( : Please comment on our new Ecommerce site : )

[pauljcooper]

Check out our latest ecommerce website, http://www.angrydragonx.co.uk, finally launched yesterday after nearly 10 months in the making. It sells snowboards, skateboards, clothing and accessories.

All comments gratefully received. Lets us know what you think of our site, our products and our chances!

There's a bit of Flash, and the main site uses PHP. PM me for more information or if you want help building an e-commerce website.

:)

[Richard Conyard]

hmmm, site cannot be found - good start ;-)

[Spire]

Hi

Well I would but the link doe's not work for me

[Richard Conyard]

btw, what has the poll got to do with the post except tenuous link since you are talking about your online store?

To answer the poll some companies may benefit from b2c e-commerce. I believe a lot more could benefit from b2b e-commerce. However there are a raft of companies that would see no real benefit from having an online store, and may not receive any benefit from having much of an online presence.

The solution needs to be found for the company, rather than a companies problems made to be fitted around a particular solution.

[Amber]

The link doesn't work because you have a comma after the .co.uk...

I think it's a nice looking site, but I don't like the horizontal scroll. I'm also a bit too impatient to watch flash intros, although yours is short enough to not matter too much.

Good luck with it :)

[DuaneJackson]

Remove the comma and it works fine: http://www.angrydragonx.co.uk/

Personally I don't like Flash intros.

The site itself is quite nicely laid out and it's easy to navigate.

[MichaelG]

I hate flash intros - but the website is ok -

[clairemackaness]

Site looks good, flash drives me mad and I dont like the intro tune. It makes me feel as if I'm walking into a murder scene or the london dungeon or something!

LOL

[duenna]

ARGH!

It looked quite promising untill my browser was steered into your inner workings!

The extensive use of text at the bottom of your intro page looks spammy.

How about incoporating some of that flash in the main site and have it as accent not major content?

Its clear you have put alot of effort in though. More to come me thinks. Good luck.

[pauljcooper]

Sorry the previous link didn't work, the comma at the end of the link is obviously not part of the URL.

Try this for size: http://www.angrydragonx.co.uk

:wink:

[BurntNjal]

Flash doesn't seem to be working on this machine I'm on at the moment, so all I can see of your site is a big list of keywords and some links at the bottom, all of which are currently timing out for me so I can't see if you're using Flash there too. As has been said above, flash intros are a big no-no
.

Actually requiring people to have flash to shop with you is going to lose you a lot of customers, likewise those who do have flash but don't want to waste their time waiting for the Flash to download.

IMO online shops should avoid flash altogether unless it's to give the user a better look at a product (features presentation etc). Remember Boo.com? burnt through a ton of cash building the coolest flash-driven website of all time - which nobody could be bothered waiting for it to download to shop on so they went bust. Keep it simple, fast and easy to use and people will shop there.

I'm sorry, I know you must have put a lot of hard work into the site. But I really think you shouldn't have spent 10 months putting together a big flash site whereas instead you could have spent a lot less time than that (3-4 weeks at most perhaps) putting together a well-designed, usable, standards-compliant, simple ecommerce site which would have been bringing customers and money in for you which, let's face it, is the whole point.

[William Wilson]

Ditto on flash but your target market may love this intro, overall the site is nicely put together.

With regard to the your use of text, the big text on the left appears completely out of the design and agree the bottom text loks spammy.

Another of my pet hates is no real contact address must be a modern thing, not a buyer confidence builder in my mind.

[SillyJokes]

I'm torn between agreeing with all the comments above and the fact that your target market will probably love this site.

However there are other markets who won't like the site that you will miss out on.

You need proper contact details and the delivery costs on your delivery page.

Also, don't ask people to sign up just to buy a jumper. This will put a significant amount of people off and simply isn't necessary. This is a particular pet peeve of mine - I hate to be asked to remember a password for a store I'm only ever likely to shop at twice a year max. Why put barriers in the way of people? You don't get asked to give a paassword to get into Debenhams on the high street - that would be stupid and the same applies to websites.

I would also avoid sound on a shop website - you can't surf at work if the website keep chirping.

However I'm sure you have researched exactly what it is your target market likes and you are pleased with what you have done. If you could have made it just as funky with outflash amd more accessible then you would make more sales.

[Rob Holmes]

For me the header graphic is just a little too large and the right hand advert is too wide :)

If you knock them both down a bit the site should fit on someones monitor without scrolling horizontally which is a bit of a no-no

Hope this helps,

Rob

[pauljcooper]

Thanks for all your replies. I will take them all on board and more than likely put some of your suggestions into effect.

Thanks again! :D

[Spire]

Hi

If I were surfing the web in my normal way I would not even get on to your site, as I can't be bothered to wait for the intro to finish, I just click the back button and move on eleswhere.

[DeveloperBloke]

hi there,

there are no rules out there on whether to have intros or not. i hav built sites where they have intros, and where they dont have intros. it has made absolutely no difference in the amount of users which have visited and continued through the site.

your intro is very short, takes near no time to download 9im on bb), and it quite nice and effective, something which i dcould see your target audience liking.

i dont like the noise at the start, if you are going to have a noise then maybe a short noise , like a board on snow, something that is releveant, but to be honest, you dont need noise at all, it takes up a lot of bandwidth

the use of the flash is debatable. it certainly wont drive people away in the millions, from requiring to download the flash player, a massive % of people have the flashplayer nowadays. one thing i would say, is the menu on the left, it closes when you go to a page. this is a no no, a a user then has to open your menu again. people dont like this, they get confused and then piss off. either lose the menu, pass variabels in the url for the flash movie to open itself at the correct position, or simply put the flash menu into an iframe. essentially, you need to use flash to enhance a users experience, and whilst your intro , header and menu are ok, they dont have any wow factor, and doenst enhance a users experience enoguh to justify the use of it. though, an easy way around the possible flash problem, is to have some code which detects a flash player, and if it detects it, then loads normally, otherwise, inserts a html based menu. relying on flash for your menu is risky.

having people login to buy, well i do on my sites, and people wont mind. ok some will, but you cant please everyone. having them login to buy is exteremely important,, you need to know who your customers are, you need to be able to market back to them. maybe create a news letter to entice people to create an account, or a competition.

where you have all the links at the bottom of the page, move these into a site map, then just have a linka t the bottom to the site map, will tidy it up


in respone to silly jokes, there arent markets out there who like or dislike flash, people dont go round the net looking at sites and saying, this is flash im not looking, but it is certainly a characteristic of a smnall % of your market which you may or may not choose to address.

used properly, flash can be extremely good and effective. the most important thing is the file size. always use vector graphics if you can, and very small if any sounds, add some php scripts to detect flash, and set a global var saying showflash = true or flase.

heres a flash site i have been working on. notice the download times, they are very small, yet the site enhances the users experience alot. thsi is the bb version, and it isnt finished yet. i will also create a non bb version, which will dyanically load in smaller photos.

http://www.webgremlins.net/simann/final/indexflash2.cfm

by the way, youmust by law have the following on your site

full terms and conditions of sale
a return policy whcih statesthe 7 day cooling off period. if you dotn have thism, then customers get three months in whicg to return a product to you
you must state your returns policy, otherwise the customer is allowed all money they have paid for p and p back too
a data protection policy
be registered with the data protection dept (voluntary, but highyl recommended)
have full postal and contact details


anyway, i have been as constructive as i could be, and it is all in my opinion, but i have been developing ecommerce stuff for years, and i own ecommerce sites myself,

hope this helsp

j