Can you spot the difference ? Does it matter ?

[♥bruyndoncx]

Can you spot the difference ? :-"

 

 

 

First off, there seems to be some confusion about what is an osCommerce "Stock" layout.

Do you consider this "stock" ? Please vote in the poll.

Hint, I still have some content in column_left, a header and footer section and no template applied.

 

Secondly, I genuily think after 2 years, it's about time to have a our cooking storereviewed.

I wanted to list the different contributions used, maybe you can help me compile this list and let me know how it looks and what bugs you find along the way ? I'm sure there are as I've made too many changes to not make any mistakes.

 

I've still got a few things I want to adjust/finetune, but perhaps there are more urgent issues to take care of.

 

What is still on the todo list:

- PWA,

- Ogone payment gateway

- and (perhaps) search engine friendly urls - not sure if it still worthwile these days.

 

Any and all feedback greatly appreciated !

 

Please note that this site is live, please add a 'test' comment to any test orders made, ofcourse genuine orders are also kindly accepted :thumbsup:

 

Thanks for your time,

Carine

[♥bruyndoncx]

Ok, so here goes my first attempt at listing contributions used:

1. 
   At the catalog side / visible to the customers
   
2. Product Listing in columns
   
3. Option types
   
4. Static attributes
   
5. Bundled products
   
6. Master Products
   
7. Wolfen Featured sets
   
8. Wishlist
   
9. Article Manager
   
10. Cart in header
    
11. Compare products
    
12. Categories ordered list
    
13. Family products
    
14. Giftwrap
    
15. Store pickup module
    
16. Thumbnail browse
    
17. Product availability
    
18. Automatic thumbnails (with caching and without stretching)
    
19. Centered shop
    
20. Category descriptions (and custom manufacturer descriptions)
    
21. Skipping account creation success
    

1. 
   Admin enhancements
   
2. Enable/Disable categories
   
3. Easy Populate
   
4. Held Orders
   
5. Comments Bar
   
6. Supertracker (customized)
   
7. Recover carts
   
8. Admin specials
   
9. Quick updates
   
10. Attribute manager
    
11. Multiple products manager
    
12. Stats clients
    
13. Image check
    
14. SEO Assistant - customized work in progress - to track performance on different engines/country and language combinations
    

1. 
   Other stuff working in the background
   
2. Google analytics
   
3. Explain queries and performance monitoring
   
4. Pricelist
   
5. Google sitemap
   

1. 
   Custom coding:
   
2. Instore products (stuff available at the shop but not yet setup for shipment online)
   
3. Calculate shipping boxes needed since products can't just be halfed
   
4. Integration of mylongtail - now known as HitTail
   
5. rounded boxes/corners (pure css solution)
   
6. tabs on top (sliding doors and categories ul listing - some javascript needed for IE) - dropdown layout is not yet working properly
   
7. product filter / multiple facets drilldown
   
8. meta tags/header tags some custom coding based around existing contributions
   
9. newsletter subscription box (integrates with listmessenger)
   
10. Enhanced (older version of) supertracker to track products viewed/purchased over time to allow for timebased reports on products viewed and purchased (and conversion rate on product pages)
    
11. Use HTMLText contribution on homepage for newsflash when needed
    
12. Listing of categories on homepage - listing sibling categories on child categories
    
13. Custom page for main categories
    
14. RSS feed box and module (based on simplepie) to show recept 'recipes' and 'recepten' from delicious
    
15. Adding manufacturer name to show whenever the product name is shown
    
16. Reworked specials and products_new to use the product listing module for uniform look
    
17. and many more tweaks left and right for looks and performance
    

• Tried and ditched:
  
• Newsletters MS2 - I needed multi-lingual capabilities and be able to manage multiple lists per language
  
• JS Infobox - just didn't like it
  
• MyGiftList (no-one bothered to use the external site)
  

What is still on the todo list:

- PWA,

- Ogone payment gateway

- SSL

- and (perhaps) search engine friendly urls - not sure if it still worthwile these days.

 

So what do you guys think ?

Constructive and descructive feedback is welcome :)

 

I'm generally using firefox and IE 6 on windows xp and occasionally Opera.

Does the site look good in your browser/os combo or do you see something funny, misaligned or out of proportion ?

 

Thanks for your time ! ( and let me know if I can return the favour )

 

Carine

[hubcat]

The site looks great (visually speaking). However, the pull down menus at the top are very hard to work with. They go away before I can click. (Increasing the time they stay visible on mouseover will help that.) The Coffee Bar pull down menu is too long and I lose some of the catagories off the right side of the screen. (I'm looking on IE6 on a Windows XP Pro.)

