Site Review

[JadeRose]

Hello

Would anybody like to review my site. I've been up and running since october and have been busy filling up the categories.



This is a new venture for me and it will take some time to get it the way I want it but my future plans are:

a) worldpay installed
b) professional template
c) better selection of toys

Kind Regards Bill

[jamie1183]

looks good, seems to be fairly well optimised too, a good template would benefit to take away the standard Zen Cart look

[Sally@CC]

I am not a techi at all but purely from a shoppers point of view I had a couple of problems:

1. The header doesn't stand out - could you make this a banner? The pictures also look like clipart, so not very attractive.

2. I had to scroll to see toys, there were just so many words everywhere - could you move things around a little so as soon as people see the landing page they know exactly what you sell?

3. Proof read - typos look so unprofessional. This was the first one I saw - We stock a variety activity toys - shouldn't that say variety OF?

4. The paypal logo right in the middle of the landing page made me think you just want my money and aren't concerned about customer service. I would expect to see this at the bottom or side.

Having said all that you have some great products at really good prices, I just think you need to make the site look more welcoming and fun.

Sally

[Diggerboy]

Hi,

Like the functionality of the site. Couple of points (Purely opinion!)

- some great pictures etc throughout the site, but the main page is a bit wordy? Could do with lifting it a bit with some of the eyecatching pics and colours you have deeper into the site. I know the site itself is not aimed at kids primarily, but it could do with a bit more impact!

- I'm on quite a widescreen laptop, but even so I feel the overall shop dimension is a little narrow. I find myself having to scroll down a little to see everything, and you could definitely get away with broadening the page, which would fit more without having to scroll. May also assist my first point!

Hope you don't mind the nitpicking. Guess that's why you're here!

[duongo]

Hello

you sell a good range of products and great prices. One thing i would say is product images could be better, especially the thunmbnail images which all seems quite blurry. I feel having good images prooduct descriptions is really important when you are selling products.

cheers

[JadeRose]

Thanks for all the feedback it was much appreciated :)

Kind Regards Bill

[martynb]

Hello JadeRose,

I wouldn't recommend worldpay its very expensive, protx would be better. While your still finding your feet googlecheckout or paypal would be good for processing cards.

Just had a quick look at your CSS your shop is a fixed width 750px i would suggest changing this to a percentage as it looks good on my laptop but on my monitor looks very small not everybody used 800x600.

I would swap the clipart for some stock images google "stock images" hundereds of websites on the net.

Get some friendly URLS in the try and get the keywords in the URL

You have two search boxes one at the top and one on the right.

Sorry for my rushed reply.

Other than that well done. :)

[sabian1982]

I'd agree with Sally, the first thing i saw was the clipart; this combined with the rather poorly repeating background and logo gives the site a very late 90's feel - the product images all tend to be rather distorted as well as i believe these have been resized via coding not a proper graphics package!

In all honesty the site isn't very well optimised at all at the moment; the url's are not SE friendly, your description and keywords metas are there but not written very well, and use of correct text element syntax such as h1, h2 tags etc are present however are not used correctly.

On the positive, title tags appear unique to each page (at a glance) and the site is coded in html/css instead of tables which is an excellent step towards better indexing and page size/load speeds.

As suggested, i think a more unique, modern and freash template design would do wonders.

[Pelenna]

Just had a look at your terms, and I don't think you can not allow returns under the distance selling regulations (http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/legal/distance-selling-regulations/) - the customer is allowed a 7 day cooling off period. Sorry if I misread it?!

[JadeRose]

Has anybody got any template reccomendations for my site?

I have been looking at some zencart template websites and would also like to know if anybody has any good ideas.

Kind Regards Bill

[Primal21]

As soon as this loaded, and fast I should add, I knew this was a zencart application. Why? because the template you have is a standard template. The logo struck me as bit bland and the clipart didn't do it for me. The up side is that it does the job that it is intended to do and the larger images for the products are good quality so that you can see what you are getting. To my mind zencart is one of the hardest applications to get good and diverse templates for. Those that are out there are quite expensive, but perhaps later it may be worth investing in one of these spectacular templates to set yourself apart from the standard templated shop.

Operationally it is almost perfect, on the eye candy front perhaps needs a little more work.

Have a look at the templates available at templatemonster.com there are also other free templates on the zencart site too.

[Gforster]

I don't believe that templates are everything. Personally I use an osCommerce store and use a fairly standard layout and just make sure that the images and logo and high quality.

So long as this is the case and the site is REALLY user friendly you will get orders which it is all about.

[Gforster]

It's in my profile for all to see.