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almost ready


jonyo

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My Shop

 

I need to do the final small little details, I walked away from it for a few weeks and now I can't remember what the small details were that I need to work on.

 

All feedback is welcome... Keep in mind:

 

-As you can hopefully see from my main page, this site is set up to sell products created by me.

 

-We will be selling a few other crafts from other local vendors too, and a few items we buy whole sale, but the main focus will be for stuff we create.

 

-Yes i know, the product images and descriptions are crummy right now. (and a few of the images are even corrupt) All of the products (as of 5/16/05) are not finalized, at this point I am focusing on the website itself not the product listings. I will be re doing all of the pictures and descriptions in the following days (along with any fixes that need to be done)

 

-Please help me find stuff that does not match the theme, I have gone through most of the site but I probably missed some stuff.

 

-Question: Which search should I use, the one in the header, the one on the side bar, both, or create a new one? Thanks.

 

I really apreciate any feedback.

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Well done, nice looking site.

 

Not sure about the grey background, i would use a wood grain if it was my site, but its not so your choice : )

 

Why have the grand opening with the lines though the words, just looks like error to me but guess its not.

 

Anyway nice job good luck.

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Ps

 

why not rename top to home in breadcrumbs, top would make me think only of going to the header and not the main page.

Thanks! I did not even think of the wood grain, I've tried tons of different stuff and nothing looked quite right. I will have to mess around with the breadcrumb thing.

 

Thanks for taking the time to look at it!

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Well the site is kind of lacking something.. not sure what. Maybe just personality. It is kind of dreary grey/white.

 

Reword your pages. I kind of find your conditions and privacy a bit offensive as a customer. Like geez- these people aren't trying to keep my info secure at all. After reading those pages- I wouldn't shop there.

 

Whats the "clearance" pic on the conditions of use page?

 

Also an end parenthesis ) and no beginning one on cond of use page.

 

Same clearance pic on the shipping & returns page, & gift voucher page...

 

Your links at the bottom are all left aligned.. It throws it off balance- try centering.

 

Better pics for sure. You aren't allowing the customer to see the details of the product. Also what can be seen in the enlarged pics- doesn't show great quality. I wouldn't buy after seeing the pics up close. I can spot nail holes, edges not flush,level,plumb whatever- the corners aren't lined up and it creates a lip. For close to the $30 bucks I feel I could get more than enough supplies at Home Depot and do just as good of a job. :-"

What are you using to sit the items on when you take the pic of them? An old rusty paintcan? ugh.

 

Get rid of the "added to our catalog" stuff..

 

As far as the search goes-. I wouldn't use both that's a little ridiculous. I don't like the design of the boxes- so i'll go with the one in the header- but it doesn't have the advanced search feature which is something that might come in handy for some customers.

 

The fine details are important to people. For those prices you should be paying attention to the details and creating quality products- not just slapping a few pieces of wood together and calling it good. Course maybe you do have quality products- just happens to be the ones in the 3 pics I can see stuff. But it certainly would stop me from buying to you- so I think that would be the most impt thing to fix.

 

Overall the site is functional. If thats what you're looking for them you acheived it.

If you are looking for a site that makes people want to come back and tell their friends about- thats not this site. Give it some personality- some warmth- some friendliness...

 

Good luck.

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Hmmm. There are quite a lot of "final small little details" that need to be sorted out here...

 

Breadcrumb - hover and the link disappears - make the hover color something other than white, or just underline.

 

Text in your category and Designers boxes is shunted too close to the left and looks bad.

 

Hover your mouse over the little magnifying glass icon - the alt tag is wrong.

 

Advanced Search help popup - shows how many people actually use this - nearly everyone leaves the text as default - eg "Microsoft and Mouse" which is irrelevant to most people's sites.

The developers could have had a right laugh and put something really offensive in here and 99% of people would probably never even know about it.

 

Please proof read the entire gift voucher FAQ - have you ever done this? If the FAQ sounds like it was written by a dyslexic ten year old, why on earth do you expect your customers to purchase them?

 

Privacy and conditions and returns etc pages need to be finished.

 

The box for your category listings looks unfinished - maybe change the header background to something other than white.

 

Bee Design Square Box product page - why is there a box at the bottom with a gift voucher in it? What is this?

 

"This product was added to our catalog on..." Remove this. Nobody cares.

 

Create account: Gender, DOB blah blah - don't ask customers for this info.

 

Country - only one, so why have a drop down?

 

Why are the boxes half white and half grey?

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To add to what others have said and if I repeat them sorry...

 

on the product info page there are two images and two links to view bigger images.. both have the same result and one is a text link and one is an image.

 

Your condition of use is... scary. Shoppers don't care about whether or not you allow people to use your images or text. I have to agree with Dawn, it needs a big change.