 

The biggest issue, though, is lack of SSL. I wouldn't buy from any site where I had to give my personal info unsecured. :(

 

Good luck,

Adrienne

[monikart]

I personally do not like 'stock' looking stores and tend to not make purchases at them either. i am however more of a designer than a coder and we tend to care about that a little more.

 

i would say that if i was going to purchase form your site and spend that much money on say the expresso machine, i'd like to see a nice big image of it. the images on the bottom are too small and on the poduct page either it took too long to load and i left or there wasn't one.

 

my question is how did you get the bundled products to work with your attributes. and please provide a link for the Master Products Contribution you are reffering to.

 

nice job :)

[Guest]

Oops, you haven't tested this site on a Mac, the layout breaks completely in Safari.

 

Look:

[♥bruyndoncx]

Oops, you haven't tested this site on a Mac, the layout breaks completely in Safari.

 

Look:

Guess this justifies going back to a tables based layout for my tab bar ?

Or is there one that actually works in Safari too ?

Thanks for the screenshot, that really hits it home :'(

[♥bruyndoncx]

The site looks great (visually speaking). However, the pull down menus at the top are very hard to work with. They go away before I can click. (Increasing the time they stay visible on mouseover will help that.) The Coffee Bar pull down menu is too long and I lose some of the catagories off the right side of the screen. (I'm looking on IE6 on a Windows XP Pro.)

Thanks for the feedback, could you tell me your screen resolution ?

My system is pretty much the same, though the tabs are far from ideal, they are not working for me as you described.

The biggest issue, though, is lack of SSL. I wouldn't buy from any site where I had to give my personal info unsecured. :(

Yes, I understand your point. I'm looking into adding SSL, I haven't done this yet as no financial transactions are done on the site, but your and other peoples data privacy concerns in cyberspace is understood.

 

Carine

[choosealogin]

Carine,

 

I think your site looks great. Agreed that there is some confusion on what "stock" is. Sure, knowing what bone stock osC looks like, I would not buy from the store at demo.oscommerce.com :lol: ...but some people are a little harsh with the 'stock' comments. Anyway, thanks for the poll..it was amusing and informative :)

 

I'm not one that likes to dig and do a thorough review. I do like to report my general overall first impression...I really like the color scheme, I think it suits the shop well. The only thing that sticks out for me right off, is the 100% width header w/ the somewhat fixed width stuff underneath it. At 1024 screen width, it all looks well balanced ...but at 1280 the right side looks empty and it looks odd to have the header stretch to infinity on the right. Hope that makes sense. I'm not that picky, really...you can't please everyone...if the header was fixed width there would be more than a few people screaming about that anyway :P

 

Good job!

[♥bruyndoncx]

i would say that if i was going to purchase form your site and spend that much money on say the expresso machine, i'd like to see a nice big image of it. the images on the bottom are too small and on the poduct page either it took too long to load and i left or there wasn't one.

If there is a thumbnail picture showing, you should get a big image on the product page.

Where are you located ? Is the site consistently slow to you, or was this more coincidence ?

(perhaps night time during systems backup time ?)

I've specifically removed the click to enlarge to show a bigger image on the product page, do you feel the image is not big enough and should be bigger or perhaps allow to enlarge to a really big image ?

My feeling is that if you cllick on a product in the listing, you are interested to see it in detail, so I figured showing the products big image immediately is better than having another click to enlarge - what do you generally prefer ?

 

my question is how did you get the bundled products to work with your attributes

well, they don't as far as I know. If you add a bundled product to the cart, I think you get it with the default attribute selected, but perhaps this is not true, and you would get it without any attributes at all ? (I'll need to test that out to be sure of what is happening and if it's ok)

and please provide a link for the Master Products Contribution you are reffering to.

 

nice job :)

thank you,

 

example of a master product with the master being priced :

http://www.keukenlust.be/product_info.php?products_id=946

one without a price for the master:

http://www.keukenlust.be/product_info.php?products_id=948

[♥bruyndoncx]

The only thing that sticks out for me right off, is the 100% width header w/ the somewhat fixed width stuff underneath it. At 1024 screen width, it all looks well balanced ...but at 1280 the right side looks empty and it looks odd to have the header stretch to infinity on the right.

Thank you for hte nice comments.

Good point, haven't seen the store in widescreen mode yet, I'll need to get some funding to do proper testing on widescreen and macs ... or maybe borrow someones system while they are on holiday B)

 

Polls are fun, too bad you can't change them afterwards, seems like you always want yet to have another option to vote on.

[Guest]

Guess this justifies going back to a tables based layout for my tab bar ?

