Do your worst

[Guest]

Hello all,

 

The N2 Natural Health Store has been running since June 2003 on a proprietary system we developed in house. Today, it is re-launched using OS Commerce, which I hope will help to increase useability, improve customer service and provide a more personal feel. I have been amazed by the capabilities and potential of this system, in addition to it's general user friendliness.

 

I will make some excuses here to begin with:

 

- The text is extremely large. Many of our customers have difficulty with small text.

- Only PayPal and money orders/cheques are accepted. We will not be establishing a merchant account at this time although I am aware of PayPal's disadvantages.

- Ordering by phone and fax is not available, although it may be in the near future

- SSL checkout is not currently enabled, but will be by the end of the week.

 

Anyway, particular points of concern are:

 

- Does the site load?

- Do you like the colours?

- Does the site have any glitches in Macintosh browsers?

 

Here is the URL:

http://n2naturalhealth.com

 

If the DNS has not been propagated to your ISP yet, here is a direct link:

http://69.93.193.74/~nscudder/

 

I appreciate any and all input. Thanks to everyone in these forums for all your help and advice.

[Guest]

I would move "we accept" down to the bottom of the left banner and "your cart" to the top of the right banner.

 

Your "N2 Children's Healing Cream" price is $0.00.

 

"Free UPS shipping if you spend $19.90 more*". You only have 1 product ($0.00) under $19.90??? Why not just say FREE SHIPPING. * Free shipping to Canada and 48 states. I finally found out what the * was for .... hidden at the bottom.

 

We accept "VISA, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, Switch, Solo", I thought it was only PayPal????? "money orders/cheques" are not listed????

 

I like the size of the main font but maybe I am tired, I am finding it hard to read.

 

Is SSL considered "software", I don't know. I haven't gotten that far into my site yet.

 

I have never been a fan of asking "male or female" in the checkout process. The information is not needed.

 

The stock guy on the surfboard in creat_account_success.php does not fit your store. I would look for another image.

 

I am getting charged shipping on my order ???? :(

 

In your currencies you have "Euro and Pound Sterling" but you only ship to Canada and the USA. Switch and Solo (please correct me if I am wrong) are UK based cards and if you only ship to Canada and USA they are not needed.

 

There is a forum post, that I have to find again for my store that adds just the US states and Cdn Provinces to the create account drop down list. Works very well also. When I find it I will send it to you.

 

Other than minor things it is a nice looking store. I like your choice of blues, but I don't really think the yellow in the top banner fits in but that is just my personal opinion. Your products are good but the "Acne and Rosacea (6)" is laid out different than the others and it confused me for a minute when I went to the others. I love consistency.

 

The payment processors .... hmmm .... paypal only ... :( I know that via PayPal you can use VISA, etc. but I do not consider PayPal paying with those types of cards. PayPal has its place and is perfect for some things in life and they do what they do very well but you may want to consider a REAL payment provider. If you just want PayPal see if you can keep the customer on your site so they don't leave your site to process the transaction. It is much more professional looking.

 

Good job so far,

 

Peter

[rseigel]

It's not bad. Not earth shattering but decent.

 

The header really doesn't match the rest of the site IMO. That yellow just doesn't work.

 

Kill the counter. Nobody cares how much or how little traffic you get (in this case it's hurting you due to the lack of traffic).

 

Lose the stock OSC icons in the header. They're terrible (as most here will agree).

 

Your link hover color disappears into the background. That will be impossible for your target market to read. I'd make it red or something bright like that.

 

Broken images on the corners of the New Products box.

 

Product pics are boring. Is that the real color of the packaging or are they in greyscale?

 

Move your search box up above the credit card box.

 

Why on earth would you put not one but TWO link exchange banners in the footer? :blink: Are you trying to ensure that your customers leave? I'd kill them both. It's not worth the tiny amount of traffic you'll get (and untargetted, worthless traffic at that).

 

Contact Us page is all out of whack.

 

You forgot to add your Shipping and Returns info.

 

I would suspect that your target market would be much more apt to order if they could call you. I'd add that option pronto.

 

You have to go a lonnnnnnnny way down on the category pages to actually get to the products. Is all that info worth it? I was looking at the Acne and Rosacea Treatments category specifically.

 

I hope you have more products to add. Dunno about others but I like a better selection. Even if it's just related type items.

 

ARGH! I hate when people don't change the popup_search_help.php page. Make it match your products. Nobody is going to be searching for "Microsoft AND mouse" at your site. ;)

 

That's it for now. :D

[Guest]

Thanks guys, great feedback. Regarding the LinkExchange banners, they give me a couple hundred hits a month, and I have two running because I have two banners on the LinkExchange network. They seem out of the way and no one ever clicks on them so I leave them down there. It seems that if you make a professional looking banner on the LinkEx network it really stands out. A lot of the competition uses the standard banner generator.

 

SSL is not software but an encryption standard. My site is hosted on linux boxes using OpenSSL, and I am waiting for the certificate to be enabled. Then all the customer's information will be encrypted using the URL secure.n2naturalhealth.com.

[Guest]

How Secure Is Information About Me?

 

We work to protect the security of your information during transmission by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts

 

You may want to change this part if it is not software.

[phooey04]

I think your site is close to looking very professional. A couple of items to consider:

• Fill in your shipping and returns information before going live.
  
• Change the color of your header as others have suggested.
  
• Consider moving your Admin directory. It's good that you have added an ID and Password feature, but it would be even better if the folder was hard to find.
  
• Check to make sure all your products have images.
  

You've added some nice mods and I like your buttons and colors. Nice work.

[Guest]

Regarding a couple points from rseigel:

 

> Product pics are boring. Is that the real color of the packaging or are they in greyscale?

That's how the labelling looks. The 'photos' are 3d rendered. I know it's boring, but it's not too sexy a product. If I ever get time I might change this - something to match the colour scheme in the site.

 

> Contact Us page is all out of whack.

I don't know what you mean by this. Looks fine in Mozilla - does anyone else see a problem? Link - http://n2naturalhealth.com/contact_us.php

 

> You forgot to add your Shipping and Returns info.

Actually I'm having trouble locating where to change it. Also, I'd like to get rid of the everpresent 'What's new here?' blurb.

 

Great feedback from everyone. Knee-deep in prioritizing these changes at the moment.

[Rane]

Some images failed to load!

[Guest]

Where are you in the world Rane? I believe all images are there - maybe some timed out - I have seen this problem with Apache.

[OrbitBob]

re: image loading. I'm in Australia and had three fail to load;

1) the Glucosamine balm image

2) http://n2naturalhealth.com/images/prod_psoriasis_cream.gif

3) http://n2naturalhealth.com/images/infobox/NHCS.gif

 

Had no problems with site speed at all. Very quick in fact.