 

Not sure why but the create account page is on a secure server? shows https anyhow but I am not seeing a lock in my browser.

Wendy James

 

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

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on the plus side it's a nice attempt to get away from a totally stock layout

 

Losing the stock layout without giving it a total makeover makes it rather bitty though.

 

I'd agree with the previous posters - all important details that need to be fixed. One really strange one is that clicking on the FAQ for Gift Vouchers took me through to the customer logon screen

 

good luck, quite a lot to do yet

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WOW heh this shows how much I can miss when looking at my own creation :-P tried to get some buddys to look it over for me but they were too lazy, I need a few friends as "honest" as people here :-P

 

Update:

About policy pages, etc: need to do this, waiting for legal advice to help write policies.

 

Clearance pics: Got rid of all of them, I hope.

 

Product listings/images: The current product listings are place holders only, they are not my products, they are another local craft person's stuff that I was considering selling for them on my site... I am still building my inventory and working on the product listings off line... It will not have the "grey and white" and will have more images to take advantage of the thumbnail contrib I have.

 

Search: Decided on the search in the header.

 

Breadcrumb - hover and the link disappears
Oops, they are fixed now...
Text in your category and Designers boxes is shunted too close to the left and looks bad.
Fixed spacing, thanks.

 

Please proof read the entire gift voucher FAQ
Just finished re-doing the whole faq section. What do you think of it now?

 

Bee Design Square Box product page - why is there a box at the bottom with a gift voucher in it? What is this?
It was the box for "people that bought this also bought that", but the colors were off so you could not see the box around it or the text... should be fixed now.

 

on the product info page there are two images and two links to view bigger images.. both have the same result and one is a text link and one is an image.
text link? what is that? yes, this should all be fixed when I post the real product listings for my own products..
Not sure why but the create account page is on a secure server? shows https anyhow but I am not seeing a lock in my browser.
I totally missed that... Since I am on a shared ssl server, in the code I had to change the ssl check from http_server to http_x_forward or something like that... don't remember how I fixed it exactly but it should be fixed now. No more unsecure images.
on the plus side it's a nice attempt to get away from a totally stock layout

 

Losing the stock layout without giving it a total makeover makes it rather bitty though.

Thanks for the positive :) I thought I'd get ripped into more than this but I guess I posted on an off day or something... What did you mean by "rather bitty" I'm guessing it's a typo or a local euphorism I don't understand.

 

What do you think of the new menu look? changed the menu header images. I'm also pondering whether I like the background or if I should get another wood grain to use instead.

 

Thanks for all the feedback!

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Looking better.

 

Gift Voucher FAQ is a lot better, but still has errors:

 

eg:

 

"the amount shows in he Shopping Cart box"

 

"send the Gift Voucher to some one via email"

 

some one=someone, or why not change it to "a friend or relative" - sounds better.

 

"If you do not see the link, and you have already gotten an e-mail stating that your gift voucher is ready"

 

change gotten to received.

 

"Recipients Name" = "Recipient's Name" - same with Email

"Message to Recipients" - no plural

 

Don't have time to do a thorough check...

 

 

Your product pictures are still badly letting down what could otherwise be a very nice site.

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Started working on the product listings, I have discovered I hate the image contrib I have installed, I need a better one. It does not keep the same dimensions, so everything gets scewed. Can anyone recomend a contrib that works good for making thumbnails and stuff, and looks good in the product listings? here is a link to the product listing I am talking about: linkage

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It turns out when I installed the image contrib, I left a line or two in that should not have been there :sweating: I figured out how to fix the scewing of the thumbnails, just set all the image sizes to _ in the admin (that is suppost to be a nothing instead of a number like 100 or whatever) As long as you don't mind the images not having width and height atributes, this works.

 

Another thing that made me hate the contrib was the image managment script was all buggy, I figured out it was because an http:// was hard coded, it was the same problem as the problem dealing with unsecure images, if that makes sense. Oh yeah, the contrib I'm using is Ultra Image Package 1.2... It's actually nice when it works.

 

If you thought my product list were bad before, check them out now! The image sizes break the whole page... Heh I have to go back and re-do all the old thumbnail images that were not true thumbnails...

 

The product listing for "Signature Box" is pretty much how I like it, I might go in and make the thumbnailed images a little bit smaller when I get a chance... What do you think of the quality of those images from the Signature Box product listing? That is the quality I hope all of the product listings will look like when I am done creating them.

 

Thanks for looking :thumbsup:

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A lot better, but a couple of tips:

Pay very close attention to your lighting - if you can, get some good quality "true daylight" flourescents with a CRI as close to 100 as possible - some of your pictures are harsh and overexposed.

Use a tripod if you don't already.

Use photoshop or similar to make the white background transparent - with a high contrast edge you can use the "magic eraser" and it only takes a few minutes.

