Please Review Picnic-Basket.com

Initial thought is that this is a very professional-looking site. The smooth-flowing curves and the choice of the oranges are pretty much perfect. The navigation to the left is great, very clear. The top navigation likewise. Load time on cable, under 2 seconds or so. The flash animation is also a welcome addition, not imposing or annoying at all and fits perfectly. I would maybe add some cell padding to the content area, it seems a little close to the edges to me.

On the actual item lists, i don't know why you have the image with the title on it then a seperate link to the right of it? Seems a little strange to me.

Also the design seems to break a little bit on the 'all products' page.

I'm not one for critique-ing the content of the sites and the grammar etc. so i'll leave that to somebody more capable.

Overall, a very nice, attractive site. Well done

it loaded ok for me in under 15 seconds on dial-up, 2-3 seconds in dsl... Anyways, the site looks really ok, the content part needs a little work, the flash animation takes up too much space, the shadow effect has too much blur, also the fluidity of the header design is quite good, considering that some elements on the left side are too constricted, while on the right too far apart. Thats all I can see at the moment, remove the feel of a template site...

Looks good. The design is well done, and I like the curves a lot. I'm not too sure about that colour scheme. I like it a lot better at higher screen widths when you can see more of the navy background. You could try narrowing the window a bit so more of that shows at 800x600, or using that colour throughout the design more.

A few more things:

• Those logos on the right side need to go - they detract too much from everything else.
• The font size on the front page needs to be a little bit smaller. It's looking rather inelegant right now. On the About Us page, on the other hand, the text is a little bit too small. ALso on that page, the header is too close to the left side. It should line up with the text.
• Actually, the front page could all be rewritten to be more easily readable. Nobody's going to read paragraphs of text. People should be able to glance at it quickly and get an impression of what the site is and what they can get there. Or you could replace it with some highlights of special offers and such. Most of the space above the fold is taken up by that photo, which is nice, but there's nothing enticing me to click futher into the site. Read this article: "Great Homepages Really Suck", by Cameron Moll (best thing sitepoint has ever published!).
• The resources header on the right has too much space at the top - it's not balanced, and doesn't match the Catetories heading
• The logo is very well done. I like it a lot - communicates the message clearly, and I like the tagline words too.
• All the pages could use a little bit more padding on the left side. There's too much space on the right and not enough on the left.
• The product pages look excellent. Lots of detailed information, well layed out
• The Designer Series page is a problem - too crammed up against the left side and hard to see what is in all the images.
• I think you'll want ot optimize your page titles a little more. The search engines pay a lot of attention to these so it's improtant to get some good keywords in. Instead of "Designer Series", for example, you could put "Designer Picnic Baskets at Picnic-Basket.com" or something like that. I'm not an SEO expert by any means so hopefully someone else around here can help you with that.
• Header tags are also important for search engines. You haven't used headers very well here. Each page should have an H1 tag describing the content on the page. Most of the product pages just have a breadcrumb trail with a "products" heading.

Good job overall - it looks like this could be a really successful site!

Thanks for the reviews everyone. You've all pointed out a few problems that I have already corrected.

I corrected the cell padding by centering the table. That helped though it is still a bit closer to the edge on the right side than the left.

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Daveboy, this seems strange to me too but it is not something I can change because of the way my host has the backend programmed, wish I could.

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Megan, Do you have any suggestions as to where that information could go because it needs to be visible somewhere?

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Megan, The text on the index page was mainly written for the search engines. It's about 700 keyword rich words. Is this too many? Any SEO's Have an opinion?

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Megan, I agree with you on the designer page. I have never really liked the final product there. Any suggestions anyone? One problem I have is I'm restricted to 1 column width. I would have liked to do a decoupage page with hotspots but once you define a category/sub-category it's gonna show up whether you like it or not and is why you see the sub-category wording to the right of all of my images.

You are right about those header tags Megan - I had forgotten about them, thanks!

Thanks so much for the imput (I especially appreciate the load times) and I look forward to hearing from some more of you.

Sam Warren
Picnic-Basket.com

I think you could do something different with the front page that would be just as good for SE's. Maybe someone who is more well versed in SEO could help you out more here. However, I think it's good to have, for example, key words that is linked. So you could highlight some key products and link to the product pages. Headings are also good, so you could have various sections with headings and then a list of links to product pages. Or you could higlight some key products with little descriptions that would get some more keywords in. Check the article I linked to above - I think it's got some good examples.

