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Rate my Store Please!


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www.irishcandystore.com/catalog/

 

Hi guys,

 

Can you all have a look at the usability of my store. It is live and sells Irish candy marketed towards the US, Canada and Australia.

 

My concerns are that users will understand that when they click on a category which has sub categories, that they will also have to select the sub category in order to view the products. At the moment if a user selects a category which has sub categories, they are shown the sub categories and below that a list of what is new to the main category. I am a little worried users might think that is all that is in the category and not realise they have to click on one of the sub category links.

 

Also how easy is it to find the currency chaneg option AND if you are in the US, Canada or Australia did the correct currency automatically come up? i.e. if in the US are you seeing the products listed in USD without having to select it, AUD for Australia and CAD for Canada?

 

I have an add-on which should do this but when I checked it through a proxy it didnt seem to work so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!!

 

The store is located at www.irishcandystore.com/catalog/

 

Thanks in advance!!

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Ollie,

 

The rules for the use of this thread state your site must have "Powered by osCommerce" on it.

 

 

Please make the changes and we can review it for you.

 

 

 

Chris

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Hi Chris,

 

Sorry about that! I have the Powered by OSCommerce line on it now. I hadnt noticed it not being there and I dont mind it as osCommerce has been a great help to me!

 

Thanks for pointing that out!

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I like the cleanliness of the site and the large product images and boxes within the categories.. It is super easy to browse and find stuff..

 

I have one pretty major complaint that could be an easy fix.. There is not much happening to tell me that I did, in fact, add something to my cart.. Yes, it shows up in the cart as "1 item in cart" but that's it.. The problem is your cart doesnt look like a typical cart box / area, so its really hard to tell that it "took"

 

A nice css overlay that says "1 item added to cart" that just appears and fades would really help people out..

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

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I like the cleanliness of the site and the large product images and boxes within the categories.. It is super easy to browse and find stuff..

 

I have one pretty major complaint that could be an easy fix.. There is not much happening to tell me that I did, in fact, add something to my cart.. Yes, it shows up in the cart as "1 item in cart" but that's it.. The problem is your cart doesnt look like a typical cart box / area, so its really hard to tell that it "took"

 

A nice css overlay that says "1 item added to cart" that just appears and fades would really help people out..

 

 

Thanks! I see what you mean on the addig to cart and that is a great idea. I wonder are their any user modules for this? Im not great at CSS yet though I could do some sort of a PHP pop-up for the time being.

 

Thanks!

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I nit-pick, don't mind me being fussy!!

 

I am in Australia and the prices do not show up in AUD automatically, they display in GBP but I can just select it and the change works. If possible I would position the currency converter at the top so customers can find out you offer multi-currency as quickly as possible. Because of the items on the home page I have to scroll to bottom to find it, if I didnt know you wanted feedback on it I'd likely miss it. Also, when I load the page it is coming up with euro selected rather than GBP, if that happens for everyone then you may find people wanting to switch from GBP to Euro may face difficulty (assuming it doesn't automatically display for them). I just closed and reopened the site and it remembers my order as a guest and to display in Australian Dollars... cart actually says 1 items in cart...if you could kick in some parentheses so it says 1 item(s) in cart it would be better (Personally I get irked by anything that comes off as a poor english translation but this is a product of dealing with Asian suppliers all day!!)

If there is anyway to highlight your specials in a brighter colour I'd vote for it (eg. Barry's Tea 7.19 doesn't jump out and make me want to buy it when it's found within a category)

I really like your images, nice and sharp, well sized. The layout is very clean and definitely appeals to me!

 

I don't know if your site is live yet? But the shipping info is missing...for an overseas client this is going to be crucial - also, personally I would prefer to have a location attached to the business. Even if it's just a mailing address such as a postal box, it gives me a better sense of where you are. You could be an Irish Candy store operating out of Taiwan ;) If you have the currency automatically changing to the customer's local currency, in combination with the .com web address you could confuse some people!

 

I now have a strong craving for rolos...5 pack sounds heavenly

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I nit-pick, don't mind me being fussy!!

 

I am in Australia and the prices do not show up in AUD automatically, they display in GBP but I can just select it and the change works. If possible I would position the currency converter at the top so customers can find out you offer multi-currency as quickly as possible. Because of the items on the home page I have to scroll to bottom to find it, if I didnt know you wanted feedback on it I'd likely miss it. Also, when I load the page it is coming up with euro selected rather than GBP, if that happens for everyone then you may find people wanting to switch from GBP to Euro may face difficulty (assuming it doesn't automatically display for them). I just closed and reopened the site and it remembers my order as a guest and to display in Australian Dollars... cart actually says 1 items in cart...if you could kick in some parentheses so it says 1 item(s) in cart it would be better (Personally I get irked by anything that comes off as a poor english translation but this is a product of dealing with Asian suppliers all day!!)

If there is anyway to highlight your specials in a brighter colour I'd vote for it (eg. Barry's Tea 7.19 doesn't jump out and make me want to buy it when it's found within a category)

I really like your images, nice and sharp, well sized. The layout is very clean and definitely appeals to me!

 

I don't know if your site is live yet? But the shipping info is missing...for an overseas client this is going to be crucial - also, personally I would prefer to have a location attached to the business. Even if it's just a mailing address such as a postal box, it gives me a better sense of where you are. You could be an Irish Candy store operating out of Taiwan ;) If you have the currency automatically changing to the customer's local currency, in combination with the .com web address you could confuse some people!

 

I now have a strong craving for rolos...5 pack sounds heavenly

 

 

Thanks alot for that!

 

Great advice again! I have installed the mod for auto currency change but this appears to only work for GBP. The site is actually in Euro and so it must have thought you were a GBP customer! I'll have to look at that mod again!