Lose the paint pot!

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Silly question about the lighting: Would photographing it in actual daylight work? I have access to different lighting stuff where I work but I do not know much about how to use the equipment, plus I don't want to have to take every one of my products to work w/ me to photograph them... (by work I mean my day job)

 

Also, question on checkout process: Currently, a new customer puts stuff in their shopping cart. Then they check out. It has them fill in their info, and creates an account for them. At the top of this screen is a message that says "if youa re already registered log in here"

 

My question is should I put 2 sections on the same page, one for returning customers and one for new customers, sorta like tons of other e-commerce sites out there, my favorite being newegg, or do you think it would be less confusing to keep them on seperate pages? I'm still trying to decide what to do. Thanks for the input :)

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Sorry that was too short, again i like the grain, but something is missing in you design to link it all, but im not sure what, im not a fan off the dotted lines around the info boxes but thats just pers taste, i do not like the grey in the box saying grand opening and im not sure about the white background, again something is missing but i can not put my finger on what would tie it all in.

 

I would like to see the site fit the whole screen and only see the grain when i flick around, and lose the grey with the grain it really looks dull when i first enter the site, try white or a light brown.

 

Sorry too sound hard im just trying to help : )

 

Good luck m8

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Rommany: Thanks for the feedback! I agree about it lacking something, it is lacking a good color scheme to tie the whole website together. When I first started out, I had a very LOUD color scheme with mostly pink. Then I came to my senses and quickly changed it.

 

All the graphics are left over from that theme, I was thinking they add a splash of (sorry for the wordage) "girly" to the theme, so I did not bother re-doing the graphics for the new theme.

 

My main target audience is women and parents of pre-teen girls (or it will be when we are finished with our inventory) Unfortunetly, the result is a theme that is OK but looks like it is mish mashed or something. I have changed the look a dozen times or more, I am out of ideas to what to do for the color theme and graphics. I have the menus and header pretty much how I like them though... the rest is in the air.

 

Instead, I am focusing on the layout and functionality for now, and right now I am working on the checkout process.

 

I need some feedback on one step in particular, create account page. As you can see, I moved the login to the same page, so if they already have an account, they can log in from that page instead of having to do an extra step.

 

My goal is to make it obvious that they will have an account on the site, but not scare them away... I am still working on the popup for the [?] next to information.

 

What do you thing on the wording, the ease of use, ect. of that page? Thanks for any feedback!

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You need to rethink your logic or layout (or both), since when I click on your "login or register" link at the top, then "continue" to create an account, the "Returning Customer" box is still there at the top...

 

Edit: I think the PWA contribution is probably the best of a bad bunch in terms of making the checkout process a little less cumbersome.

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You need to rethink your logic or layout (or both), since when I click on your "login or register" link at the top, then "continue" to create an account, the "Returning Customer" box is still there at the top...

 

Edit: I think the PWA contribution is probably the best of a bad bunch in terms of making the checkout process a little less cumbersome.

 

Thanks for the feedback FalseDawn, I'll look into the contirb. Although I think I'll keep hackin at what I'm doing, I'm already mostly done with it.

 

Heh I did not explain how this page is going to be used when it is done: I plan on having 2 versions of the register page. 1 version is for use during the checkout process, where it shows both on one page, and the 2nd is the normal one, in the case of a customer wanting to register before they are in the checkout process.

 

I was waiting till I got the modded version finished and understandable before I messed with the logic flow. Anyone have feedback on the page as it is now? This is the scenario where the customer will see this page: They put something in their cart. They check out. They are not logged in yet. This is the page they see when they hit the check out button in the shopping cart. Is the page understandable? Is it obvious enough that if you are a new customer, you only fill out the second section? (and visa versa if you are a returning customer) My goal is to get the checkout process down to as few steps as possible, while still making it not too overwhelming or confusing for the customer.

 

Thanks for any feedback! And thanks again FalseDawn, all your feedback is great! I don't know how you find the time to help me (and tons of other people) out so much, I really apreciate it :thumbsup:

 

EDIT: link to the page I'm talking about is here!

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Thanks for any feedback! And thanks again FalseDawn, all your feedback is great! I don't know how you find the time to help me (and tons of other people) out so much, I really apreciate it.

 

Because I'm a miserable old git with nothing better to do... (joke)

 

Thanks for the comment - I think quite a lot of people get offended by my negativity, but at the end of the day, your store won't get improved if you don't get criticism on it... My theory is "a complaint is a gift"...

 

Anyway, I understand what you are trying to do, but it still needs more thought.

 

For example, if I checkout, and see I need to login at the top:

 

case 1) I mistype my email or password - I am taken back to the "default" login page with an error, which is confusing.

 

case 2) I've forgotten my password, so I click the link, then "back" - again - stock login page - I didn't test what happens if I actually have an account and successfully request a new password.

