Whimsical Village

the url would be nice!

Yes, no, probably not, doubtful.

Definitely -- information architecture, poor design *for the products* and the site doesn't convey its purpose.

You don't have credibility, either, as a brand new vendor, and nothing to help people take a chance on you. All your links are identical, so I don't know where to link and the OSX-like swoosh doesn't say "whimsical" it says "new age", and it definitely doesn't look like something I'd expect on a site that sells kitschy rooster goodies.

Please take a look through other threads and offer your opinion. While I'm sure you're focused on your own work right now, this may help you see where you've gone wrong, and you agreed to do so when you posted this thread.

Thanks.

The bottom part looks really bad, make it one bar instead of three. There's nothing to catch the visitor's eyes, it's very plain without much colour. I would also center it so it'll be easier for the visitor to read it.

Thats another template from monstertemplates.com aint it?

Was probably quite nice to start with, but it's not suitable for your product range and you've removed a lot of the "furniture" (page elements and widgets) that help makes it look good.

Welcome to TWF! When you posted this thread you saw our posting agreement. We'd appreciate it if you would follow the guidelines there and review some other sites. If there is some reason why you can't or don't want to do this please let us know.

Thanks for all of your opinions. For all of those that have said that I need to read other threads and reminded me of the agreement to read other threads, just chill out! I just joined Monday night and I had to stop what I was doing and go help me husband in the yard. I will read others. Thanks again for your help!

Sorry if I sounded too sharp there, cangyray. Unfrotunately we have a lot of problems here with people asking for reviews and never contributing back to the community so we like to get that cleared up first if possible.

I agree with the others about your site. It really does look like a template, and, most importantly, doesn't suit the content of your site. Honestly, I think it would be easy to better than this on your own if you had a little time to learn. You saw the Style Showcase site posted in another thread. Notice how the colour scheme tied into the products and the target audience. You may want to choose a typical product from your catalogue and choose the colours from there.

Otherwise, the shopping area is well layed out and easy to navigate. I think it's important to have large views of products available. Here when I click on the images I just get the same size version. People are wary about buying online, especially with stuff like this, so make sure they can see details.

One of the questions I always have when I shop online is a) will the site ship to me (i'm in Canada) and b) how much will it cost for shipping? It might be good to include this in the FAQ. Speaking of the FAQ, links should look different from plain text so they stand out and people can tell that they're clickable.

Some of your text is really small here. Particularly the item descriptions.

I tried to purchase an item and everything went quite smoothly. I like the way you've highlighted required items in red on the form there.

I have made some changes to the verbage and to the overall design. I wish I could make more design changes, but I am stuck in the template layout. I have to stick with this website for right now. It is a part of a package deal that I got to do the credit cards. I hope to eventually have one designed. I know this is going to sound crazy, but I am a graphic designer. Mind you not a web designer, so I don't know all of the ins and outs of web design. I know what I want it to look like, but I am stuck with the templates and the requirements that they hold. Give me paper! I have never grasped web design. Anyway, please look at it again if anyone gets a chance!

That looks better. Much more appropriate, anyway. One thing you should know is that sans serif fonts generally work better on the web. You could also go with something liek Georgia or Garamond, they look good too. For some reason Times just looks terrible on a screen.

I also think that you should move your logo up into that space in the top-left corner, and change the colours to match the template. Oh, and flesh out your page titles a little bit, it'll help with the search engines. Put your site name in there for branding, and maybe add some keywords if you can.

Otherwise this is okay for right now. I'm sure you'll be able to get something great once you learn more about web design :)