70 replies to this topic

[ScooterProShop.com]

I am looking for feedback on our new osCommerce scooter store.
We are currently making sales, and everything is functioning as expected.

We are trying to get high ranks and would like to get feedback from the pros here in the community. We have hired an SEO company, but would like to get feedback as well.

I am not easily offended, so please don't hold back and be honest. Most comments bad or good will help us to make our site more attractive to our customers and beat down the competition in the long run.

It's all business - nothing personal.
The Store

Edited by The_Bear, 22 December 2003, 14:34.

[jello1]

Hello.... well in short....
1.it's boring, needs somthing..
2. RED ARRG!!!!!.. hurts the eyes... i'm sure you could find a better color.... since your doing scoots red is not a good ecommerce color... it's just a proven fact. red scares customers. i don't know why..
3. KILL THE SPLASH PAGE.... not needed at all. most customers will not make the next step. put you info on the front page in the center.

you have a great product.. just need to make the next step. have you looked at BTS?.... i'm sure you could run with it and make a real nice site. try to get away from the standard OSC look and feel. I do a lot of work with BTS and it's amazing what you could do with it..
HTH

[trendyfashion]

I agree with jello....the red is not a good color. The top logo looks cool but it's way to big. There are a couple of ads that all of a sudden the pages is way to wide. Had my scrolling sideways alot on a 17" monitor. I bascically am a sufer who hates to scroll sideways on a website. I did find myself poking around the scooters with my son....looks cool, i want one now...hahaha.

[ScooterProShop.com]

Ok, maybe red isn't the greatest color .. I will try blue or something softer.

As far as the splash page .. osCommerce main page won't index, unless you know a trick to it. Dynamic pages are often skipped by spyders, leading to no rankings.
Hence the splash page was created.

I will reduce the image size also .. by 20% ... it is a bit large and takes a minute too long to load. I agree.

I would like to eventually reface the site a bit, but I am not very good with php and still learning the vanilla code for osCommerce .. over time I will make changes as the php learning curve straightens out a bit.

As far as the ads, I think thats an oversized manufacturer Image I need to fix. Not usually a side scrolling site at all.

Thanks for the Feedback.
Much appreciated.

Anyone else ?

[Marg]

You should consider the small, medium, large images contribution. Your http://www.scooterproshop.com/catalog/ takes
1. 198 seconds over ISDN
2. 479 seconds over a 56k modem
3. You don't even want to know what a 28k modem is.

Just my input
M~

[ScooterProShop.com]

Those numbers don't match what I get ... but reducing the load time is a key factor. The test server you were using must be a bit laggy .. or far away .. *shrug*

I would still like to look at the contrib. Any idea of the contrib # or location ?

[burt]

Standard Oscommerce with a new header. Boring, dull. What have you done that is worth commenting on ?

I have seen a really fantastic Scooter Shop before now - I am sure it was an Oscommerce store. If I can find the link I'll post it so that you can see what a difference a design can make.

[ScooterProShop.com]

Burt , thanks for your bluntness. I like a hardened critic approach.
I have seen the site your refering to and WOW, I have no idea how to do that type of work. That takes an artist hands not a business man. Perhaps I should hunt that person down and hire them? I would love to have a site that appears all artsy-fartsy, but fact of it is .. I am really not in the entertainment business and wouldn't want to distract a customer from the main pupose of the site. Make sense?

Would the cost of the pretty graphical interface add a cost driven value to my business? Perhaps. Compliments .. sure. But at the end of the day the sales would most likely be the same.

If you know anyone that has such a talent .. and would be willing to help out, or point me in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.

Edited by ScooterProShop.com, 23 December 2003, 15:22.

[trendyfashion]

I didn't time your load time but on a 1.5m/s cable connection it loaded pretty quick. The top logo looks alot better now man. I am set at 800x600 and before I could only see 1/2 the free shipping logo, much better. Maybe take the overall height of the header down a bit...it takes up alot of room...mine is 100 pixels tall and I think that is still to big.

I also agree on the no need to for artsy-fartsy graphics and stuff...you have a cool product and that needs to be the focal point as you said and it is. Hek I am I still looking at the wheelman powerboard..I gotta have one! Thats what your site did for me...I surfed in just looking to help out with site review and now I want one...I want one bad...see your site works!! If you have some video that could be linked from the product info where you could see a scooter in action that would be real cool but of course eat alot of bandwidth.

[ScooterProShop.com]

Well I have a weakness for exotics, and all things considered if it adds value to my business then I will make an honest attempt to make it happen. I am also concerned that if image load time is an issue, then the artsy-fartsy graphics will just add to the load time. True?

Image size issue:
I have to use larger images and such, people that purchase my products like the larger detailed images. So if a 56k user can't load my page in a reasonable amount of time, I suppose it may be time for them to upgrade? (IMO) I have tweaked and reduced the image sizes as far as I can go. My part is done on image loads and download times.

Edited by Johnson, 24 December 2003, 05:16.

[TerryK]

Robert wrote:

Quote

So if a 56k user can't load my page in a reasonable amount of time, I suppose it may be time for them to upgrade? (IMO)

Yes, upgrading would be nice -- but you can't expect your customers to upgrade just so they can see your site more quickly.