Or is there one that actually works in Safari too ?

 

Safari is pretty standards compliant generally, I do all my development work on a Mac and the result is normally identical in Firefox and Safari. I'll take a quick look at your code for the tab bar if you want to send me the relevant file (header?) and css.

 

John

[abra123cadabra]

If there is a thumbnail picture showing, you should get a big image on the product page.

Where are you located ? Is the site consistently slow to you, or was this more coincidence ?

(perhaps night time during systems backup time ?)

I've specifically removed the click to enlarge to show a bigger image on the product page, do you feel the image is not big enough and should be bigger or perhaps allow to enlarge to a really big image ?

My feeling is that if you cllick on a product in the listing, you are interested to see it in detail, so I figured showing the products big image immediately is better than having another click to enlarge - what do you generally prefer ?

 

 

well, they don't as far as I know. If you add a bundled product to the cart, I think you get it with the default attribute selected, but perhaps this is not true, and you would get it without any attributes at all ? (I'll need to test that out to be sure of what is happening and if it's ok)

 

thank you,

 

example of a master product with the master being priced :

http://www.keukenlust.be/product_info.php?products_id=946

one without a price for the master:

http://www.keukenlust.be/product_info.php?products_id=948

 

Hi Carine,

 

nice layout. I like the colours.

 

But, as you are asking for feedback, I'll point out a few things that could be improved:

 

1) When you are using master products, only a click on the slave image takes me to the slave details. Maybe make the slave name also clickable.

 

2) The master product with price (link above) gives me the option to buy more than one but I can only buy 1 of the slaves each time. Maybe I only want the creamer because I already have the base pack. I need to set the master quantity to 0 and the slave to one before adding to the cart. As the price for the master is at the top of the page and the slave is way down, I didn't realise this the first time and added the base pack too.

 

3) Your layout is set to fit the 1024 resolution which I use but I don't maximise the window. It's slightly smaller and I have to scroll to the right.

 

4) I personally think your pages are too long. A lot of options to navigate your site, which is good. No idea what to do about this. I just don't like neverending pages where I have to scroll back up again because I can't remember what was at the top of it.

 

How long are you online with this shop? Are you happy with the sales you get? If you have the means to track how your customers are browsing your site, you can determine which elements are used and which are not to get from A to B and what exactly customers are looking at. I have added Google Analytics and it is really interesting. Ok, most of my visitors are friends or people from this forum but my impression is that product listings with many pages don't get the attention they deserve. Hardly anyone clicks on "next five pages". It's hard to get it right for everyone.

 

Keep up the good work!

 

abra

[♥bruyndoncx]

1) When you are using master products, only a click on the slave image takes me to the slave details. Maybe make the slave name also clickable.

Done

2) The master product with price (link above) gives me the option to buy more than one but I can only buy 1 of the slaves each time. Maybe I only want the creamer because I already have the base pack. I need to set the master quantity to 0 and the slave to one before adding to the cart. As the price for the master is at the top of the page and the slave is way down, I didn't realise this the first time and added the base pack too.

Fixed so that the slave allows to buy multiples and also indicates if there is limited stock.

I'll need to review if pricing a master product is sensible as you indicate it is confusing when ordering.

3) Your layout is set to fit the 1024 resolution which I use but I don't maximise the window. It's slightly smaller and I have to scroll to the right.

Correct - browser stats show that the bad display on higher resolutions is a bigger issue then the scrolling on lower resolutions. I have very few visitors using 800x600, I'm not sure how many people with 1024 width resolution actually use a smaller window when browsing the net.

4) I personally think your pages are too long. A lot of options to navigate your site, which is good. No idea what to do about this. I just don't like neverending pages where I have to scroll back up again because I can't remember what was at the top of it.

Which pages specifically you feel are too long ? Is it the master products listing, home page, main categories, general product listing and/or regular product info page ?

How long are you online with this shop?

Almost 2 years, but starting of with pretty standard shop and adding functionality and customizations over time.

Are you happy with the sales you get?

I do have regular sales, but I'm not happy with the conversion rate overall.

To increase conversion rate significantly I'll need to tackle the big issues on my todo list (PWA, SSL, Ogone)

If you have the means to track how your customers are browsing your site, you can determine which elements are used and which are not to get from A to B and what exactly customers are looking at. I have added Google Analytics and it is really interesting. Ok, most of my visitors are friends or people from this forum but my impression is that product listings with many pages don't get the attention they deserve. Hardly anyone clicks on "next five pages". It's hard to get it right for everyone.

I have google analytics since the fall of 2005, but I have not been able to get usuable navigation stats (the screen with the data overlayed on your shop). I think it is because there are so many product pages that people enter the shop on, being treated as separate pages and google analytics not able to recognize the common navigation elements.