 

Send me your address and i'll ship out those Rolos FOC for the advice!

 

P.S. we're based in Ireland. I'll mention that somewhere. The site is live, I had a shipping page but i was messing around with my FTP and accidentally uploaded an older version of shipping so theres a rewrite on the cards!

 

I also hate typos and bad grammer (hopefully none here but I'm rushing!) so I appreciate the mention of the item(s) albeit a smaller thing!

 

If we are all running shops did anyone ever think of having a shopping mall with everyones products on it or something like that. Im sure using PHP the orders could easily be allocated to the correct supplier. Payment might be an issue though - just a thought! Im trying to get rich!

 

I've had lots of hits but zero purchases so far!

 

Thanks again

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Nice and clean store. Easy to navigate. I like your logo.

 

I agree with previous post that your currency box should be on the header, it was not obvious to find at the bottom.

 

I don't expect you'll get an export sale until you sort out your shipping page. I wouldn't email you for a price for shipping on Rolos, but if the shipping price was advertised and cheap you might catch me impulse buying.

 

Marketing comments (you can ignore these if you want);

As far as your product range goes, many of these products are available for me locally (Australia). So I would recommend you highlight and promote any products that are traditionally Irish. Explain that they are Irish (just like Gran use to make). You would target homesick Irish people abroad as well as anyone who loves Irish stuff (ie anyone who drinks Guiness!). In Australia we like Ireland as a brand. We like Irish people. I think you could target this better.

 

Just My thoughts.

 

Cheers, Ryan.

 

PS. Need to sort out some SSL as well. I won't fill in your account form until you do.

Ryan,

Australia

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Ollie,

The mall idea is something that I don't think would EVER work. Everyone is trying to make money selling stuff online, and LOTS of people on here find out that it is a whole lot harder than they thought and abandon their stores.. It would be a HUGE job to just keep up with everyone's stores.

 

In my honest opinion (and my strength is in design and marketing) i think in order for you to make money online selling someone people can get around the corner, you need to make your name known and really show people who you are. Purchasing sweets is typically an emotional purchase.. so you need to be in the front of their minds when that emotion comes up.. OR you need to create that emotion by putting your brand infront of people during a particular browsing experience online.. facebook, blog marketing, and other online outlets are a good choice for you..

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

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I have another little nit pick regarding the design...

 

The navigation on the left is nice and clean, but when you click on a parent category and the children pop under it, there is not enough differentiation between the parent and children. I can see you have indented the children, but it's not seeming to be enough. Maybe a slightly lighter background color would suffice.. Or even a lighter color. Something to make it obvious that I just opened up to see children cats.

 

Your pop up pictures for the product info NEEDS a lightbox.. Your design is nice and clean and to have an ugly pop up window is a big no no.. Add lightbox or prettyphoto to it.

 

Add a larger overall product image for the product page.. people really shouldn't NEED to pop up the image to see it larger because your items are straight forward.. That picture could easily be 400px wide

A great place for newbies to start

Road Map to oscommerce File Structure

DO NOT PM ME FOR HELP. My time is valuable, unless i ask you to PM me, please dont. You will get better help if you post publicly. I am not as good at this as you think anyways!

 

HOWEVER, you can visit my blog (go to my profile to see it) and post a question there, i will find time to get back and answer you

 

Proud Memeber of the CODE BREAKERS CLUB!!

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Thanks everyone for the views and opinions! Im working on implementing as much of them as I can! I CANNOT believe that I completely overlooked the SSL certificate!

 

Thanks again

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I like it. But its missing an intro i think! Even just a simple splash page or a paragraph of text and imagines. Keep up the good work though, you've taken action which is half the battle.

 

Cheers

Tony

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Hey Ollie,

 

I really like your site; clean and simple.

 

I have a few things that I noticed.

 

Home page is really slow to load for me on dial-up.

I think it might be your thumbnails, 170 x 102 = 57,167 bytes.

My thumbnails for comparision, 120 x 86 = 6,525 bytes.

 

I am from US, currency defaults to Euro.

 

No SSL as mentioned above.

 

products_new.php has a different layout theme as product_listing, guess it is ok.

Not sure I like the "Manufacturer" tag added under the "Date Added" tag. Some products don't have a manufacturer specified and some don't line up correctly. Besides, you seem to use the Manufacturers name in the product name.

I like how the picture and description alternate sides through out the listing, but... I would prefer to see the Date Added, Price and Add to Cart keep a consistant layout for each product. Something like: Date Added aligned left, Price and Cart aligned right.

 

Breadcrumb trail: contains both TOP and CATALOG which both point to the Home page. I would change them to just one link - "Home" or "Catalog".

 

The "Show: All Manufacturers" drop down box is a bit too long. Maybe shorten it, align right and add something in the same colored background row like "Advanced Search".

 

Your large images: they are not overly large so I would do away with a popup box and put the image on the product info page instead of the thumbnail. I used this contribution with a little edit to do just that, plus it helped me with my thumbnails - Big Images Modification v1.25. Also the thumbnails look crisp and clear but the larger images are a bit fuzzy and out of focus. Almost as if you tried enlarging the original image. Better to start big and reduce the resolution.

 

Sorry for being nit picky blush.gif

 

Just a few of "my" thoughts.

 

Good luck!

- :: Jim :: -

- My Toolbox ~ Adobe Web Bundle, XAMPP & WinMerge | Install ~ osC v2.3.3.4 -

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I have found that the majority of general american internet users like a "mom n pop" feel to a store, so my thinking would be that this store is looking too clean. This would be good for selling to the european market who I have found are a bit more web-savvy.

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