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New site ready for launch. Have at it!


ACE99

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My site is ready for launch and I need your help and constructive criticism. You can visit my store at (it is live so please be careful)

 

Do My Own Pest Control

 

We are a do-it-yourself pest control store. Does the site make sense to you? Is it easy to navigate? Are things understandable? Is it inviting?

 

Some things I know need work:

 

1. I need to finish the home page. It will eventually have random pictures to make the site look unique on each reload, and it will also have various ads and product highlights.

2. I still need to finish the bug help pages

3. There are a few CSS and font tag problems

4. The sites seems a little slow. What do you think?

 

Thanks for any comments and suggestions. Thanks!

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Looks nice - crisp and clean, and your header is nice too.

 

Only one thing... you spelt traditional wrong on your main image on the home page he he. You missed an 'i' - but other than that I think you'll make some good sales with it.

 

:)

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Hey thanks. Yeah, I can't believe I spelled "traditional" wrong. I must have looked at the homepage a 1000 times and never noticed! Thanks also for the tip on the scrolling issue on 800x600 montiors. It's doing that because the graphic on the homepage is too wide and doesn't go any smaller. I'll have to fix that.

 

How about the other pages? Are they understandable? If you had a pest problem do you think you could figure out what to do and where to go? Is it evident what the site is right away and the purpose? Did you even read the main graphic on the homepage or did you just look past it?

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Hi, Philip!

It's a great site. A shopping trip and a learning experience rolled into one! I'd say you hit the nail smack-bang on the head.

BTW - Love the glue-board idea. Do you do them in wife-size???

John Mc

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Philip,

 

the site looks great - very professional indeed. Design is very clear and easy to naviaget. I think you are onto a winner with it.

 

Can I just ask a quick question. I see on your site that when you select one of the categories, before displaying the list of products, you have some text briefly explaining the category. Can I ask how you did that ?? I am looking to do the same kind of thing for my site, but can't work out how to do so.

 

Thanks, and well done.

 

Alex

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Another Question: Can you tell the green across the top bar is grass??

 

I don't what it to be "christmasy". I used red because this is pest control (tough stuff), but come to think of it green tones down red, being it's complement.

 

I wonder how it would look if I put a house to the far left off in the distance, so the grass looks like part of a big front yard. That'd be cool....

Don't want to over-do it of course.

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By the way guys (and gals), I did a lot of the design work with the help of the STS (Simple Template System) contribution. It lets you design the pages using your own self-designed HTML templates. Then of course I tweaked the PHP because STS won't do everything.

 

That's how I was able to get the descriptions and pictures before the list of products are displayed.

 

Other than that I used Dreamweaver build everything and organize it, and Photoshop 7 and Firworks to do the page layouts and image optimizaiton. With these at Dreamweaver and Photoshop you can do almost anything. Highly recommended.

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Yeah it looks very good. Crisp. I recocnised the grass, do I get some free slug pellets? ;)

 

Can I ask what contrib your Tabs at the top are done with?

 

I think with them up the top theres no need for the Catagories box personally, Cept you dont have Equiptment tab but thats easily remedied.

 

Does download a bit slow as you say. Is it running one a proper host or a home computer?

 

Cya

Stot

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I designed the tabs/ header in Photoshop, but again I used STS (Simple Template System) contribution to put them at the top of the pages. And by using several templates you can easily make the tabs change colors depending on what category you are on.

 

I'm hosted on LunarPages. I think the STS is slowing it down a bit (though supposedly it doesn't) and my pics are a little too big I think (they are 215x224 on the individual product pages). I'm working on the speed issue. Thanks. :D

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You have great graphics, but yet you kept the cartoonish OSC header images (like the guy climbing into his monitor on the Account page). I would either replace those or delete them altogether as they don't go well with your site.

 

Same applys to the stock OSC buttons. You have a nice "Proceed to Checkout" button in the shopping cart infobox, but then you have the stock blue buttons everywhere else.

 

One other thing, your breadcrumbs include both Top and Catalog. Clicking either one takes me to the same place. I would just use one instead of both.

 

There are also some of the standard pet peeves. Like do you really need to require their Gender or Birthdate when creating an account? Also the address has Post Code above city and state. I know that is the OSC default, but it looks funny to anyone in the US who is new to your site.

