Website testing - please! :)

[gary]

Hi all

I've just finished converting http://www.tiewarehouse.co.uk to osCommerce, and I would be most grateful if a few people could do a bit of testing and pass on any comments!

Most important is the checkout process - I need to ensure this is working OK, so if you could do a test order that would be great! You can go through the whole ordering process, entering your details etc, and then when you get to Worldpay to enter your card details, just click on cancel so the order is cancelled. Of course if you actually want to buy something, please feel free to do so!

Thanks very much!

Gary

 

[tommy]

It all seems to be working fine for me.

And once again let me say, I think that your site is excellent, well laid out and easy to navigate through.

Tom

 

[Ozzy]

Site looks nice and clear to navigate, butthen I do know osCommerce so I would say that

The checkout process works fine but it has the same problem that I haven't got around to sorting on my own osCommerce installation yet...
The Checkout reference quoted on the Worldpay statement and payment confirmations is the session variable that means nothing to customer nor merchant. I am going to get around to changing it to the $order_id one day on mine and I'd recommend you do the same.

Other than that nice

 

[gary]

Thanks very much Tom and Richard! Glad you like the site! Someone else who looked at it said they expected to be able to click on the image or product name and go through to a more detailed product page (product_info.php, Richard). They found it off-putting that they could only click on Buy Now when they wanted to see more detail about the product, in the normal osCommerce way. It was an interesting point and I'm just waiting to see if anyone else thinks the same.

I removed the requirement to create an account because I wanted to make it quick and easy to buy something. I'll look at that checkout reference as well, thanks.

Thanks very much for taking the time to test it for me!

Gary

 

[AcornDomains.co.uk]

I agree good job. It is nice to see some products on the homepage as you can tell immediately what the site is about when you arrive.

From a SEO perspective your meta tags are a bit too long for what is recommended:

Title = 97 characters, recommended max is 80
Keywords = 724 characters, recommended max is 500. You have 56 keywords, recommended max is 20.

Your keywords relevancy to your page content is 39%, try adding keywords that appear on the homepage or change the homepage to show the keywords.

Add a "Robots" and "Author" meta tag.

 

[SillyJokes]

I really like your site, Gary and it has got better.

Things that might improve it further are visited links colouring.

When you are looking at a product in detail you have the bread crumbs at the top but it might also be good to have the section you are in highlighted on the left menu.

In the basket, I could be wrong but isn't 'remove' normally on the right hand side?

I changed the quantity but couldn't find the update button. After a while I saw your pink highlighted text but I think you would be better to make your update button much easier to find or have many more of them.

 

[gary]

Wow! Not sure if you guys realise this, but my original post is a year old! Not that I'm complaining though - I always welcome practical feedback, and the site has changed, and sales have increased, considerably since this was posted in April 2004 as a result of such feedback.

AcornDomains,

Thanks - glad you like the site. The product categories on the homepage are there as a result of people suggesting it, and it has made a difference.

Sillyjokes,

Thanks for the comments. I know you're keen on visited links changing colour and I'll look into making the lefthand menu context sensitive as well.

You're quite right about the Update button - it's a real pain, or it was until I added the pink warning when someone changes the quantity. Before that I used to get quite a few emails saying they couldn't change the quantity, or people would just order twice! There have been almost none since I added the warning, but ideally there needs to be a better solution - though so far it's been hard to get one to work.

The Remove box is a good point - yes, I think it should be on the right and I'll look at moving it.

Thanks again!

Gary

 

[SillyJokes]

I know everyone thinks my visited links fixation is barmy but it really does help you navigate almost subconciously.

Think about Google - if their visited links didn't colour you would never remember which sites you had visited during a search.

When you enter a supermarket shop you can instantly see all around and find the section you want. You know you have seen everything there is to see, but on the web that is not true. You don't know from a home page whether you are on a 10 page site or like SillyJokes, a 2000 page site. And if you browse around it is hard to keep in your head exactly where you have been before. Visited links give you the visual cue you need to avoid making the same clicks over and over again.

I really like the way some dynamic sites let you know which pages you most recently visited and Amazon is the king of this with 'the page you made'. But dynamic sites can be slow and not easily placed in search engines - it's a pay off.

OK Preach over - I just thought I would clarify my position on visited links.

 

[gary]

No, it makes sense. As you say though, there's a payoff between usability and speed - I removed a number of automated functions from the homepage because they just added too many database queries and slowed the page down. In fact I quartered the speed of the homepage by doing that, so it was well worth it.

 

[sportingmemories]

I can only agree with points made earlier that there needs to be a long description. Buying clothing or accessories is such a difficult leap of faith on the Internet. It is so difficult to convey what something really really looks like on the Internet. Some of the product pictures look almost computer generated. A description of the fabrics used and also a close up of each item I believe would really help.

I`m sorry to be completely negative to start with because other than that the site is extremely efficient and easy to navigate, everything i needed was within eyesight at any given time which is a fantastic effort. I just feel that more descriptions are required.