address". Mybe bold the text, would make it stand out.

Please note that shipments from the United States to other countries may involve taxes, import duties, tariffs, customs-related fees, or other charges beyond our control, for which the recipient is responsible.

Great that you put that in. A lot of people don't know.

6. DNA and urine sample (just kidding)

Cute but you are running a business :(

communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing.

I may be wrong but standard email is not a legal document. Check out Verisign secure date/time stamped emails if you want something legal.

If an items correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.

I am in Canada and here you HAVE to sell it at the stated price unless it is an obvious error such as $999 is stated as $9.99. Canceling an order is not an option.

 

Other than that it is an interesting concept you have for your store. I have never thought about framing a mother board. There is not a lot of text on the site, search engines love text. Maybe add some text pages such as 1) how to mount the mother boards. 2) how to hang it on a wall. 3) photo gallery of mounted mother boards 3) etc.... can't think of anything else right now. Going through it some more I seem to be finding more text though. I would make your FAQ easier to find, maybe in the information box and tie it into the same CSS as the rest of the pages.

 

Reading the pages I got a bad feeling and I had to go back and read them again to find out what was bothering me so much, and I think it is things such as this line

If you use this site, you are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computer

which is fine by itself but nowhere in your site do you say what you do to protect the customers information that they are giving you. They are entrusting you with their identity and very personal information and as a customer the above line does not fill me with confidence about what YOU do. You have protecting yourself down to a fine art, but what are you doing to protect the customer? From the looks of your hiperion.site5.com SSL it looks like you are using a shared SSL or that is the way your server is set up. I think take a look at things from the customers side and the site will do well. It is a very original concept and you should be able to carve out a great niche market.

 

Peter

 

P.S. I didn't mean to pick at you, you have done a great job and have a very nice site and I wish you all the success that you can handle. I just always read the pricacy parts before ever looking at a site and yours just hit me the wrong way. Check out e-trust.com for some good info on privacy statements and there is always amazon.com to look at the best out there. There is nothing there that is wrong it is just too one sided for my stomach to handle.

[phooey04]

Peter,

Be assured your comments were well received. In fact, I've made some changes based on your suggestions and have submitted them to my attorney for review.

 

We do have a statement in the privacy notice which was meant to inform customers that we protect the information they give us. Maybe more is needed...?

 

With respect to security: We always use industry-standard encryption technologies when transferring and receiving consumer data exchanged with our site.

 

On a parting note, my attorney wasn't a big fan of the "DNA" joke either, so I've removed requirement #6 from our returns policy...oh well. ;)

 

Thanks to you and Tom for your feedback!

 

Jay

[OrbitBob]

Wow. what a wickled clean & simple layout, looks greeeeeat!

Appreciate seeing the PDF guide, educational &inspirational.

Top stuff overall.

I thought the backdrop on the product photo's didn't do them justice. It must be frustrating work taking Case pictures. To me it looks like they would look much nicer with crisper lighting & minimal but yet dramatic reflections.

One of my favourite layouts ever. (not just Osc even). Makes me want to get the chainsaw out on my current project :)

[phooey04]

Thanks for your feedback OrbitBob. Photographing acrylic does present many challenges as you can imagine. With our products, we attempted to flood the display cases with "diffused" light to minimize reflection and glare. While overall, I'm pleased with the results I would like to try some different techniques next time around.

 

Good luck with your site and be sure to post a link to your finished site when your done.

[420]

I am in Canada and here you HAVE to sell it at the stated price unless it is an obvious error such as $999 is stated as $9.99. Canceling an order is not an option.

 

 

A simple disclaimer in any country will cover a seller on that point. Typos do happen. :/

[SGershon]

To help others who are working on their own site, I've compiled a list of the modifications and contributions used on my site.  See link below.

Nice site, funny idea of framing MoBo.

Now I want to frame my old asus MoBo, nad maybe my current MoBo, if I just manage to insert all the wires and power supplies, the we could get a bit of neon lights on the frame, and... now its a little CaseMod!

 

I regret not documenting the changes I did on my OSC site. Now I need to repeat them and I cant remember what I did.

 

SGershon

[phooey04]

Erik - You are correct.

 

When Peter mentioned the Canada exception, I did some research on the topic. The key factor is whether or not the retailer had published their typographical error / ommission policy prior to the time of the error. If a policy existed, most courts (in any country) will discard the lawsuit and rule in favor of the retailer.

 

If a policy was not in place however, then the outcome of the trial will depend on a number of factors including how close the published price was to the "real" price of the item.

 

SGershon - I haven't heard of anyone modding my mobo cases yet, but it wouldn't surprise me. Some People (caution bandwidth intensive) can do some very cool things with a PC Case.