I happen to live in a remote community where our only option is dialup or satellite -- very costly. And how about the grandparents who spend only an hour or two online with their minimal-hour plan. They might be looking to purchase one of these for their grandchildren, but should they be expected to get a digital cable connection so your page shows up more quickly? I think not.

Quote

I have tweaked and reduced the image sizes as far as I can go. My part is done on image loads and download times.

You could *still* optimize your images more. For example, your XCOOTER CHOPPER-(XC900GT2).gif displayed on the main page is 63K. Save it as a JPG at low resolution and you could probably get it down to around 10-15K.

When I go to the product page, your XC900GT2-1.jpg image comes through at 73K. Optimize, optimize, optimize! Save it at 72dpi low res and you'll get it way down, too. Better yet, use a mod like Big Images for both a thumbnail and regular size image, and you (or I) will see your site load far more quickly.

HTH,

Terry

[ScooterProShop.com]

I did look for that contrib earlier with no luck. I am not even sure it will work for me. Example page ?

I do not mean to be so blunt about it, but in situations where a 56k user doesn't realize they are "slow" they will wait for the page / image loads anyways, because they are used to it. Fast or slow. 1 minute or 5 minutes.

My products are unique and the "common" curious internet user will do the wait. I get your point though ... but options in my situation are minimal. I will try anything, but low-res images is not one of them. Customers want the detail high-res images.

Thanks!

[ScooterProShop.com]

Updated:
*Changed color to Baby Blue to appeal to the softer side of people.
*Tweaked a few larger images - converted to .gif to reduce filesize.
*Added a Product listing contrib that adds more information on the product listing main catalog page.
*Reduced the display of new product listings to 4.

These changes should reduce load times and make my store a better place to visit.
Thank You for all that commented and advised, it is very much appreciated.


If anyone else would like to review my store and post comments here, please do.
I welcome open critisism, but keep in mind the issues already mentioned and reconciled. TIA!
My Store

Edited by ScooterProShop.com, 23 December 2003, 21:36.

[trendyfashion]

Dang that wheelman is cool...the video rocks.!!! The new splash page is cool and fits your purpose(se placement) but is small enough where a surfer can jump right to the scooters!

Are you using an image addon like thumbnails or some of the others. I think that is where you will gain the most speed.

You are right on having high res big pics.....you have to since you sell a high dollar items but small size thumbs will help and you could keep your big high res full size images.


Just went and surf site some more....yeah those images are killing you at 186k+...thats the one thing I didn't like about osc was the images where just resized by the height and width and not actually thumbed. I also use 100k+ images but my thumbs are a mere 1.5kb and yours are 180+! Granted the addon I use makes kind of a s@#$%y thumb but there are other contributions you can try. Plus the way your setup is must take some bandwidth to run.

[ScooterProShop.com]

Well I searched and Searched and cant seem to find the contrib that allows me to use the thumbnails on my product page and such.

I did find a contrib that allows a thumbnail and larger image in the product info page. But that doesn't replace the current configuration, just adds to it.

Additional Images (Version 1.0)
*installed* - http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1032

Any idea where I find a contrib that will allow me to use thumbnails for the image in catagories.php? I will need to be able to click on the thumbnail and get the larger image in the product_info.php page.

I am looking, but not sure which one to use.

[Johnson]

'Sm, Med, Lg Images' is the name of the contribution.

Matti

[ScooterProShop.com]

Go figure?
I searched for thumbnails, images, little images, Big Images, ect and got nowhere.
Perhaps I am not using the right search terms. Seems to be a big factor.

Anyways .. thanks for the specifics Mr. Johnson.

Also, I will deter any product discussions as well. I had no intentiuons of spamming.
I do appologize and will keep the focus on the reason I started this thread.

[Johnson]

You may also find this interesting re. "resolution/file size":

DPI

Matti

[241]

Cheers Matti that was enlightening.

Edited by 241, 24 December 2003, 15:37.

[tkeats]

ScooterProShop.com, on Dec 23 2003, 11:39 AM, said:

Image size issue:
I have to use larger images and such, people that purchase my products like the larger detailed images. So if a 56k user can't load my page in a reasonable amount of time, I suppose it may be time for them to upgrade? (IMO) I have tweaked and reduced the image sizes as far as I can go. My part is done on image loads and download times.

Your customers may need to upgrade. However as we all know, that the biggest bottleneck is the 28.8 to 56K modems still being relied on heavily in some parts of the contenant, or even the world. Some places you just cant GET faster then 56K without putting out a large amount of green for expensive equipment.

I myself am on a 1.5MB DSL line, and should have had no problem viewing your site within 30 seconds. Instead I had over 2 minutes to wait.. (Is someone surfing heavy at 22:00 EST on Christmas eve?)

Check the links along the top of the forums. Check out the Wiki effort, they will help you out. They've assisted me a great deal. (I struggled for over a year in the PHP heavy mess that is osC - no offense intended to osC's maintainers )

You might want to consider investing in psp and working the quality vs compression factor. See if it helps any.

One more idea. It may be just me, or the fact that I've done this to my own storefront, but consider slimming up the width of your site. I did just 2 changes on my own site, and it started to look less like osC (Although still painfully obvious)

Thomas