Please Review: www.skinsolutions.com

They have: 107 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

http://www.skinsolutions.com

OK,
I posted this a LONG time ago, but have improved it alot since then. Also, an online store has been added.

The site is split up into two parts:
Skin & Cosmetic Solutions: a cosmetic dermatology site

and

Raleigh Dermatology : A medical dermatology site

Both of these stores are right next to eachother physically.

I am trying to get visitors to get the idea to choose which one that want to enter on the hompage. Is that coming across?

Thanks,
Chris

z28cam's picture

They have: 102 posts

Joined: Oct 2001

Yeah, I think your point comes across. But you could word you links different just to make sure your users dont get confused. Like "Enter Raleigh Dermatology store" or something to that effect.

On a side note:
On the site where it says
"Our online store is now complete. Now you can order many of Skin & Cosmetic Solutions's products from your own home."

I would change the last part "from your own home." to "from your home.",or "from the comfort of your home."

It just sounds funny the otherway. Makes it sound like, before i had to go to my neighbors house to order it. But now i can do it from my home Smiling:)

I know its nothing big, but i just had to point it out

They have: 107 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

z28cam,
Thanks for the suggestion. Just changed it.

~Chris

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

The only thing I would say is that having the 'Hours of Operation' may indicate to some people that either the website isn't online 24/7 or that the online shop isn't as there is no actual real-life address shown there. I would personally leave that off the first page and put it in the details on the respective sections where the address is.

It would probably be better for your visitors if you say on this first page whether they ship internationally, locally or whatever, otherwise someone may go through to the shop and get to the checkout or whatever then realise they can't get the goods shipped abroad. Let us know when the shop is up & running. How did you find using Miva? I'm interested as that's what I use for my stores.

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

Busy's picture

He has: 6,151 posts

Joined: May 2001

I remember this site Smiling maybe my memory isnt as bad as i thought it was Smiling

looking pretty good, the authentic site image is next to the banner in netscape but under in IE, if you want it under, just add a after the banner code, (beside actually looks better).

apart from that works well in both, well actually aligns better in Netscape.

thought about putting curves on the white section? check out the graphics forum a few sections up, someone (sorry forgot your name) was giving away free corners if you arent able to make your own.

doh, perhaps my memory is as bad as I thought it was Sad

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

Still needs work. I think that logo should be re-done. The font is too scratchy and the drop shadow seems to be a little on the big side. I think a smoother, scripted font would look better.

The colour scheme here also needs work. The mauve and pale yellow is fine, but you've also goot bright blue and some dark red in there. Try making your links purple - maybe a little darker than the colour you've used elsewhere.

About the entrance par there, you might want to make those areas more clearly defined. Put boxes around them with rounded corners and maybe do the titles as graphics. Get rid of all the other clutter on that page - it's distracting people from their choices. Set out the lists of services using bullet points, and lose the hours of operation. Set those two boxes out on purple backgrounds and give the page a white background. Make sure those two boxes are the same size. You could put a button below them, centered, for the online store. Keep the logo up there at the top.

On the Dermatology page you introduce yet another colour - the light aqua in the "Raleigh Dermatology Home" graphic. Get rid of that altogether. That text on the right side doesn't look quite right either - make sure the font on that matches ther rest of the site.

Clicked on Skin cander, there's an ugly aqua header again. Definitely do something different with those. I also see text here in red, bright blue and teal. There looks to be a graphic on here that was scanned from a book and I don't see any kind of copyright information. That's important.

Skin and Cosmetic Solutions page - on all the sub-pages in this section you're using different design styles. Some have photos, some don't. All the photos are different shapes, sizes and styles (some have text, some don't...) Many of them look like they may hve been scanned from somewhere as well - watch your copyrights!

Overall the design is okay, but it really needs some refinement.

They have: 107 posts

Joined: Mar 1999

Thanks,
The client insist on having the store hours on the homepage.

We do have the right to use all of the images on there. Yes, some were scanned in and others were used in their advertising. The graphic you are referring to came from one of their brochures.

Good idea with the mentioning shipping. Just changed it to say (United States Only) on the storefront page.

The online store is up and running. Miva was great. It was fairly easy to add all of the products (about 120) with their images and attrbutes. There area few things that could use some tweaking, but there are most likely modules out there that you can add on to miva to get it to do whatever you want. It integrates nicely with the payment processing as well.

They also want the current font used in the top logo. Anyone else have anything to say about the logo. What if I didn't make it as beveled out as it is?

Colors. The main logo is the ont seen in the top left of every page. I was trying to follow those colors. But that aqua just looks too hard to see on the purple, so thats why it is kind of a bright blue. I think I will take out the red text through the site, just so overall there are less colors.

For the layout w/ the images. All of the pages that have specific photos (mainly before and after). These are all linked to by saying something like "click here for ...."
I think I am going to add a little image looking icon right before those, so it kind of alerts people "this is a link to an image."

The Webmistress's picture

She has: 5,586 posts

Joined: Feb 2001

I like Miva too, very easy to use & very easy to customise as well. I have built 6 stores using it now, so if you have any questions about it then I will probably be able to help you.

Julia - if life was meant to be easy Michael Angelo would have painted the floor....

alda.b's picture

They have: 44 posts

Joined: Dec 2001

... since everyone else has covered just about everything.

This part in the yellow band

"Our online store is now complete. Now you can order many of Skin & Cosmetic Solutions's products from the comfort of your home."

really is unecessary. You could use this space to clarify why users would want to start with Raleigh Dermatology or Skin & Cosmetic Solutions rather than start shopping. Especially since you have links to the shopping part in each of those sections.

Since you do have a news item about the store opening, you really don't need that announcement on the top of the page. Actually, it would be a good idea if you moved the news items to the left bar.

Hope that helps!

Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.