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Going live..Need input


beachboy

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Ok,

 

Here I go, I know I helped you through some problems you were having, so please don't get too mad when I critique this. Just remember how happy you were when we fixed your problems. :D

 

First of all....your colors just don't work together. That is the first thing you need to change...All of them.

 

Second....Your left column is way too big, and your right column too small. Even these out, or at the least make your left column smaller. Your whole page looks out of proportion.

 

Third, work on your "Welcome to beachboys tool shack" image in your header, it looks pretty bad.

 

Fourth....

Here at Beachboys Tool Shack you will find a wide variety of tools from Air Drills and Air wrenches,Cordless Drills,Drill bits,Automotive tools,Electrical tools,Garden tools,Hardware,Hydraulic tools,Machinery and shop tools,Paint tools,plumbing tools,Power tools,Socket sets,Tool boxes,Vises and wrenches.

Feel free to shop around, if you have any questions just give me a shout at the contact us link!

This is the catalog page From here you can access all the products, View your shopping cart and checkout. Remember that if you bundle your items you will pay less in shipping charges!!

 

I see many many problems here. The words, "Air Drills,Air wrenches,Cordless Drills,Drill bits,Automotive tools,Electrical tools,Garden tools,Hardware,Hydraulic tools,Machinery and shop tools,Paint tools,plumbing tools,Power tools,Socket sets,Tool boxes,Vises and wrenches" should ALL start with a lowercase letter. Also after every "," (comma) you should have a space. It should look like this:

 

"air drills, air wrenches, cordless drills, drill bits, automotive tools, electrical tools, garden tools, hardware, hydraulic tools, machinery and shop tools, paint tools, plumbing tools, power tools, socket sets, tool boxes, vises, and wrenches."

 

Thats where I will leave it for now, make those changes and I will offer some more advice on your store.

 

You do have the foundation of your store in place. Your database is set, oscommerce is installed and operational, so making these changes could turn your store around. I don't know what your sales are, but if you redid your graphics and colors, in my opinion you would do at least 100% better on sales than with your current layout.

 

Hope it wasn't too harsh, and if you need any more help, let me know.

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Leezard..What..You don't like the red white and blue??What do you recomend? Also I thought that for search engine recognition I shouldn't put a space between the keywords..Maybe I'm wrong on that..My right column was a lot longer until I limited the best sellers to 5 items because I want to put some links there to affiliates etc..Anyway..give me some color ideas to play with..

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It's not that I don't like the red, white, and blue. But your red (looks pink), white, and blue (two different blues) just don't mesh well. I am telling you this from a customers prospective. You aren't going to tell every customer that agrees with me "What..You don't like the red white and blue??". They will be gone and you will have no way of contacting them.

 

As far as the space not being between the words, *if* (which it doesn't) it did matter with search engines, I don't think it would help when somebody clicked through to your website. If it were me, I would turn around and leave. Proper grammar and punctuation is crucial to a website. Poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation will probably lose you 6 out of 10 sales.

 

I wasn't talking longer (up and down). I was talking wider (left to right). If you are designing the site, remember this, you have to try to design your site to look good on many different screen resolutions. You may be designing on 800 x 600, but I am viewing at 1280 x 1024, and it looks to small. If don't want to mess with different resolutions, install Linda's center shop contribution. That will display an almost identical site on many different monitors.

 

As far as colors, I don't know what to suggest. Pick some that you like and try them. But don't get upset if they don't work and others critique them. Here is what I did (here goes my secret and now everyone can laugh). I am a major sports fan, and my favorite team in the NFL is the Miami Dolphins, go ahead, look at my site, its teal and orange, but guess what, it works. You need to pick a primary color to use throughout your site, and compliment that with small amounts of a couple other colors. So if you want to start over with colors, maybe you should look at some sports teams you like, try their colors and see what happens.

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I wasn't talking longer (up and down). I was talking wider (left to right). If you are designing the site, remember this, you have to try to design your site to look good on many different screen resolutions. You may be designing on 800 x 600, but I am viewing at 1280 x 1024, and it looks to small. If don't want to mess with different resolutions, install Linda's center shop contribution. That will display an almost identical site on many different monitors.

 

On this part of my previous post, I was referring to your right column.

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I know that my right and left columns aren't the same, but on your site, it looks like you made your left column bigger, and your right column smaller. Your left column is about 3 times larger than your right column.

