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OUR BRANK SPANKING NEW SHOP! Looking for feedback.


naiadomare

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Hi guys,

 

First off I'd like to thank the support forum in general for being amazing. I would NEVER have got the site finished without all your help.

 

So, the site is:

 

http://www.naiadomare.com

 

It's called Naïa do Mare, is based here and Madrid and is for all you girlies more than anything. Well, it could be useful for presents for the chaps too for presents and such!!

 

I'm looking for feedback: Do you like it?, Can you see anything I should change?, Does it work in your browser? (I'm particularly nervous about this! It has fixed elements and other stuff that might not work for everyone), Is it slow to load?, Blah, Blah, Blah...

 

I've modified the hell out of it and it seems to be OK but it'd be really useful if you could check it out.

 

I'd also be interested in agreeing link exchanges with related, but not competing, stores (others considered too). PM me if you would like to talk about a possible exchange and I'll give you my contact info.

 

THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE... YOU'RE GREAT!!!! :lol:

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Hi guys,

 

First off I'd like to thank the support forum in general for being amazing. I would NEVER have got the site finished without all your help.

 

So, the site is:

 

http://www.naiadomare.com

 

It's called Naïa do Mare, is based here and Madrid and is for all you girlies more than anything. Well, it could be useful for presents for the chaps too for presents and such!!

 

I'm looking for feedback: Do you like it?, Can you see anything I should change?, Does it work in your browser? (I'm particularly nervous about this! It has fixed elements and other stuff that might not work for everyone), Is it slow to load?, Blah, Blah, Blah...

 

I've modified the hell out of it and it seems to be OK but it'd be really useful if you could check it out.

 

I'd also be interested in agreeing link exchanges with related, but not competing, stores (others considered too). PM me if you would like to talk about a possible exchange and I'll give you my contact info.

 

THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE... YOU'RE GREAT!!!! :lol:

 

That is really different .. especially that up/down menu thing (bear in mind that people like what they are used to not what is clever though)

 

Generally I think a well done is in order. Do you think though that given the products you are selling that it should be quite so grey?

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That is really different .. especially that up/down menu thing (bear in mind that people like what they are used to not what is clever though)

 

Generally I think a well done is in order. Do you think though that given the products you are selling that it should be quite so grey?

 

Hi, thanks a lot for the message.

 

The "grey issue" was brought up in the design process with my boss (a.k.a. my girlfriend!) and we tried out quite a variety of colour combinations and we THINK that the colour scheme helps keep the focus on the photos and the general feel clean and not "over the top". But I can always change it when I have a couple of days free if the general consensus is that we were wrong.

 

Thanks again and regards from Madrid!

 

BTW, if anyone wants to know how anything was done, I'm willing to share.

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Site took ages to load.

 

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

 

I've noticed that it's pretty slow on SSL pages but I've had people on the phone looking at it in the UK and here in Spain while speaking to me and they said it wasn't too bad... What connection speed to you have?

 

The problem is that it has a lot of transparent pngs and things like that. I'm pretty sure the cache isn't working either so I'll look into that as it should help quite a bit.

 

Thank you for the info. Everything's useful. :rolleyes:

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Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

 

I've noticed that it's pretty slow on SSL pages but I've had people on the phone looking at it in the UK and here in Spain while speaking to me and they said it wasn't too bad... What connection speed to you have?

 

The problem is that it has a lot of transparent pngs and things like that. I'm pretty sure the cache isn't working either so I'll look into that as it should help quite a bit.

 

Thank you for the info. Everything's useful. :rolleyes:

I must admit my internet connection speed is really slow, with a download speed of only 10 Mb/s.

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I must admit my internet connection speed is really slow, with a download speed of only 10 Mb/s.

 

I wasn't attacking your internet connection!! I'm sure it's great :lol: :lol:

 

I'll look into it and see if I can speed it up a bit somehow.

 

Thanks again.

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I just noticed that I wrote "BRANK SPANKING NEW" instead of "BRAND SPANKING NEW" in the title!!!

 

Don't know if I can change that but, nevermind, it's kinda funnier that way!

