New Website Review

[Phanerothyme 12]

I'd be interested in the outfit you've retained to do this. Not in open thread clearly, but I'd love to know who it is!

 

The site, as it stands, looks good, I certainly can't add much that hasn't been noted already.

 

My personal impression as a shopper is that it's immediately interesting, plenty to tempt me on the first page, but like indizine says, that huge image at the start is where I'd expect to find a special offer or something occupying slightly less space. The listings are clear and clean, the products are attractive, but I wouldn't immediately hit a drop down list at the top of the page to find more categories and products.

 

I like the chosen typeface and the rest, but get a favicon sorted pdq! The cubecart favicon is at odds with the look and feel.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Phanerothyme

[billybilo 10]

Hi,

 

Your website looks great. You would benefit from a logo though. The fine details of a website add value to your products and trust to your company, just like in physical stores. You have a niche market, so a play on that market would probably help. Just my opinions. Well done on the site and good luck!

 

[SpeedwayDan 10]

I agree with all of the points already raised.

 

Another area I would like to be tidied up is on some of the product pages you have a picture and a description at the top of the page. The font in this area is different to the rest of the pages font. I'd personally either have it the same as the rest of the fonts on the site or at least reduce the size.

 

The line height needs expanding too as it's hard to read.

[rankurak 10]

File size meant the load time was at least 30 secs on my laptop - 5 sec rule online, that's how long people generally wait around before pressing the back button and going elsewhere. The layout and design are pretty cool - think you could draw greater attention to buy buttons by changing the colour though.

[BarryRiley 10]

Karis, the main font looks really odd on my computer running Chrome. It's really rough and difficult to read. I'm not sure if it's the font everyone else is seeing or a secondary font my computer has loaded because it doesn't have the original installed

[BarryRiley 10]

Also agree on the logo. Get a logo to use throughout as brand identity and use it to replace the plain rollover in the top left

[breenen 10]

Before any site goes live its always best for the devleoper to draw up designs and layouts, we do this for all sites and bounce back and fourth ideas and suggestions until the client is totally happy with the look and feel of the design.

 

That step is very important, as once a developer starts stripping any images down and putting the code together its not as easy to amend layouts and colours.

 

After that stage, work should start on the rest of the pages, keeping in touch with the client thoughout... thus avoiding the problems you seem to be having above.

 

Hope all goes well with this site in the end, keep us posted on progress here.

[Phanerothyme 12]

I'm seeing this at the top of the index page now

Warning: reset() [function.reset]: Passed variable is not an array or object in /home/thegeeke/public_html/includes/extra/categorytree.inc.php on line 38

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/thegeeke/public_html/includes/extra/categorytree.inc.php on line 112

 

Looks like there may be a problem with the cart software, and at a wild guess, empty session information.

 

-- edit

 

or not - the categories pull down is empty

Edited February 24, 2012 by Phanerothyme

[breenen 10]

also, will your products be integrated with Google products, and have you considered integrating with eBay and Amazon using the same back end pages to retrieve your sales and print dispatch labels and picking lists etc...

[breenen 10]

Hello Phanerothyme, I'm also seeing that same error on all pages... is this site actually live now?

[Karis 11]

I've raised it as an issue today, but I very much doubt I'll get a response as I've just queried the massive invoice with him.

[Phanerothyme 12]

If nothing else, you can add the following line to your .htaccess file;

php_flag display_errors off

 

Which will suppress all php error messages like those being shown. Quick and dirty fix.