 

On my site, there is only 20 pixels difference total. My left side is 192 pixels, and my right side is 172 pixels.

 

As far as the Chargers colors. I think it would look really good if you could match (or at least get very close) to the dark blue and yellow they have.

 

I have to throw this in. I am trying to get tickets to the Miami vs. San Diego Monday night game this year in San Diego, I think it would be awesome to see Junior Seau play for Miami against his old team. It will be an awesome game!!!!

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I'd have to say that I agree about the blues not matching. The site basically says to me: "do not buy from here, something will go wrong with the shipping, the order won't come, my card will get double billed, don't buy from here."

 

With regard to suggestions, I recommend more "peaceful" colors. The osCommerce forum's default colors look good: grey, steely blue, splashes of orange, yellow, or other colors. I personally don't think you need to stick to a "web only palette" for your color choice. Similar colors that look too different are often a problem (like your blues). It looks odd. If you serach around the web for "good site design" and such topics, you'll start finding solutions. A totally quick and dirty solution, which just struck me, would be to use a color selector to grab the blue from the "in cart" button, and then make all of the blues in your site either the same blue, or a "related blue," by fading the original blue from the button. For how to's you can visit sites such as http://www.teamphotoshop.com/index.php.

 

Also, the JPG you have as your top banner is not professional. While I see that you've reduced the size of the image for faster download, the text is smudged as a result, and there are other "lumps or scrapes" in the image. I'd suggest getting a graphic designer to make a logo for you. If that's not an option, work on getting a GIF file that makes the logo look as "smooth and clear" as possible. There are GIF crunchers out there, and you can do a lot in PhotoShop to make clean graphics with small file sizes.

 

Hope I've helped, and I hope that honesty is not a problem on this forum. Good luck on improving your site and on "ringin' in the sales!"

 

--Dainis

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secret..

Everyone has their own opinion but after looking at your site I can tell your no expert!!

 

Rick

 

Why did you even bother to ask for reviews if you're going to snap back at everyone that has something bad to say about your site? :?

 

Personally, I think it's the worst OSC site I've ever seen. Nothing seems to fit at all. I'm not trying to be mean. That's just my honest opinion.

 

I'd try to help you improve it but to be honest I don't even know where to begin. IMHO you'd be better off just going with the stock OSC look and pay someone to do a decent logo for you. :wink:

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rseigel

I haven't snapped back at anyone..The guy that told me it looked childish I looked at his website and I thought he had no right to talk..

You are being kind of harsh with me..I spent 3 months setting up this site. The stores out of the box are plain and boring, I wanted to add some life and color to it.The logo fits the motif of the store. Now if you have some construtive ideas for me I would appreciate it, others have made suggestions and I have tried to impliment them..I am trying to center the site and have tried Linda's cont. but it is not working, waiting to hear back from her..

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I was merely stating my opinion. I stand by it. Your logo is horrible. Your site is horrible. Sorry, but it just is. I can't think of any other way to say it. That doesn't mean you can't improve it but to be honest at the rate you're going it may take you a year or more to get it to the point that it's professional enough that anyone will actually buy anything from it. That's why I suggested going back to the stock OSC layout. At least it looks mostly polished. Yours doesn't. Sometime the truth hurts I know but better you hear it now than after you go live to discover that nobody trusts your site enough to buy anything from it.

 

Remember, you're the one asking for reviews here. It's flat out rude of you to offer your opinion of someone else's site that didn't ask for it and I'm sure didn't appreciate it.

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Instead of Beachboys Tool Shack it should be Beachboy's Tool Shack. You'll have to change the text on your main page as well as the logo.

 

Move the iOffer thing into the footer so that the left column can go back to the correct size.

 

Your product descriptions could be formatted better. As an examle,

 

Specifications: Air Inlet.....1/4" NPT. Avg. Air Consumption.....6 CFM. Speed.....10,000 RPM. Cutting Capacity.....1.5mm. Stroke Length.....10 mm.

 

is not very user friendly. It would look much better formatted in a table.

 

There's more but that should give you a start at least. :wink:

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Thanks for the tips..I followed the oscdocs on putting the ioffer link at the botom outside the column. I guess it's in it somehow..The descriptions I just copy and paste them from my wholesaler as that's how they have them..I have ove 800 to list and to format them all would take forever. After I get them all listed I'll go back and format them..

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