New site up for evaluation and criticism

[Guest]

Hi everyone,

Just want to see if I can get some opinions and criticisim on my new website. It is live, so feel free to place test orders and such, but please if you do let me know in the comments field that it is a test and that you don't want it shipped.

 

The store is an Australian musical instrument accessories store online and the address is http://www.stringsandthings.net.au

 

Feel free to give me as much curry about it as you can and I'd love to see a good allround test of the entire site, especially the affiliates section. (Feel free to join up and place links on your site)

 

I think I have fixed a lot of the bugs and I know that there are probably plenty more hiding out there, but to the best of my knowledge the only major thing I have left to do is to design some banners to put in the affiliate section.

 

Thanks in advance,

Dave

[burt]

Really _very_ nice. Like the layout and I like the colour scheme - it looks classy.

 

I would make two changes (these are things that immediately stood out):

 

1/ The <hr> above and underneath the Music quote of the moment... looks bad. These would be better as a tep_draw_separator with a grey gif file.

 

2/ On login page, the 2 "boxes" new customer and existing customer would look better if one was placed above the other. They look too squished side by side.

 

Overall, _very_ nice.

[agiftcodotcom]

Looks great! My 2 thoughts...

 

1) If this is going to be your only web site without a 'front' of any sort, other than a 'click here to enter' page, you might want to look into moving your store up one folder to your root directory so that guests go directly into your store. Sometimes 'click here to enter' pages can make people 'click to close'. Just a thought.

 

2) You might want to either move your categories menu or put it in a background color different from your standard bg color. While I was visiting, I had a brief moment of 'I can only shop by brand'? It appeared, at first, as though there was not a way to simply browse your entire products. Being that I was there to view your site objectivly, I ended up finding the categories box, but someone who is there to simply 'browse' may not find it so quickly. The only reason I say this is because the way you have it set up, it appears 'off the page'. Many things that are 'off the page' are advertisements and people tend to ignore them, so as I did, they might ignore your categories box.

 

These are my only two thoughts. Your site looks GREAT though!!!

[Chance]

Very nice.

[Guest]

I agree. The site looks very nice - I wish I was in Australia. I actually need a new set of Dominants for my violin.

 

Anyway, my brief comments are as follows: I agree with the poster who mentioned that the categories box was a bit difficult to find. I too thought I could only search by manufacturer until I really looked around a bit. Might I suggest switching the categories listing and the shopping cart? Just a thought - but it would seem to be a more common layout and therefore easier for visitors to identify with.

 

Also, and this could just be me being brain-dead, but on first glance at the product description pages I just didn't even *notice* the product image. In fact, I was initially going to note that it would be nice if those images were included on the description pages until I went back and saw something that I initially thought "Oh, is that a recommended product?" and realized it was the image for the product I was viewing. Maybe there could be a way to just have the image a little bit closer to the item description itself? It just feels a little far removed right now is all.

 

Overall, I really like the layout. Very classy & professional looking. Definitely one of the better OSC customizations that I've seen! So excellent job. I'm going to submit a few musical quotes to ya right now ;-) My favorite is about a cellist...

 

Laura

[Guest]

Hi again,

I'm testing more things on your site. Here are my latest comments (and again, I think it's a very nice looking site!).

 

1. I agree with the previous poster about moving your catalog up to the root directory so visitors don't need to click on something in order to enter your store.

 

2. The Affiliate Programs FAQ - not loading all the backgrounds/graphics. You may need to check the source code here.

 

3. Couldn't find any products, banners or text links to add to my site through the Affiliate program. I presume you'll be adding these soon?

 

4. When registering for an account I'm asked to type in my State. But when I click on "Submit" I get an error indicating that I need to choose my state from the drop-down. Could the dropdown be there to begin with? It's a little annoying to a new customer to get an error for something that they didn't have the option of doing in the first place.

 

5. In the Checkout area - It feels pretty cramped in here :P I'd suggest removing the column with the arrow pointing to the shipping address, or else create something a bit smaller for that arrow. Maybe make it into rows instead of columns?

 

6. Same comment as #5 - for the Payment Method box on the next page.

 

7. Same cramped feeling on the "Confirmation" page. Play with this layout some more.

 

I think that's about it! Again, nice looking site. Just needs a bit of tweaking (as does mine, for that matter).

 

Laura

[Guest]

Thanks everyone for your ideas! It's really great to have a constructive support forum who can give advice when sometimes you can be so busy making the site perfect in your own eyes and difficult to get around in someone elses.

 

I love everyones comments and I will certainly start playing around with some of these things.

 

I do however have one agonising decision to make. I happen to like the click to enter page, just because it sets the tone of the site and I really don't want to lose it, but I understand what is being said. Do you think it would be possible for me to just put a redirect in to open the catalog page once loaded, or would it be better if I just moved everything into the root?

 

Every other comment I agree with wholeheartedly and will see about fixing those issues over the next few days.

 

Once again, thanks for all your contributions and advice.

