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Advice on bounce rates


gforster

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I like the top blue buttons.

left and right columns look too big to me specially when in the product page.

you could make the top banner a hyper link image for easier navigation

play around with your .css file to change your colors.

Santa's little freelancer

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Anyone care to give constructive criticism / feedback on my site. Still more products to be entered so there maybe a few categories / sub-categories without products but essentially it is ready.

UK Bathroom Store

Hi

I like the look of the site, especially the middle part. However, I feel that there would be more unity if you changed the colour of the default gray osCommerce lines around boxes into the same blue as the background of your top banner. I also think that the right column is disproportionately - and unnecessarily - wide.

Also, I would suggest that you change the font of the text: "UK Bathroom Store - Top Branded Bathrooms at discounted prices

Welcome to UK Bathroom Store," etc. from Times New Roman to Verdana. Same goes for the bottom navigation - you need to not only change the font there, but the alignment too (make it centre), or - even better - put buttons instead of text.

Lana

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Hi

I like the look of the site, especially the middle part. However, I feel that there would be more unity if you changed the colour of the default gray osCommerce lines around boxes into the same blue as the background of your top banner. I also think that the right column is disproportionately - and unnecessarily - wide.

Also, I would suggest that you change the font of the text: "UK Bathroom Store - Top Branded Bathrooms at discounted prices

Welcome to UK Bathroom Store," etc. from Times New Roman to Verdana. Same goes for the bottom navigation - you need to not only change the font there, but the alignment too (make it centre), or - even better - put buttons instead of text.

Lana

 

Thanks for the feedback, I have already taken on board some of the changes that you suggested. Can you clarify some of them for me however.

 

When you say change the oscommerce gray to the blue of the top banner, do you mean the light blue or the dark blue of the stripe ? (perhaps I should try them both out).

 

Also you say that the right panel is too wide, which page was this on ? Was it the homepage or one of the product pages, I am not doubting you but on my homepage it is quite narrow.... Again many thanks for your comments so far, I take them all seriously.

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looks really nice I personally think the colours work well the dark blue in the top banner picks up with the images for cart and so on.

The left hand boxes are quite big compared to the right and it does throw the site out a bit but overall very nice, good clean images and a nice clean looking site. The only downside I saw was the mass of text at the bottom I know its advertising and thanks but maybe it could go somewhere else ?

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looks really nice I personally think the colours work well the dark blue in the top banner picks up with the images for cart and so on.

The left hand boxes are quite big compared to the right and it does throw the site out a bit but overall very nice, good clean images and a nice clean looking site. The only downside I saw was the mass of text at the bottom I know its advertising and thanks but maybe it could go somewhere else ?

 

 

Thanks for the comments, I am currently working on changing those borders to the dark blue as I agree this will work better.

 

I am also then going to work on that left box as it probably is a little too large.

 

Could you tell me which advertising text at the bottom ?

All I could find there was the oscommerce text and diamondsea which I believe are requirements for the GPL license.

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Hi,

 

My store is live and taking orders, however I appear to have a high bounce rate even for really good traffic (ie the user has typed the exact product into a search engine and gone directly to the product page).

 

My understanding is that usually bounce rates mean that the site is awful or very very slow. My site may not be perfect but I don't think that there is anything so bad it would drive a customer away and I didn't think it was overly slow (although I have a fast connection).

 

Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

www.ukbathroomstore.co.uk

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Thanks for the feedback, I have already taken on board some of the changes that you suggested. Can you clarify some of them for me however.

 

When you say change the oscommerce gray to the blue of the top banner, do you mean the light blue or the dark blue of the stripe ? (perhaps I should try them both out).

 

Also you say that the right panel is too wide, which page was this on ? Was it the homepage or one of the product pages, I am not doubting you but on my homepage it is quite narrow.... Again many thanks for your comments so far, I take them all seriously.

Hi,

I actually meant the light blue - but the site works very well indeed with dark blue, no need to change.

What I mean re. the right column width - on all the pages - is that it is simply noticeably wider than the left column width, and that, in my opinion, it would work better if both right and left column were the same width - like in default osCommerce (I do like it when people decide to drop one of the columns altogether, but making one wider and the other narrower does not seem aesthetically pleasing to me).

Lana

PS : Just scrolled to to bottom and - oh horror - discovered that Times New Roman is still in the bottom navigation bar. Please change that to Verdana.

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Hi,

I actually meant the light blue - but the site works very well indeed with dark blue, no need to change.

