Hello kamakazi,
I am going to be as harsh and honest as I can, so please forgive me in
advance.
#1 - I think your website does look professional, but definitely needs
some improvement.
I would recommend that you make it somewhat more colorful. It does
like kind of blank, perhaps some kind of background or dividers would
look nice, or make the links to "Home", "Products", etc. graphics that
are more colorful.
I am not sure if you detected my resolution, but if not, then you
should definitely make the website more accessible to people with
lower resolutions. I have a 1280x1024 resolution and to make the
entire window visible, I need to enlarge the window so that it takes
up most of the width of my screen. There are still many people with
800x600 resolutions and you should take a look at your website at that
resolution. It would be so frustrating for people that they would
probably visit leave your website if they can't view the width of the
page on their screens.
I also think your logo is too large and that it should be just above
the "Products" and be more tiny. You could make the slant more
horizontal so that the height of it decreases. On that note, I would
also prefer that the logo be in the top left, and directly right from
it on the top have graphics for "Products", "Specials", "Order
Catalog", "Search", "Login", "Contact Us" (in that order) and where
those links currently are, I would have navigation for your product
categories. (Cell Phone Accessories, TV Accessories etc.) When the
Product page is clicked, you can show the categories again but with a
picture of the category like you have here:
http://solid-deals.com/pages/cat01.htm
Clicking on your Products link, I would say that it could use the
following improvements:
Remove the "!" marks on all of the top three links. In addition, I
would change them into something shorter and make more categories:
Cell Phone Accessories
TV Accessories
Spy Gadgets
I also think that you should merge "Specials", "Limited Time Only",
and "Free Stuff" into a promotions category. Not only will this be
more professional but there will be one area your customers can go to
see all the current promotions.
The Products link also links to solid-deals.com and not
www.solid-deals.com (the copyright notice at the bottom has the same
problem). I would make all your links to www.solid-deals.com and not
solid-deals.com because more people are familiar with it.
Regarding the Contact link, I would change it to an "About Us" link
that provides information about your company in addition to contact
information.
Login looks fine, but Password (W should not be capitalized), and I
would also increase the size of the password box so that it is more in
line with the User ID box.
Search looks fine, but again only at higher resolutions. Also, would
it be possible for the results to appear in the same window while not
losing the sidebar, the top bar and the bottom bar?
Shopping Cart Looks awesome, but I do want you to remove the
@yahoo.com link at the top and change it to a more professional email
address: shopping@solid-deals.com would be one suggestion. I also do
not like losing the functionality of the website when I click on
shopping. Is there anyway you can keep the shopping cart in the middle
and keep the top, left and bottom sidebars? This would also work to
hide the emartcart.com link (if you could hide this it would add to
the professional look). I am not sure if your server supports
imbedding HTML pages (or how this works), but hopefully it does so you
can do this.
Order our Catalog: I think you should split up the Address into more
boxes. If you are going to be shipping your catalog outside of the
United States, add a country scroll down to list the countries you
will ship to (shipping cost is much higher for some countries). If you
ship only to the United States, make only the United States available.
Split up the Address into Street Address, State etc. For name, ask if
they want to be known as Mr. Ms. Mrs. Dr. etc. (some people really are
serious about wanting this included in business correspondence). For
email, ask them to input it twice and make sure both versions of it
are the same. Also provide a picture or two of what your catalog looks
like.
Your privacy policy page looks great, but takes up way too much of my
screen. Provide an email address or form so people can contact you if
they have any questions regarding your privacy policy.
For your index.htm page, I would write the languages you support under
the flags because some people might not be familiar with all the
flags. Also take a look at this page at a lower resolution and you
will see that it takes up way more width than it should. I do like the
flags at the bottom though; they add some colors to the page and
provide a quick way of switching languages.
What are your shipping policies and costs? I never like it when I have
to add items to a shopping cart to find out what they cost. There
should be a place where people can find out this information. What
currencies do you accept? If you accept US Dollar currency only, you
should provide information about who will be doing the currency
conversion (if its the person's credit card company the exchange may
not be what they expected). Tell them to contact their credit card
company for exchange rate information.
#2 - From what I think your business is about, I would say yes. But
you should make it clear in an About Us page, what your company IS
about! Do you ship to wholesalers only? Is there a minimum order?
Taxes? Etc. You might also want to have a newsletter so people sign up
and are able to get used to your URL (by weekly reminders of specials)
and so they catch on to your URL, especially the hyphen. You don't
want to be losing people because they forget what your URL is when
they want to return to your website... and with longer URL's this is
definitely a problem. Make a newsletter that is sent out weekly and
make it VERY simple to sign up (requiring only name and email
address). Make sure you have a system that will allow you to remove
people who do not wish to receive further emails, and make it clear
that you will do this during the signup process so more people will
sign up.
#3 - I have included this in the above section. Another thing I can
think of is tell users that when they Check Out from your website,
that they will be redirected to a secure page and have the small lock
on the bottom. It scared me when I realized that clicking on your
shopping card and noticed that it was not secure, but after clicking
check out, I was reassured. A person who is concerned about security
might not realize this and leave your website before continuing. I was
also a bit confused and clicked on Continue Shopping instead of Check
Out. I would switch these two buttons if possible, but it might only
be a personal problem. The credit card and paypal pictures could go to
the very bottom (under the blue line) but do not look too bad to make
this a great concern. Do you offer payment by money order or bank
transfers? This would be a great convenience for some people who do
not have credit cards and is something that distinguishes a small
business from a large one where it becomes too complicated to accept
other payment methods. This might result in you getting more orders
from people who want to buy online, but not with a credit card.
#4. I do think that the font size is way to large and is more a "fun"
type of font than a professional one. Your paypal page uses Verdana
size 8.5 for standard text and for the sake of continuity; I would
suggest that you use this font. Your emart cart uses Arial, so this
might be another possibility. I notice that both your emartcart and
paypal have blue themes, so this is what I suggest you use as a
background and adopt a similar theme for your website. Perhaps make
the navigation buttons somewhat like the eMartCart button at the top
of your shopping cart, but a bit smaller.
One final note, I am not recommending you use a blue background, but
if you do not want to make buttons and color your text a bit more,
then it might be something you should do.
I think you have a great start, and I have tried to be as exhaustive
as possible. I hope this is what you were looking for. If you need any
clarifications regarding this answer, let me know and I will do my
best to further assist you.
Also a quick note on the Google Answers Service, usually this level of
detail and answering four questions does not accompany a $2.50
question. I answered this question because I wanted to help out, and
because this sort of stuff is fun to me. I look forward to version #2,
and maybe we can take a look at that in a different question.
tisme-ga |
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