I agree that browsing through pages and pages of products is not happening, that is why I have the filtering mechanism to allow people to focus on a subset. Evidently these filters only work when all the data to filter on is entered, but it does allow to narrow the results and shorten the list.

 

Visitor wise, about 70% is via google, for june I got 125 visitors from the oscommerce forums. Yahoo and MSN referrals are minimal but growing. I know that few of the people from the oscommerce forums are actually interested in what we sell, but I did make some sales to people implementing osCommerce shops, so the community sponsorship badge is almost paid for :D

 

I'm still discovering the power of analytics, goal setting etc. It's pretty powerful, but not easy to use imo.

[Guest]

I'm not sure how many people with 1024 width resolution actually use a smaller window when browsing the net.

 

I have my screen res set at 1280x1024, but I virtually always have browser windows open far smaller than that. To me the whole point of having a bigger screen and higher res is that you can do/see more things at once, rather than simply one thing much bigger.

[abra123cadabra]

I think it is very difficult to predict how customers behave on your site. You can also only figure out which resolution they use, what platform etc. but you'll never know if they really use full screen or open up a lot of windows (I tend to have dozens of tabs in my firefox). I'm more a visual person. I don't like to search for information. If it is not there at first glance, I'll go check somewhere else.

 

The homepage is the one that I find too long. Too many options to navigate so I don't really know what to click first. Now I went back to see about the master slave thing I mentioned earlier. I thought I'll find it from the homepage but was kind of lost. Using the top navigation for dining, I get all the plates and stuff but I'm not sure if it was Villeroy & Boch. Had to click through the listing. Hm, that creamer looks like it is part of the pack but I can't see the pack. I remember how the image of the pack looked like. Click, ok, here's the master, I'm in the right place. The master quantity is still set to 1. I only need 4 new plates because my helpful husband broke the other ones... If I don't set the master to 0, I'll buy the whole pack again... See what I mean?

 

I have to agree about google analytics. It's very powerful once you figure out how to use it.

 

abra

[trogette]

Correct - browser stats show that the bad display on higher resolutions is a bigger issue then the scrolling on lower resolutions. I have very few visitors using 800x600, I'm not sure how many people with 1024 width resolution actually use a smaller window when browsing the net.

 

I do it all the time, habit from using chatrooms while browsing forums :) Also it's a known thing that it's easier to read text in narrow-enough columns to not have to move your eyes too far.

[superjadex12]

I think the design layout is pretty professional looking and does not resemble stock in my opinion.

 

As someone else mentioned, the home page looks like there may be too much going on.

The magnifying glass to the right of the search looks too jaggedy and is uneccessary.

The pepper mills ( i think thats the name ) have not so good looking pictures, not so good looking pictures at all ...

 

Other than that I think the site is pretty cool. Didn't really take a detailed, and technical look at it, but design wise I think its a job well done.

 

As for the things on your to do list, specifically the PWA, I highly recomend you don't bother with that.

 

I honestly think PWA is a waste of time and essentially useless. Not to knock the creators at all but the simple fact is that creating an account and "purchasing without an account" has the exact same form page. PWA offers no real benefit at all, it isnt faster or more convenient because the form is the same, and customers actually benefit more with an account as they can check order status and receive bonuses via email. I can't think of one good thing PWA does other than give the customer an illusion of choice.

 

Many people use fast easy checkout so you might look into that.

 

What I use personally is the simplest mod of all. Intead of the checkout buttons sending you to the login page I made it send to the checkout_shipping page and edited the header to check for login, if not send to create_account. The create accout then becomes the default way for people to order without actually being portrayed as the burden of "creating an account first".

 

Hope this helps.

[abra123cadabra]

Good point about PWA. I'm using fast easy checkout but with the account creation option. The details are logged anyway for order precessing purposes and the customer has the option to create an account immediately, after payment or when he receives the order confirmation email. If he doesn't use this option, he can order again with the same email address, overwriting the previous customer details - and he gets the option again. For the customer it gives the impression of being able to "testdrive" ordering with my shop before creating an account.

 

I prefer it this way, especially when I'm shopping for low cost items.

 

abra

[jodo]

carine, which thumbnail contribution are you using to achieve the small image and larger product image?

[avtoritet]

The site looks nice. At first glance I think that this is a big company.

The only comments I have is site SIZE. On screen resolution 1024x768 it is a little bit wider, so bottom scrolling bar appears. And there is a big disadvantage on a screen 800x640. Then you need to work a lot on the bottom. You probably fixed the width size. Try it on screens with different resolutions. Just remember many people use 800x600 res.