 

Dave

[Guest]

I think you're already setting a tone with your lovely, unique site design. You don't need to set the tone with a splash page. I say lose it. Not because it's not nice looking...it is. It's just not necessary and causes the customer to have to make an extra click.

 

One rule I learned a long time ago is to keep your content as close click-wise as you can. The fewer clicks a customer has to make to find what they want, the better!

 

Laura

[bobthelucky]

ok very nice site,some cool ideas, just like 2 things,first im a old guy and i like to see what im viewing so i use 600x800 your store doesnt fit well at that res. second item is if i was goingto buy a music or anything else thing for over 2000 dollars i would like a better picture then osCommerce gives you the ablity to have. i have a pic of our brick and morter store on mine lets say 400 pixels,i then have a click to enlarge goes to another pic of lets say 1000 pixels. that way it wont slow load time and yet if they want to see detail they can. just a thought other wise nice store

[Guest]

Bob makes a good point about the size of the images. There's at least one (maybe more) contributions out there that allow you to create multiple sizes of images and allow your customers to click on the smaller one in order to get a better view. My site modified that a bit - we used the thumbnail-sized images in the product listing view, and had the larger image actually set in the product description - 'course, very few of our products need anything much larger than about 200 pixels wide. But I believe the contributions set things up slightly differently than that. Take a look. I don't think they were terribly difficult to implement.

 

Laura

[Guest]

Thanks again everyone for your thoughts. I've already implemented a few changes...

 

* The horizontal rules in the right column have now become tep_draw_separators with a 1 px high gif file

 

* I have changed the category display to be in the left column

 

* The login pages (both customer login and affiliate login) now have the new customer and returning customer sections one on top of the other.

 

Thanks Laura for the quote... I love it and I'm busy trying to implement some of your other recommendations. Let me know what you think of the current location of some of the boxes. Is it an improvement or should I try a different position?

 

Thanks Bob for your input, a multiple image contribution has been on the cards for a while because I know how frustrating it is to try and see any detail in a low resolultion and grainy product image. I've downloaded a few of the contribs but haven't tested any on my demo server yet.

 

Thanks Gary and Eric for your recommendations. I am currently finishing implementing them. Should be fixed within an hour or two.

 

I'm still agonising over the intro page, but I think I will fix that because it seems to be a lot of peoples opinion that intro pages are an escape route that future customer may take before visiting my site.

[ryanf]

I think the intro page needs to go, I can't stand sites with them.

 

When I am navigating to the products, it get bored. there is nothing except a list of sub categories. there needs to be some pictures and/or text.

 

I also didn't see the product image at first. I think it didn't have one. I would suggest moving it into the product information area.

 

I can't stand how you can't right click. It is only a minor inconvience to those who want your pictures but a great one to everyone else. Stopping people from right clicking will NOT stop them from taking your pictures if they want. Its way to easy to take them. heck all I got to do is put in the url: http://www.stringsandthings.net.au/catalog...esign/jeans.jpg and its mine. If I had windows xp it allows you to save them much much easier. Just hover over the image and you can click the save button.

[agiftcodotcom]

My favorite is to just do a print screen and then crop it in photshop :D

[Guest]

Hi David,

MUCH better placement of the boxes. I think it's far more intuitive now!! Good job!

 

My $0.02 on the "No Right Click" script - Ryan's right that it's far too easy for someone who's wanting to maliciously steal your images to get around the script. As a consumer, there are occasions when I want to save an image of a product I'm consideering purchasing - for whatever reason. Maybe I want to send the image to a friend or family member for their advice (yes, I could just send them to the website), or who knows what my legitimate reason at the time could be for wanting an image. Given the fact that the script is so easy to get around, I would say that it should probably go. It gives an impression of "you're not welcome", even though that's not your intent :huh:

 

I'll send you more quotes in the next couple of days! Gladja liked the cello one! It's one of my all-time favs!!!

 

Laura

[Guest]

Hey all,

 

Thanks again for the info and advice. I wasn't even aware that I had the no right click script in (I'm using safari as my browser on the mac and it seems to bypass the right click script). I must have put it in on my testing server and managed to upload it with one of my updates. I don't particularly like right click scripts, and I'm not worried about people using my images. I'll find it and remove it for you all.

 

Good news for all that are interested... The intro page is going today! Hurrah!

 

Laura, glad you like the new placement. I'm looking forward to the new quotes.

 

Ryan, I'm still trying to figure out just what I can do with the product images in the product pages. I know I need to do something, I've just got to work out what that is. I also agree whole heartedly about the boring category pages. There is meant to be a Featured product box that turns up on those pages, but I can't seem to get it to show on 1st level categories, ie. strings. It is there in strings/guitar. I've been thinking of putting an image or something to liven up the page. Will have a bit more of a think about it.

 

OK everyone, no doubt there are still plenty of opinions out there. I'd like to hear them, because I don't think the site is perfect yet. Let me know waht you think.

 

Thanks again,

Dave