 

Also, the ZIP code field should be after the State box.

 

 

Keep working at it - it takes time!

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Just a quick look, but my first impressions...

 

Header is too big... nearly half a page and much more on 800x600.

 

Don't like the shopping cart logo and the blue background on mouseover doesn't fit in with the site colour scheme. Ditto the red rollovers on the links (maybe change to the purple colour?).

 

Like the search box, but I'd be tempted to lose the 'Advanced Search' below it. That'll help reduce the height of the header too.

 

Put some cellpadding around the info boxes with the dotted lines - the Log In or Register text is hard to read.

 

Have the gift voucher FAQ automatically take you to the first topic. Otherwise it's just an extra click.

 

The blue borders on the product listing boxes are a bit big and out of place.

 

I like to link the Categories heading to an all products page (link).

 

Good luck!

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Just a quick look, but my first impressions...

 

Header is too big... nearly half a page and much more on 800x600.

 

Don't like the shopping cart logo and the blue background on mouseover doesn't fit in with the site colour scheme. Ditto the red rollovers on the links (maybe change to the purple colour?).

 

Like the search box, but I'd be tempted to lose the 'Advanced Search' below it. That'll help reduce the height of the header too.

 

Put some cellpadding around the info boxes with the dotted lines - the Log In or Register text is hard to read.

 

Have the gift voucher FAQ automatically take you to the first topic. Otherwise it's just an extra click.

 

The blue borders on the product listing boxes are a bit big and out of place.

 

I like to link the Categories heading to an all products page (link).

 

Good luck!

 

Thanks for the feedback, it's nice to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at the site!

 

header: I agree it is a tad big, on 800x600 it takes up half the screen (compaired to about 40-45% of the screen for most other popular online vendors like newegg, tigerdirect, ebay, etc) I am partial to the "artsy" part of it, I hoping to eventually tie the whole website together with it, including the other non-shopping sections of the site. About the advanced search: it wouldn't reduce the header size to remove it, since it is overlapped with the artsy part of the header. Plus some customers like the search ability.

 

Menu padding: Thanks, I hadn't noticed that before. I put some space before and after each menu item, there isn't room to add cell padding though because it breaks the layout when you are logged in. That is another reason for the large header, there are potentially 3 lines of the menu when you are logged in, so I need that extra space. After I am done messing with the checkout process, I will work on figureing out how to reduce the size of the header some w/o getting rid of the elements I like in it, maybe have more overlapping or something...

 

 

Gift voucher faq: I have to disagree with you on this one. I agree reducing amount of clicks is good in general(which is why I am re-doing the checkout process), but not here. Lets say it does take you to the first FAQ question. I (as a customer) go to this page, and scroll down expecting to see the rest of the questions answered. Since it only shows one question, I assume the page is broke or still under construction or something. Not a good thing for business. You have to remember people tend to read a little as possible, and if they see one question ansered and not the rest they assume it's broke w/o reading more to see if they have to click something. Now assume it is like it is now. I go to the page, and see the list of questions at the top. Then below I see a short message telling me to click on teh question I want ansered. No confusion!

 

Product listings: Yes, I need to redo the css for the product listings. I have been trying to decide on how to make them look, at this point I guess just taking off the blue will work (for now) I want to make them look better some how though, maybe a few graphics or something...

 

All products: Thanks for the suggestion, I will be adding that or something simular in the future.

 

Falsedawn: I'll get back to you (well everyone) when I am done with the checkout process to see if you can break it. I will be working on it the next few days. Thanks for all the help again :)

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ok, the checkout process is finished, I hope. Let me know if you can break it. I set up an account with lots of voucher money for everyone to test the gift vouchers.

 

e-mail: robinisabird (at) dodgeit DoT com

pass: 123pass

 

Please do not change account info.

 

If you are testing the retreave password, you can check the e-mail at dodgeit.com just go to the website and type in the user and it will show you all the e-mails for that user. Nice site for that sort of thing...

 

If you do reset the password, please change it back.

 

Please only send gift vouchers to yourself in the amount of $1 or less for purposes of testing to see how that part of it works. I will be resetting gift voucher balances when we go live (obviously) and also if anyone transfers more than a dollar.

 

If that login does not work, please PM me. Do not post on this thread with login problems because that would be thread littering :P

 

Keep in mind, this is to test the logged in part of the site when someone has gift vouchers. This is not a test to see how much you can monkey around with the account :P

 

Thanks for any feedback :D

 

PS some other things I've updated:

-Changed cart logo.

-Changed main logo (what do you think compared to the old one? I think I might change it some more before I'm done w/ it)

-made the cart in the header shrink or expand depending on how full it is (was fixed width before, so was always wide)

-added first name of person logged in to the header

-Like I said before, majorily changed around login and register process during check out.

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