Site review please.

First off Hi Kenny & thank you for posting your site for critique. We do ask for you to help others by offering a critique to others sites as well as posting your own, so have a look at some of the other threads in this section as it will also help you out as well.

First impression of the site is obviously the pop up window, it doesn't all fit in the window! Certificate can only be seen if you maximise the window and people will close pop-ups rather than read them, let alone do anything else with them.

On to the main window & at 800*600 there is a horizontal scroll bar - only just but it is there & shouldn't be! The specials page has a large one.

I personally don't like the table it is all in. Keep the background to the far left column but the rest doesn't work well. Nor do I particualarly like the buttons, too big.

Also on the sub pages (which most of the main links open into another window which is most annoying!) the headings don't look good in just plain Arial at that size.

I have an adsl connection so for me no problems with loading but perhaps you'll get feedback from others on that.

Kenny2

I would like to read what your site is about, how you select the entries there and in what way does coming to your site enable me to buy 4 less. That would give your site some personality, which could in turn encourage me to shop there.

Stephen

Overall I'm finding the design to be way too cluttered. Too many ads mixed in with other things that make it hard to see what is your content and what is an ad. Get rid of anything that doesn't make you money. See if you can get it down to one column, and keep it on that blue backgrouond. I find that different coloured backgrounds for ads really make them fade out of the design. Maybe try using the lined pattern from the .com text in the logo as a background for ads. Or maybe use that as a page background with the content area still on white (so it would show up on both sides at high resolutions) Can you get those award buttons off the front page? Maybe onto a separate awards page?

Also, those nav buttons, well, they're just tacky. Your logo is excellent, and yet you've got these rather cheesy, unappropriate nav buttons there. The "SALES and SAVINGS. Shop Online for less at this Internet Mall" text can go - I think it's pretty obvious what this site is about.

I went to the Arts and Crafts page - the only thing I can say about this is that the explanation text is a little on the big side. Otherwise it looks good.

The drop down navigation is okay, except that the "take me there" button is appearing below it, and that's a little unexpected. Just put a little "go" button right beside it.

What I would really, really like to see on a site like this is store litings with availability (which countries they sell too) and maybe which currency they use. I would probably shop online more if I didn't have such a hard time finding out whether or not a site will sell to me. Oooh, and maybe a customer service rating as well. Would be very helpful.

Thanks all,

What great suggestions. Alot are things I had been thinking about too. Courious about horizontal scroll, I also use 800x600 and dont see it. Re check in dreamweaver shows the widest top bar to be 759 pixels??? Correct about special page, I will change that today. I just might remove the pop up all togother too. Hmm... Stephen, I have some press releases that very much explain the site. Maybe adding a link to them would help. I also thought the buttons were too large and awards should go. "sales and savings...ect" is h1 text that I understood would help in SE's. I will change drop down select too. Logo was made by a friend, I guess I could have them make me a lined pattern background. Nor am I happy with the large arial text.

Great advice, all comments are things I thought could be problems too and exact answers to them. Keep them comming and I will use this advice and re work them into the site.

Thanks again, Kenny

I'm on a 56k dial up in Japan so I'd like to offer some feedback re load times. It was slow. I didn't time it but I think it took about a minute to load, which isn't great. However it loaded the text and top banners first so I had something to look at while all the ads were downloading.

A bit slow but not enough to scare me away and I hate waiting. I don't think you need to worry too much about load times.

Andrew

Heres a little program you may find useful, its claims to check load times

http://www.tafweb.com/webspeed.html

I've used it as a guide once or twice and it seems pretty close.

As for your site, very blue, maybe change the border to a different color, your links are blue so it kind of clashs.
from "sales and service .." to "bookmark us" should be made apart of the table, the buttons need to be smaller for sure, the "weekly specials" button looks like it was just thrown in there as it wouldnt fit on the top row.

javascript among other things can and does slow your loadig time, people forget about the size of the .html file and or .css, .js files. removing the clock/date up top right which isnt needed will save you some, a guestbook on a e-commerce site? the "search the web" is another wasted part, I think everyone knows where microsoft, netscape, yahoo, and the rest of the main sites are.
The weather channel? I wont ask. hehe
that "shopping, savings, selections" graphic is a waste of bandwidth, the animation part i mean, you have an awesome icon (buy4less) keep the rest of the header to that standard or at least spend some time on a decent animated graphic.

hope that program helps

Thanks Andrew and Busy,

Dam you people are good. Webspeed is a nifty little prog. Thanks for the logo compliment, My friend who made it has a credit link on the bottom if someone want's to see more of thier work. Just 3 days ago they also suggested removing that bandwidth hog animation and possibly replacing it with text. Guess it's unanimous on the buttons. I have some smaller ones I will use. Not one entry in the guest book, guess that wont be missed. And yes the target=blank has to go. Even my self with many brouser windows open can hit one and I see nothing, But it changed below. Very irritateing.

Great suggestions everyone. I will work all these out and then up date entire site. Any More?

Kenny

P.S. I'm going to play some more with over all re design. Rounded tables and edges. Little different color scheem, All above suggestions. Before I over write all can I get I view on up date?
when it's done...

I see nobody has noticed that the closing image at the bottom of the left row, is not fitting. Also get rid of the buttons, and use plain text. Or at least a smaller image. I agree with all comments given here. Other then that, it's verry nice looking.

Also, change the default text of the buttons. Cause I'm using a dutch version it says "Query verzenden" and that looks just weird at an English site.