[monikart]

I found myself back on here and took another look at your site.

 

sorry if any of my comments are repeated from before, i did not read through all of the posts. also, by no means am i an expert at this. i've built a few shops for my clients using osc, i am a web designer and a very selective online shopper. This is feedback based on that combination.

 

My first impression is that 'this is a warehouse' and there are soooo many of those online stores around that i feel you really have to set yourself apart. when a potential customer searches for stores like yours and literally clicks on a site every couple of seconds in the search results (or sees a screenshot of it on Ask) you have to GRAB them. There is really nothing grabbing me when i go to your site. The colors are drab and really is nothing for my eye to follow. When i search for kitchen accessories on google i get results like bedbathandbeyond.com, crateandbarrel.com and lehmans.com. those are some of your competitors.

 

If you go to sites like hermes.com, chiasso.com or many other well know sites you'll see that they place their main focus on their products. Generally having beautiful large images, either static or rotating, as a focal point, along with a clean home page that can be easily navigated rather than having tons of text that i don't even know where to start with. Have the text, just not all of it on the home page. For example you could list your brands on the home page like this:

 

AEG

Alessi

Alfi

Amefa

Ariete

Brabanita

Braun

Calor

 

Click for More ...

 

 

Or list the most popular brands and then Click More.... (Some of those Brands hold no products ie (Hummel, Spiegelau, D?longhi) or only one product (Prestige) that can be dissapointing to find on a first visit. Make sure all your home page links are pointing to a page that you would like a first time customer to be impressed with.)

 

I would also move those catalog screenshots either to another page, rotate them in the left or right columns or place them lower on the page under the fold.

 

You have a lot of beautiful products and images of those products, yet, I have to click a couple of times in order to see any of them. (Salt & Pepper Shaker images get blurry on enlarge) This, I believe, is crucial time you have to save your potential clients, especially when some of those items are pretty pricey.

 

I like that you have a lot of products and that you have pretty good images of those products. I would really like to see that 'feel' to come across in the overall design.

[sassypickles]

You have a very Nice Web Site and I'm still improving on mine. The one thing that I have found in pruchasing and selecting on web search is that if to many things are on the frist page the why go to the next. I'm still having problems in the login page. can't seem to figure out how to set to the color I wish.

 

And as for pictures, and monitor size matters as I have a 19" and most of it look just ok but still needs help but some don't have big motitors, if it does'nt fit the motitor why read it.

 

What would be really nice is a easy way to put in my Meta tags which I have used a contrabution and still working on it.

 

Well all good an said any feed back is allway helpful and greatly apprecated.

[crandersons]

heheheh you sell dutch ovens , heheheh

[DeadDingo]

The overall site looks very impressive. Well done. It is obvious a lot of hard work has gone into the site.

 

There were a couple of things I would possible change though (very minor things).

 

The next page links (bottom right) are still in the blue text with the yellow rollover background. I would be tempted to change them to make it fit with the rest of your site.

 

When registering an account the postcode is above the city. Not sure what it is like for the rest of Europe, but in the UK the postcode comes after the city.

 

Also there is no My Account button, so I cannot check my previous orders, change my password or address details (your welcome email says I am able to do so)

 

Have you thought about adding an SSL ot your site as well. It would be a nice additional touch.

[♥bruyndoncx]

The overall site looks very impressive. Well done. It is obvious a lot of hard work has gone into the site.

Thank you, the (ad)venture into osCommerce land started almost 3 years ago.

 

The next page links (bottom right) are still in the blue text with the yellow rollover background. I would be tempted to change them to make it fit with the rest of your site.

True, it's just a cosmetic issue, but it is ugly isn't it :) - let me see to kill the yellow and blue

 

When registering an account the postcode is above the city. Not sure what it is like for the rest of Europe, but in the UK the postcode comes after the city.

In holland the post code comes before the city and indicates the street as well.

In belgium comes before city and just represents the city.

Thus I think the placement between street and city is the most logical, unless I ask for country first and then make the screen layout country driven, but that is not going to happen anytime soon ...

 

Also there is no My Account button, so I cannot check my previous orders, change my password or address details (your welcome email says I am able to do so)

How about the link at the top left, next to the language switch - should I rename it ?

 

Have you thought about adding an SSL ot your site as well. It would be a nice additional touch.

That is the next level, my current host doesn't support SSL, and since I don't take creditcards right now, it is a smaller issue. However, I agree, I will need to add it in the future and possibly change hosts. This will then be a major undertaking but will take the site to the next level.

 

Thanks for taking the time to review

 

Carine