 

Thanks to all those people that have visited but not commented... looking at the statistics helps figure out what needs to be changed too!!!!

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I wasn't attacking your internet connection!! I'm sure it's great :lol: :lol:

 

I'll look into it and see if I can speed it up a bit somehow.

 

Thanks again.

I didn't think that you were attacking my internet connection, but it is slow when waiting for sites to load, files to download, files to upload.

 

While I didn't time the load time of your site, it did take a long time so I mentioned it. Tonight it took around 20 seconds, about 8 seconds befoe anything appeared on screen. I don't know what the performance is like on dial up, adsl, or adsl2.

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I didn't think that you were attacking my internet connection, but it is slow when waiting for sites to load, files to download, files to upload.

 

While I didn't time the load time of your site, it did take a long time so I mentioned it. Tonight it took around 20 seconds, about 8 seconds befoe anything appeared on screen. I don't know what the performance is like on dial up, adsl, or adsl2.

 

Just kidding!

 

That does sound horribly slow. It's not bad at home on 3mb adsl (apart from the ssl connection). Maybe I'm right next door to the server or something, I'll go and ask the neighbours if they've got any servers in their basements, lofts... :rolleyes:

 

As I say, I shall look into it.

 

Hasta luego!!!

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It took 6 seconds to completely load on my 2Mb adsl connection, but only two seconds to load up the background and header. I think that load time is fine.

 

The look of the website is very good, but the functionality needs more work.

 

I don't know if you have noticed but using IE as the browser the product images have the standard blue borders for when the image is a link and the border=0 code has not been used, whilst in Firefox the borders are black - which is what I assume they were meant to be. Better take a look at the css being used.

 

When switching to ssl the includes/configure.php file is wrong and has an extra / in the pathway e.g.

https://naiadomarecom.sserver.es//naia-do-mare

 

I also get a warning message about Secure/Insecure content. If I elect not to show the Insecure content it gives me the ssl padlock but if I elect to show the Insecure content it does not give me the ssl padlock.

 

The right-side navigation is screwed. Upon mouseover of the main Category the Sub Categories should show when they slide out, but there's just a blank space until you mouse over them.

 

The "Click to choose currency" image is right on top of the right-side navigation Button number 5 image - obscuring it completely from view until you scroll down the page.

 

In Western countries navigation is usually on the top and/or bottom plus the left hand side. Putting it on the right, and bottom to top, may seem a novel idea but it's confusing for shoppers. You need to decide whether it's more important to be novel or more important for customers to be able to navigate your website easily.

 

I did my checking using IE 7 on a 19" screen with 1280 x 1024 screen resolution.

 

No Meta Tags and no Ultimate SEO URLs - not good.

 

Vger

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can you put availeble ypu stylesheet.css file to see some thinks

 

i have the http://www.wearandgifts.com and want put rounded corners

 

Hi,

 

I could put the stylesheet up but it's a bit confusing as some things as my site is very modified. In any case...

 

The rounded corners on my shop are (almost) all thanks to a contribution called "Graphical Borders & Individual Boxes".

 

Here is a link to the contrib:

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,1702

 

I'm pretty sure that I downloaded the version from CoSmis from the 31st of Jan.

 

Of course, you then have to either use the images that come with it (which are actually quite nice) or make your own. I don't mind helping you anyway.

 

If you prefer to speak Spanish (ya que es más parecido al Portugués!) I'm more or less bilingual. I can understand a bit of portuguese but I couldn't communicate in it!

 

Congratulations on your site, good use of dynamenu and fixed width main content with fixed background image... it's not easy to make OsCommerce "not-ugly" but you've done a good job!

 

Cordiais saudações de Espanha.

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It took 6 seconds to completely load on my 2Mb adsl connection, but only two seconds to load up the background and header. I think that load time is fine.

 

The look of the website is very good, but the functionality needs more work.

 

I don't know if you have noticed but using IE as the browser the product images have the standard blue borders for when the image is a link and the border=0 code has not been used, whilst in Firefox the borders are black - which is what I assume they were meant to be. Better take a look at the css being used.

