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osCommerce

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Site Mock-Up - your comments appreciated


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I am just beginning an installation of osCommerce for a client, and I have created a static mock-up of the site interface for them to have a look at. If you would please let me know your thoughts it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Please keep in mind that it is only a static gif at the moment, the URL is http://staging.chingali.com/LandscapeSuppl...es/mock-up.html

 

Also note, the site will actually be at 100% browser width when implemented, for the purposes of the mock-up I had to lock it in to a set width.

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Looks good! A little busy for my taste but well organized anyway. Have you thought about changing the "About" section to a seperate full-width table instead of having all of the white space on either side?

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Looks good! :D

 

Consistant use of color (even if yellow is not my favorite!)... I like the font use for the titles, I really like the footer directory feature...

 

One concern; how easy will it be to implement 3 Feature Product cells and the New Products cell?

 

Look really promissing!

Jean

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Hi jeanjerome,

 

Thanks for the nice comments. The client has now seen the template mock-up and given me the go ahead to proceed. Personally I don't think much of the yellow either, but it isn't my site so I just do as I am instructed. They said yellow, so they get yellow! Actually they chose a much brighter shade of yellow if you can believe it, and I toned it down a bit to be more "gold" than yellow. They also wanted me to use green as the contrasting colour, but it looked quite nasty so I suggested red and they went for it.

 

The three featured products is quite easy to implement, I have done it before. All you need to do is put another field in the products table that is either a yes or a no, and give the admins a check box in the admin module to set a product to display as featured. Then on the home page you just put in a query to the db to find any products set to be featured = yes, and grab 3 of them at random. You then just print them to the page in the three td's.

 

The new products cell is easy as well, you just query the db to find the last ten products entered by product_id, and again just get it printed to the page.

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Congrats on the deserved approval. It is alway good to see people/company actually take the time to create mock ups even if the software is just to be customized... and then bearing the fruits...

 

Every one custumizing such software should alway creates mockups, but unfortunatly it is not always the case. The result is lots of wasted time and/or less than adequate end result.

 

People should follow your lead!

 

Jean.

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Some things you (or client) migth want to consider:

Links in the upper corner wil probably be confused with breadcrumbs alot. You migth want to use something else than arrow like seperator. They make the links look like they are connected sequentically rather than by group.

 

Removing the categories from left column and all links in the bottom, if you are using the same header for all pages.

 

Moving "about us" to a seperate page.

Otherwise it looks great..

 

PS. Whats the correct definition for mock-up ? Colored wire-frame model ? This is a first time I have come across the term.

"Use no way as way, have no limitation as limitation." - Bruce Lee

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Every one custumizing such software should alway creates mockups, but unfortunatly it is not always the case. The result is lots of wasted time and/or less than adequate end result.

 

I agree fully with the need for mock-ups. Fortunately I am in the position of having more work than can I can really handle. So it is absolutely imperative for me that I never waste any time with revisions or redesign and that if revisions are requested, that the client pays for the changes.

 

I never start work without first getting the client to sign a contract and pay a substantial deposit. The next thing on the list is to create a mock-up (or series of them) until the client is happy. Once the client verbally agrees to the mock-up, I then get them to sign a colour printed copy of the mock-up signifying their approval and we move forward. If at a later date they request changes to the interface, we have a solid reference point to bill them for the additional work from.

 

It's also worth noting, the mock-ups aren't done "for free", when quoting on a fixed cost for a project I will factor in a number of hours based upon what I anticipate it taking, always allowing a percentage just in case. When working on a project using an hourly rate charge, I just bill them for the number of hours taken to create the mock-ups.

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Links in the upper corner wil probably be confused with breadcrumbs alot. You migth want to use something else than arrow like seperator. They make the links look like they are connected sequentically rather than by group.

 

That's a good point, I had never considered this to be an issue but what you say makes perfect sense. I will have a rethink and come up with something different to use as a separator, probably a bullet point would do the trick.

 

Removing the categories from left column and all links in the bottom, if you are using the same header for all pages.

 

* I'll leave the categories in the left column as the categories setup the client wants actually goes a few levels deep and I like how the left category navigation expands and contracts etc to let the end user know whereabouts in the hierarchy they are.

* I'll also leave the links in the bottom as they will be text only links, and there are still some people who browse with images turned off and the first place they will always look is in the footer.

 

As well as the above two points, leaving the links in both the left column and footer gives the search engines a few more instances of text to index.

 

Moving "about us" to a seperate page.

 

That's a good point as well. The intention was to not have so much text in the mock-up, I just got a little bit excited on the cut and paste! The site will actually only have a paragraph of text and then a link through to "read more". The first paragraph however will be very carefully written to include as many keywords as possible included for the search engines to index. It's a bit tricky getting all of the words you need in as many times as you can and still have the paragraph make sense. Fortunately I have a friend who is a very good writer, and I always contract her to do these things for the client.

 

Whats the correct definition for mock-up ? Colored wire-frame model ? This is a first time I have come across the term.

 

I don't know if there is a correct definition of "mock-up". I use the term for anything from a demo web site interface, to sticking post it notes on a white board and shuffling them around when designing a database schema!

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