 

Don't mean to drag your site down, it really looks great. Just being honest since you asked. I think if you change those little things it will make a big difference.

I'd rather be flying!

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Great advice. No seriously I had some of the same feelings. I definitely need to change the OSC standard blue buttons. Can I ask you though:

 

Is there a quick way to get rid of all those little OSC pics on every page?

How do I get rid of the "Top" in the breadcrumbs? (Top>catalog>etc..)

How do I remove gender and birthdate and the country from the create account?

 

I'm still new at OSC and sometimes it take awhile to figure out where the changes need to be made in the PHP. I appreciate the criticism.

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I grabed all those little OSC pictures in photoshop and made them white then reuploaded them. so they are still there but you can't see them.

In Admin - Cofiguration - Customer Details you can change DOB and Gender to false.

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To fix the "Top >> Catalog >>" in breadcrumbs:

 

in catalog/includes/languages/application_top.php comment out the breadcrumb line:

 

// $breadcrumb->add(HEADER_TITLE_TOP, HTTP_SERVER);

 

then in catalog/includes/languages/english.php and change:

 

define('HEADER_TITLE_CATALOG', 'catalog');

to

define('HEADER_TITLE_CATALOG', 'Home');

I'd rather be flying!

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Hey Ace99

 

Is easy to install/use the STS with a modified OSC with a lot of contribs?

 

 

To remove a lot of the OSC stock images i use a contribution tha have all the same images in trasparent, this is the link

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2034

 

To remove the gender, look in the admin section, but to remove the birthday i think that can't be done in admin.

 

and.. to remove thing in the breadcrumbs look in catalog/includes/aplicattion_top.php

 

I think that you need to comment out one of this lines

$breadcrumb->add(HEADER_TITLE_TOP, HTTP_SERVER);

$breadcrumb->add(HEADER_TITLE_CATALOG, tep_href_link(FILENAME_DEFAULT));

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I agree with the order of the fields on adding new account. But I don't necessarily agree with not including gender. I mean if you don't it's not a big deal but if you ever need a bit of detail on your demographics this would prove helpful for your marketing efforts. I guess you could guess with the type of names but it would not be as helpful as having a field where you can easily create reports. Now if you know that 60% of your buyers are female, wouldn't that change the nature of your marketing efforts? Just a thought. I will probably keep it when I launch my own site as I have a general site where the products could be useful to anyone and I will be interested to know what the break down is of female to male.

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Hi,

 

Took another look at your store today. To me it looks like your SQL lookups are whats causing the slowdown. Reason? Well you click a link and count to two or three then the page will start loading in a micro second. I think that few seconds before hand is the SQU gathering the data?

 

Cya

Stot

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Ruben,

 

STS should work fine even when you have a lot of contributions. But it would probably be better and easier to install STS first and then add the other things on top of it, since you can probably do a lot with STS that would free you from the need to use so many contributions anyway.

 

It really all depends on what contributions you have installed and what php files they modify. I really can't tell you if it would give you problems or not. Usually things like payment and shipment modules don't have much effect on the rest of the store.

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To fix the "Top >> Catalog >>" in breadcrumbs:

 

in catalog/includes/languages/application_top.php comment out the breadcrumb line:

 

// $breadcrumb->add(HEADER_TITLE_TOP, HTTP_SERVER);

 

then in catalog/includes/languages/english.php and change:

 

define('HEADER_TITLE_CATALOG', 'catalog');

to

define('HEADER_TITLE_CATALOG', 'Home');

One minor correction to Bluepony's post, the application_top.php file is in the /catalog/includes folder, not the /languages folder.

 

Ace99 - Very nice site and a solid business concept!

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Can I just ask a quick question. I see on your site that when you select one of the categories, before displaying the list of products, you have some text briefly explaining the category. Can I ask how you did that ?? I am looking to do the same kind of thing for my site, but can't work out how to do so.

Alex: There's also another way to add category descriptions. A very easy contribution to install.

 

Category Descriptions 1.0

 

Phillip: Excellent site, better business concept. Congratulations. (Just a quick note, i know that Spain is not your target but accesing from here shows the version in spanish so lots of things are not showing).

 

Good luck. ;)

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