 

When switching to ssl the includes/configure.php file is wrong and has an extra / in the pathway e.g.

https://naiadomarecom.sserver.es//naia-do-mare

 

I also get a warning message about Secure/Insecure content. If I elect not to show the Insecure content it gives me the ssl padlock but if I elect to show the Insecure content it does not give me the ssl padlock.

 

The right-side navigation is screwed. Upon mouseover of the main Category the Sub Categories should show when they slide out, but there's just a blank space until you mouse over them.

 

The "Click to choose currency" image is right on top of the right-side navigation Button number 5 image - obscuring it completely from view until you scroll down the page.

 

In Western countries navigation is usually on the top and/or bottom plus the left hand side. Putting it on the right, and bottom to top, may seem a novel idea but it's confusing for shoppers. You need to decide whether it's more important to be novel or more important for customers to be able to navigate your website easily.

 

I did my checking using IE 7 on a 19" screen with 1280 x 1024 screen resolution.

 

No Meta Tags and no Ultimate SEO URLs - not good.

 

Vger

 

 

Hi Vger,

 

Now THAT is criticism. And totally justified. I have to admit that the testing has been very, very limited. I'm working on a Mac (not intel so can't install windows on a partition) and the windows laptop has just died (because it's a PC). I've basically got it working on Firefox, especially as that is what my boss/girlfriend sees it on!

 

The testing process for Internet Explorer was opening it on the last day and saying something like "Bugger, the text in the menu only shows up when you move the mouse into the menu!!" Ah well... I'll fix it when I can!!

 

I suspected that that extra "/" wasn't good on the SSL pages! But, as I was in such a mad rush to finish, I just let it fly as it was at least working! I'll get that sorted - thanks! I don't know why the secure/insecure thing comes up. I really need to look into that as internet shoppers are VERY jumpy.

 

The main issue is that I've done this site for my girlfriend and she has no idea about computers, internet, web-design or anything of the sort. Therefore, she has been happily saying "I want this", "I want that"... without knowing 1) how difficult it is and 2) if that is really the best idea. If I had left her roam completely freely the site would be a complete mess! I've reined her in on some things.

 

The menu is on the right as it has the up and down functionality so that people don't have to use the up and down scroll bar on the right. Personally, I use the mouse scroll but it seems that a lot of people go and point at that little tiny arrow on the right to move up and down which seems a bit clumsy.

 

I can always change it over to the left hand side if needs be but at the moment we're going to try being different!

 

I don't know what's going on with the currency button. I'll have a look. no-one else has had that problem... wierd!!! I imagine that was in explorer, right?

 

Meta tags, decent SEO titles and URLs are next on the list!!! I've actually installed Ultimate SEO URLs before and it screwed the site up (I'm sure it was my own fault though) so I'm very wary of it!

 

Thank you very much for your feedback.. you have been very helpful on the CCGV(trad) forum too.

 

Now I've got some things to fix!

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Vger...

 

One more thing. I just fixed the "double slash" problem and, at least on my end, the SSL padlock seems to be working fine.

 

I was just wondering which pages they were showing mixed secure and unsecure content?

 

Cheers!

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It took 6 seconds to completely load on my 2Mb adsl connection, but only two seconds to load up the background and header. I think that load time is fine.

 

Vger

That is interesting. In ie6, the load time is the same as before. In firefox, it is worse. Maybe there is a kink in the fibre-optic.

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I was just wondering which pages they were showing mixed secure and unsecure content?

 

All https pages. I suspect it's http page links in the Flash content to Adobe downloads.

 

Vger

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All https pages. I suspect it's http page links in the Flash content to Adobe downloads.

 

Vger

 

Hello again,

 

Would you mind checking again as I'm not seeing it on my end now I've corrected the "double slash" issue? I'll look into the adobe links suggestion.

 

I've got some decent page titles working now! More SEO goodies to come!

 

I still don't understand the currency DIV showing up where you said. I've tried it on Firefox, Safari and IE and it seems OK. I shall keep looking into it though.

 

Thanks again for everything.

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I'm still getting the Secure/Insecure error. Try removing the Free Hit Counter link in the footer.

 

Vger

 

Hello again.