If anything, get rid of that image show thing at the top that's just taking up space and replace it with product highlights and such.

Designer series page - why not just do it like the other subcategory pages???

wow the design looks really good and unique. i love the colours they flow perfectly and the picture in the middle draws real attention.

Very professional!

If I have to make a complaint it is this (and I'd be interested to know others' opinions on this issue)

I like big print because I like to sit a few feet from my computer. My dad likes big print because he can read it.

But the menu View > Text size has no effect on your site. I'm stuck with the small letters. Is this because of CSS? Maybe there's a way around this that I don't know about. And people like my dad aren't your likely clinets. But how about people like me that don't necessairly sit at a desk and read, but rather try to read from a medium distance? View > Text Size > Largest is my friend.

Also, I like your color scheme and the images you took. Makes me want to go on a picnic!

I just opened up your site and I really liked the look of it. You should be happy that you have created something so proffesional-looking, and I think that visitors will have no problem trusting you with their credit card details, which is a plus!
If I were you, trying to sell products, I would have images of the products and your most recent offer on the first page. Maybe even just images linking to each of the categories. This would help the visitor know which exact picnic category to go for, and give them an idea of what your product is like when they load up the site.
Perhaps the essay on picnicking is a bit much, however good marketing spin it is!
My advice would be to generally sell your products more.

Thanks to everyone that has reviewed picnic-basket for me. I have gotten some great feedback and
have made a few changes based on it.

My advice would be to generally sell your products more.'
Matt, that's good advice and I will try to figure out some ways to do this.It was a consious
decision on my part to NOT start off on my main page trying to sell you something. I want the
user to feel comfortable on the site, to want to return for more (content). I have many plans
in the works for more content BUT I can see that I need to make it easier for people to shop.

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Tony, I understand where you are coming from on this. This site uses CSS and I do not know if I
can change the CSS to allow my users to use a larger font. Anyone out there know if it can be done?

gfxsector - Thanks

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Megan, Thanks for the info, I really appreciate it. I did the things you suggested and would love
to get even more feed back from anyone else with knowledge of SEO.

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Megan - I can't agree with you on this one. I really like my "image show thing".

Thanks again to everyone for your feedback, you guys are the greatest!

Sam Warren
Picnic-Basket.com

Hey

nice job i like the look of it.
it loaded quickly for me so no problems there.

I love the header and the nav bar looks great.

2 things though
1 it doesnt fit horizontally on my screen (ie6)
2 the colour chosen for the bottom nav bar doesnt allow me to see the links properly

other than that good job i like it.

The site looks pretty okay, but the brown curves don`t say picnic basket. They make me think about...chocolate, or something like this. Must be all the damn comercials...
Anyway, you should ad some heading tags h1, h2 with keywords, and try to make the source code a little more crawler friendly. On a google search ( http://www.google.com/search?q=picnic-basket&hl=en&lr=lang_en|lang_ro&rls=GBSA,GBSA:2005-23,GBSA:en&start=50&sa=N ) for picnic-basket I could find you on the first 6 pages. Therefor, you don't exist...sad but true.

the site is pretty nice but the colors on it reminds me of chocolate and caramel.
for pick nick basket website i picture a bright, surburban, good morning type of web site.

When I arrived at your site I was a little disappointed as the colour scheme put me off a bit. I think the idea that you are selling picnic-ware should impose more of a fresh/outdoors theme as I think in order to sell any product the buyer needs to have a sense of "being there" or using the item. On the other hand the swirling bar at the top is inviting and adds to the "romantic" theme you've gone for. The site is certainly professional and I would certainly feel comfortable buying from you, I just dont think I would have spent long on there if I had of been shopping for myself.
I hope this helps and good luck.

I think the design looks great! excllent job overall.

Your title is WAY too long. You are just cramming words in, and it looks horrible. Both your keyword tag and your Discription tag are doing the same. I"m all for Keyword density, but you're going overboard with not only density, but you repeat the same words over again "picnic, basket"

Yes, I have the same feeling as allen555. The colors remind me of chocolate.
If it is a site to sell chocolate, I will definitely buy one.
Anyway, your site is greate. I like those baskets offered on your site.

One more thing, when I searched sth in your search box at the top, the font size and color of the footer links on the result page is not the same as the homepage.