What I mean re. the right column width - on all the pages - is that it is simply noticeably wider than the left column width, and that, in my opinion, it would work better if both right and left column were the same width - like in default osCommerce (I do like it when people decide to drop one of the columns altogether, but making one wider and the other narrower does not seem aesthetically pleasing to me).

Lana

PS : Just scrolled to to bottom and - oh horror - discovered that Times New Roman is still in the bottom navigation bar. Please change that to Verdana.

 

 

Thanks for the pointer re: Times new roman font !!!!! will fix asap...

 

It's not that I disagree with your comments regarding the right column it's just that I cannot seem to replicate the problem here. I am curious to know if there is something different at your end, are you using a different browser or is there an image that is resizing incorrectly to make the right column expand etc etc.

 

Obviously I am keen to fix the problem in case every user except me can see it but at the moment I don't know what I am fixing ???

 

P.S. I really appreciate the help, without honest opinons from other users it would be impossible for these flaws to get fixed.

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I guess that the site is okay, but it looks pretty stock osCommerce to me.

 

For some reason you have two pop-up images on your product info page - one that opens in a small pop-up window and one that opens full screen. Looks tacky.

 

Your product descriptions, for pretty expensive stuff, are way, way too short.

 

Your right column is suffering from the varying width manufacturer's image syndrome - it changes width based on the width of the manufacturer's image. Also looks tacky. I never understood why people don't make these images a uniform width (that is less than the defined column width) so that the column doesn't bounce around in size. Also, for the manufacturer of some of the tubs, you just have an image in the manufacturer's box and no name.

 

For some reason there is a link trail at the bottom of each page that goes to Manhattan Showers - I don't think that it belongs there. Also, there is no style assigned to the text in this link, nor to the text in the Contact Us page that provides your address. There is no About Us page, which I think helps to provide credibility.

 

I don't know of a reason to list the date added to our web site or a reason to display your hit counter at the bottom of each page.

 

Your logo doesn't link back to the home page. In your breadcrumb trail, Top and Catalog both go to the same place. Get rid of one of them.

 

Somehow your footer keeps changing. I don't know how you would make it change like it does and my guess is that it shouldn't be changing.

 

I don't have a successful web site, so my advice isn't based on a successful experience, but I still believe that you need to be very thorough and accurate in your presentation. You still have a lot of work to do in this regard.

 

Good luck with the site.

 

Tony

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I guess that the site is okay, but it looks pretty stock osCommerce to me.

 

For some reason you have two pop-up images on your product info page - one that opens in a small pop-up window and one that opens full screen. Looks tacky.

 

Your product descriptions, for pretty expensive stuff, are way, way too short.

 

Your right column is suffering from the varying width manufacturer's image syndrome - it changes width based on the width of the manufacturer's image. Also looks tacky. I never understood why people don't make these images a uniform width (that is less than the defined column width) so that the column doesn't bounce around in size. Also, for the manufacturer of some of the tubs, you just have an image in the manufacturer's box and no name.

 

For some reason there is a link trail at the bottom of each page that goes to Manhattan Showers - I don't think that it belongs there. Also, there is no style assigned to the text in this link, nor to the text in the Contact Us page that provides your address. There is no About Us page, which I think helps to provide credibility.

 

I don't know of a reason to list the date added to our web site or a reason to display your hit counter at the bottom of each page.

 

Your logo doesn't link back to the home page. In your breadcrumb trail, Top and Catalog both go to the same place. Get rid of one of them.

 

Somehow your footer keeps changing. I don't know how you would make it change like it does and my guess is that it shouldn't be changing.

 

I don't have a successful web site, so my advice isn't based on a successful experience, but I still believe that you need to be very thorough and accurate in your presentation. You still have a lot of work to do in this regard.

 

Good luck with the site.

 

Tony

 

Thanks for the feedback, it's always appreciated.

 

The manufacturer resize explains the last persons comments on the right column width and me not being able to find it !

I have installed contribs for the main images to be resized to thumbs etc so i didn't realise that this did not effect the manufacturer images hence not resizing them. I will do this so they are a uniform size.

 

I think you must be viewing in firefox as this does for some reason display two pop up images on the product page, this does not happen with internet explorer so not quite sure yet how to fix it. The top image should link back to the index and I missed that, so another problem solved.

 

In terms of design it is very stock oscommerce yes, I saw no need to change it as it looked exactly how I wanted it after some minor changes etc. In my opionion many people ruin their sites by trying to change it to something completely non stock oscommerce and failing, but this is just my opinion.

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