 

That could have something to do with it although that only got included yesterday evening. I was thinking that it might be the iFrame that I'm using in the "invite your friends" pop-up. That would make sense right?

 

If that's the case, does anyone have any idea how I could fix the problem?

 

Thanks :lol:

 

Joseph.

 

PS. I've now got rss working as I downloaded the RSS contrib a while back and I found it lurking on my hard drive. I'm pretty happy with it in general as it has category feeds apart from the main one but I'm going to have a fiddle with it to see what else I can get it to do. I was thinking maybe tags like in a blog so that they get picked up by pages like technorati. Social bookmarking might get included too.

 

PPS. I should have meta tags on everything by tomorrow afternoon.

 

To go: SSL issue, explorer stuff (such as the text not showing up straight away) and the weird positioning thing on the currencies button.... wish me luck!!!

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Hi Joseph,

 

Okay - a few comments.

 

-I don't like the idea of shipping to any country - I'll bet that it is tough to do because of varying regs, etc., and I also think that fraud is rampant and that fraudsters are pretty slick. I've seen comments in forums about people not dealing with some countries under any circumstances. Initially, I would be very selective about where to ship to - maybe starting with the EU and then expanding if things work well.

 

-it seems that people are into big headers these days - and yours seems to be falling into this category - on my screen (900 pixels high), I would guess that your body starts at about 325 pixels from the top of my screen (or 250 pixels from the top of the browser page). That leaves 575 pixels for live area. On a 768 pixel high screen, it would leave 442 pixels for the live area. Amazon's head ends at 175 pixels (or 100 pixels from the top of their page). As a consequence, on your site, I only get to see one row of category images without scrolling, and one product image without scrolling. I would think that you could reduce the height of the head so that you could see at least two rows of categories and two product images without scrolling.

 

-some of your images are distorted - making some of the models much wider or thinner than they really are. And, some of the large images are probably too large - when they are popped up, there is a lot of scrolling involved just to hit the close button (maybe a way around this would be to add the close button to the top as well as the bottom, or do a click to close thing). Some others are just right - big enough to show detail, but not too large to be tough to look at without scrolling. Some of the large images have a strong dot pattern from scanning that could be diminished if they were made smaller.

 

-it seems that you have a repeatable error - if you click the Tell a Friend button and then click the Back button (original osCommerce style), you get a mysql error - it seems like the back button goes to product_info, which you don't seem to be using anywhere else on the site.

 

-you have a little duplication in the breadcrumb trail - Home and Shop. I think that you can get rid of it by editing breadcrumb.php.

 

-I like the navigation "lift" on the right, but like other posters, it seems like it would be more natural on the left side of the page. I think that you have done a good job of simplifying the design of the site, and have removed a bunch of the osCommerce clutter. And, you've done a great job with the English translation.

 

Good luck with the site.

 

Tony

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Hi Tony,

 

Good stuff!!! I really appreciate it.

 

The main thing to bear in mind here is that my other-half is as stubborn as a Spanish mule (slightly more stubborn than even an anglo-saxon one). The site is for her and has been designed under her omnipresent gaze and cabezonería (bigheadedness). There have been a long series of pitched battles in order to reach the compromise that we have. More details:

I don't like the idea of shipping to any country - I'll bet that it is tough to do because of varying regs, etc., and I also think that fraud is rampant and that fraudsters are pretty slick. I've seen comments in forums about people not dealing with some countries under any circumstances. Initially, I would be very selective about where to ship to - maybe starting with the EU and then expanding if things work well.

Seems daft to me too but "she who must be obeyed" won't believe me until I am proven right (I imagine it will happen at some point).

it seems that people are into big headers these days - and yours seems to be falling into this category - on my screen (900 pixels high), I would guess that your body starts at about 325 pixels from the top of my screen (or 250 pixels from the top of the browser page). That leaves 575 pixels for live area. On a 768 pixel high screen, it would leave 442 pixels for the live area. Amazon's head ends at 175 pixels (or 100 pixels from the top of their page). As a consequence, on your site, I only get to see one row of category images without scrolling, and one product image without scrolling. I would think that you could reduce the height of the head so that you could see at least two rows of categories and two product images without scrolling.

