www.jewellerybasket.co.uk

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 10:19 am Post subject: www.jewellerybasket.co.uk

Hi,

Just about finished my new osCommerce shop which sells Jewellery

Link: http://www.jewellerybasket.co.uk

Please let me know what you think to it.

There is still some more watches to be added

osCommerce Contributions Used
Active Countries
Anti Robot Registration
Anti Spambot Review
Change Page Title to Show Catagory Name (Breadcrumb Trail)
Down for Maintenance
Dynamic Sitemap
Login box v5.3
Meta Tag Controller Support v1.2
Order IP Recorder
osC PrintOrder with StoreLogo
osCommerce PayPal IPN Module v1.3 For 2.2MS2
osCProductListingSelect
Pending Order Email v1
Printer Friendly Product Page
product sort
Purchase Without Account
Review Approval System v1.3
Shop By Price
Top to Home
Ultimate SEO URLs 2.2.2
Who's Online Enhancement 2.00

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:48 pm Post subject:

I am sure you want an honest reply so I'm afraid the following isn't pretty...

Front page

1) Looks like a 1995 vintage website - sorry.

2) Title banner - Could be a lot better - Jaggies

3) Images at either side are non clickable

4) Earrings pic (and others) have white boundary around them which looks awful - Jaggies

5) Image resizing has been done badly

6) Jaggies (have I mentioned that?)

7) Front page clickable text is exactly the same as non clickable text (I really really hate this)

Inside Shop

8) Menu on left is black bold that changes to grey underlined on mouse over. Centre clickable text is bold underline which doesn't change on mouce over. Consistant rules on text and link styles would be a lot better.

Otherwise OK!

NetHosted Customer Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 149

I have to admit my first thought was to get rid of the front page altogether. What purpose does it serve other than forcing your visitors to make an extra click before they can start buying stuff?

Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 6:49 am Post subject:

Looked at it this morning, and I take it you've done some modifications since yesterday.
The most obvious problem is that title banner. That wants ditching straight away! You'll be a lot better with plain mauve text on a white background and no bits of casual clipart. Colour scheme is good (mauve/gold) - is it a standard one?
The category page titles look a bit odd in red. The icons that are replaced by text on right hand side of the titles are plain text at mo, I assume that you are going to replace these at some time. I personally don't like these small icons that osCommerce puts on all the pages, and remove them whenever possible.

Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 9:21 pm Post subject:

It's looking better now. The banner isn't "graphic design" standard, but it's passable. The design of banners is something that gives me a lot of grief as I've not got the ability or style. I had/have a problem with one of my banners, which looks OK on my monitor, but on my friends quality LCD monitor looks rough (jaggies??), so it's always worth getting someone with a very good monitor to give it the once over.

The way images are dealt with on osCommerce is very crude. The small samples you see on the categories are just the same image forced into a table cell, so the file size isn't reduced. This means that your pages can be slow loading with lots of product images on each page. Your Bracelets & Bangles page is a classic example, a lot of those images are 30-40kb each, so you can see how the page size mounts up - not everyone is on high speed broadband. I personally think you've got too many products on one page (51!) - can you break down the categories some more?

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:34 am Post subject:

The only immediate problem I see with the banner is that the JPEG compression seems a little.. lossy... it's blurred!

Apart from that, it's nicely done.

Mike

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:53 am Post subject:

Its looking a lot better now. Good work.

Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 2:32 pm Post subject:

Could you get a pdf ready of the ring sizes to print off. My wedding ring is a T and 61.9mm means nothing to me. It would be really useful to have a chart with circles at the right size to compare. At least with a pdf, you should get a consistent print out on each OS to enable an accurate size to be printed. I could compare my ring (or the mrs), cut out the hole and try it on my finger.

Call me Mr Over-Practical but that is the worst thing about buying rings, knowing the right size.

Ian

Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 12:53 pm Post subject:

Hi,

Thank you for your honesty and all your replies it is very welcome

Sorry for not replying sooner.

I have removed the front page. My point of the front page was for search engines and keyword/description tags

and a small sample of the products we do, but I can do that on the shop front page.

Center Menu/Text on front page, now uses the same A:hover as left menu and also now the menu bit when on a picture it changes the colour of the text.

Whilst talking about the mouse over/hover the menu on the left and other links that turn that greyey/bluey colour. What colour do you think would look better ? I am happy with the red when it is selected.

Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 1:27 pm Post subject:

Image resizing....

I resized using my graphics package (Corel V6) which gave a similar result to yours but still didn't look right so I increased the contrast a bit which improved things I think (mine left, yours right)

Jaggies...

Yours left, mine right

Both should be easy to do in PSP5.

Posted: Fri Sep 29, 2006 3:14 pm Post subject:

I would have thought that you can create perfect circles using Paint Shop Pro of an exact radius in millimetres to match the sizing. I don't use PSP but I assume you can save in pdf format to give an accurate size chart. I use Photoshop which can do this and Photoshop Elements should manage it just as well. You can usually get free trials of these programs as downloads or with PC mags.

Ian

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 6:10 pm Post subject:

Hi,

I tried in Paint Shop Pro 5, and was not really getting any where so I downloaded a trial version Corel Praint Shop Pro Photo XI

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