Hey guys, the last few months I've been working at the same company, but as the web/sysadmin. We've just finished (ish) our latest website, and we'd like to hear peoples thoughts on it. We've asked family/friends/colleagues, but it'd be nice to get opinions from other people. As this is a live shop, please don't put sales through, but do feel free to have a proper play around, try and break it etc! would love to hear what you guys think of it, I'm really proud of it myself, as it's the first site I've designed. Cheers EDIT: LOL FURGOT SITE www.tiles-ceramic.co.uk Edit: thanks to mods for moving.
Personally I'd have Cart and My account before Tell a Friend on a left to right basis in your navigation bar. Your asking for the customer to recommend you before they've bought anything.
Cheers for the CC Printed off and noted. I don't know why, but I always expect the cart at the top right
not bad but have noticed some stuff the sky blue massively clashes with the natural stone colour on the home page making it slightly hard to read. nice clean layout not too keen on the search tab - maybe a search box instead ? the tabs along the top seems jumbled - i.e. contact us is in the middle ? on 99% of website its either on the end on the main tab or at the bottom of a menu not sure what the tell a friend page is all about ? i thought it might be a discount scheme until i clicked it. i love the roating banner at the top showing different tiles tile calcualtor is a nice touch that people would use but its almost hidden on that tiny bottom bar delivery page is in a different format than other pages on the contact us page if you start getting bot spam just add an adcatcha on to it overall looks professional and i would buy from it and thats what counts
All the advice is duly noted, we're in the process of changing the front page etc at the moment The calculator is available on all of the products, we've had to do it this way so that google doesnt see our site as a tile calculator, rather than a e-store. It's a shame as it's such a powerful tool as well. We've got an inhouse spam system for the contact us page, aswell as an ip list on the htaccess. Thanks for the kind words, rest assured the home pages 9 "tiles" will be updated soon enough
I would say scrap the 'Product Type' drop down in favor of a small search box there, with the obligatory link to the 'Advanced Search'; especially as a number of the items are in the 'Categories' section. Other than, it is quite nice. The cart etc are in the right place in my opinion, that is where I always look for things like that.
Looks good dude. Needs some rainbow javascript, at least 50 animated gifs, some scrolling banners and at least a few "under construction" signs. If you pass it through the XHTML validator it passes as well with only minor warnings, which is good -- consider looking into those minors? (If you're anal like me)
On the "Contact Us" page you've got: "If you feel the need to contact us via phone, please feel welcome to call our offices on: Web sales & offices: 02392 361881 email weborders@dtw-tiles.co.uk" However the "email" is underlined along with the address looking messy. Kinda sounds as though you are trying to talk them out of calling, and the information is hidden way down the page, below the physical addresses. If I'm going to a web-shop and feel the need to Contact Us then I'm mostly likely to be wanting to phone or email (to check stock perhaps?). I'd be tempted to move those details right up to the top, just under the "Please contact us" bit so that the how to contact is right next to the invitation to contact. Also I'd expect the email address on the top right of the header to be a mailto link. Expecting me to C&P an email address is just cruel tbh the text on that page is a little ropey (imo) but I don't have time to come up with anything better for you (right now at least.. might do tomorrow or something)
It all looks fine to me.I found my way around it easily. The tell a friend bar is a minor gripe, I don't mind it at all, it's not like it's offensive or in your face. Looks like a web site should to me. I'm not having a go at any one here, although the points on here are valid it's just picky. The main thing is it's easy to navigate and looks good, that's what people want. I hate over complicated and fussy web sites it just make s me look else where. You've ticked all the necessary boxes and that's what counts. Well done Matt.
The site looks good... Accessible, easy to follow and nicely laid out. Only little issues I see: 1. Light blue (a:hover style of sidebar links) clashes with the light brown background and makes it hard to read. A darker blue could make it better. 2. If you go to the "New Products" and "Special Offers" pages; the images shown to the left of the Item Title and description are being re-sized via CSS from full size images on your server. Here's an example: http://www.tiles-ceramic.co.uk/products_new.php That page lists this product: VICENZA MODULAR BEIGE The thumbnail next to the title is 130px by 130px, but that's not the real size of the image. You're just using this url as the img src tag: http://www.tiles-ceramic.co.uk/images/vicenza beige ftwap501.jpg And that url points to a 500px by 500px image that is 200Kb in size. I didn't check all the images, but the ones that I checked are the same way. Two things about this: 1. You should never resize images at moment of serving - AKA resizing on the fly - AKA resizing via HTMl or CSS. Why? Simple... because even though you're resizing the image from 500x500 to 130x130; the web browser still has to load the 500x500 image in order to resize it and that takes time. If an image is going to be shown at 130x130, you should create the files in that size. 2. I know that with broadband connections nowadays, this won't be too much of an issue, but if you created all your thumbnails at the size that they are meant to be shown those thumbnails would come in at about 10K each and that would increase your site's load speeds... And you wouldn't have to resize them via CSS which in turn would make your CSS files smaller and that means faster loading sites. I see you're using fadeslideshow.js and slimbox2.js to handle showing full size images of the thumbnails. Changing the site to show thumbnails where thumbnails are needed and full size images when appropriate should be easy enough. That's it for now. Hope this helps Sebastian
There are many forms on checkout->create account. This can decrease the conversion percent of visitors in buyers.
Some of this has been stated before: The blue hover in the menu is quite bad. The contrast on hover just gets all whack, making it hard to read. This applies to the blue text on the individual sections as well. Another thing (though this is a speed/standards thing rather than a functional thing): Use divs and spans for the layout. It's tricky to get used to, but that's what they're there for, and consequentially browsers render them in a different fashion, often making your site navigatable quicker, especially on some older browsers. Tables are for tabular data only. The rounded-corner images aren't used consistently across pages. http://www.tiles-ceramic.co.uk/index.php?cPath=6 I'd probably make the favicon more descriptive than just a blank tile. Once you're done, make sure to minfy all the CSS, JS, and run the images through Smushit.
Thanks again guys! Duly noted. Undoubtedly some of these points will be coming into place Much appreciated.
CC has been handed over to our web dev now, I've started to roll out higher quality images, and the blue is being changed to a deep red. We're still experimenting with colours. Much help so far guys Keep it coming.
Images are currently getting some loving on the website, OK I have to crop/edit/shop them, but they're coming out so much better than getting a program to run them off for me! Done the first 9 Room Settings here, and some of the products inside have receieved new secondary pictures etc: http://www.tiles-ceramic.co.uk/index.php?cPath=1
better than my website lol <quick edit> better than the website i would of had if i had known that the server i bought sucked power like a...nevermind,it sucked power...but good job