Again, I totally agree with you. My gf doesn't understand the concept of screen resolution AT ALL!! I've tried to explain it but it just isn't working. So far as she's concerned, a screen is measured in centimetres and she doesn't think that there are many people with screens that are too small to display what comes up on her computer.

some of your images are distorted - making some of the models much wider or thinner than they really are.

Similar gf issue. You're referring to the category images. I hate that but she's convinced that no-one will notice! I'll be sure to tell her all of this stuff so that she sees it's not just me!

And, some of the large images are probably too large - when they are popped up, there is a lot of scrolling involved just to hit the close button (maybe a way around this would be to add the close button to the top as well as the bottom, or do a click to close thing). Some others are just right - big enough to show detail, but not too large to be tough to look at without scrolling. Some of the large images have a strong dot pattern from scanning that could be diminished if they were made smaller.

As I said, she just doesn't understand that we're not all seeing the same thing as her on her computer. Would you believe that I had to literally fight with her to AT LEAST get her to scale the photos down to the width of the page. She started doing it with photos that were so large that you would just get an eye or a nose on the screen! She also doesn't understand that you can't get pixels out of thin air and has made the mistake of increasing the size of images beyond their original size despite my telling her over and over again that it doesn't work. It will help that you've pointed it out as my opinion doesn't count! (of course!)

-it seems that you have a repeatable error - if you click the Tell a Friend button and then click the Back button (original osCommerce style), you get a mysql error - it seems like the back button goes to product_info, which you don't seem to be using anywhere else on the site.

I hadn't noticed that. I think I'll just replace the link with a javascript back link. That way it really does just go back to where you were.

-you have a little duplication in the breadcrumb trail - Home and Shop. I think that you can get rid of it by editing breadcrumb.php.

That's one thing that actually is deliberate and will be needed. This shop is going to be one of various things on the site and I have everything redirected from "Home" to "Shop" at the moment but "Home" will eventually go to a different page where you can choose where to go. I thought about changing it temporarily but I'm not sure if I can be bothered! I'll just get the other stuff done and remove the redirect from the front page.

-I like the navigation "lift" on the right, but like other posters, it seems like it would be more natural on the left side of the page.

Thanks, it was pretty tricky to get to work to be honest. Again, it's on the right because of the boss lady!!! We'll have to see how it goes!

I think that you have done a good job of simplifying the design of the site, and have removed a bunch of the osCommerce clutter.

Thanks again, less is more as they say!!! Seriously, I think OsCommerce has one main flaw being that the original design is about as ugly as you can get. Changing it has been a nightmare (especially as I've had my hands tied!!) but nevermind. All's well that ends well!

And, you've done a great job with the English translation.

Thanks, to be honest, I did it in a hurry but I would be pretty rubbish as a bilingual Spanish<>English(from England originally!) person if it wasn't OK! My real job is being the owner/director of a linguistic services company. The plan is to translate into more languages soon.

Anyway, thank you very much for everything. I'm going to see if I can fix some stuff today. If you guys need anything that I might be able to help with, just let me know.

 

Regards,

 

Joseph

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I'm still on the SEO stuff at the moment.

 

I've got improved titles on all pages and meta-tags on most things now. All dynamic and changing-languageified. I'm quite pleased with that.

 

I was wondering what SEO URL contrib I might be able to use that works and is stable bearing in mind how modified my site is. I prefer to have a working site with rubbish URLs than pretty ones and a screwed site!!!

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks.

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I'm still on the SEO stuff at the moment.

 

I've got improved titles on all pages and meta-tags on most things now. All dynamic and changing-languageified. I'm quite pleased with that.

 

I was wondering what SEO URL contrib I might be able to use that works and is stable bearing in mind how modified my site is. I prefer to have a working site with rubbish URLs than pretty ones and a screwed site!!!

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks.

 

ULTIMATE SEO URLs by Chemo vs 2.1d updated.

 

Proven over time, solid, reliable, easy to install, works.

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Hey, the site looks good once it loads. You may want to search for optimizing by Chemo in the forum and a auto thumbnailer for the large pictures.

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