Guest EliteReef Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Well, HERE is our online store. Still a big work in progress as far as customizing goes, so please fire away with the constructive criticism Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest vrakas Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Not many changes to be honest Changed the background, the header photo and removed a few others, thats about it Suggestion, try in the .org forum where you can find Free and Commercial skins ready to be used but also a good way to see some ideas :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jerseyjoe Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Well, HERE is our online store. Still a big work in progress as far as customizing goes, so please fire away with the constructive criticism MattHope you are not offended by sincere but uncoated critique. The banner graphic (poorly trimmed and not very attractive to start with, by the way) is more than 65k, roughly 150% of good practice for an entire home page. The graphic in the center of the home page is almost 133K, more than 3 times the suggest upper limit for a fast downloading home page. A few of the product images I checked are in the 25k and up range. Yet not one of them needs to be over 10k - and probably could be much less without loss. A run through Photoshop's "Save for the web" at 60% or some similar tool would do wonders for download speed. If you don't already know it, what matters is not what you think is the download speed - because after the first visit to a page, the page is not being downloaded but delivered from your computer's cache. What matters is the speed of the download for a first-time visitor. That's why many first time visits are aborted due to impatience. A long-accepted standard is, a home page should not exceed a total of 40k. Question - what purpose does the drop down box for currency serve, given that the box directly above it says the same thing - and you accept only one currency anyway? Viewed at 600 by 800 (you'd be surprised how many of us there are out here - and we spend money, too) the login is invisible. The area to the right of the right hand column is totally empty and therefore wasted. Hope this helps. Regards, Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EliteReef Posted July 28, 2006 Share Posted July 28, 2006 Thanks, that kind of critisism is exactly what I'm after. Will do some more tweaking with the sideboxes, clean up the images, and remove/rearrange sideboxes, and post an update Thanks. :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valencia Posted July 29, 2006 Share Posted July 29, 2006 Interesting colour , but your white information boxes might not be blending in well with the site colour. Additionally, align your latest products by putting them in individual boxes or change dimensions of the images. Your text for current special on the homepage is also kind of hard to read as it is too near in colour to the main colour of the site. Good luck as you update :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EliteReef Posted July 30, 2006 Share Posted July 30, 2006 OK did some more tweaking with Hover functions, resized the images, removed a few side boxes, and altered the remaining ones. So please let me know if I'm making progress with the design THANKS! (don't forget to refresh) Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roban Posted July 30, 2006 Share Posted July 30, 2006 Not that aesthetics have much to do with SEO, but they do have something to do with customer loyalty. I personally find the orange and blue theme hard to look at, however if you're married to it at least let's make the blue's match. Your box headers and nav bar colors are not complimentary. I might toy with the idea of losing the nav bar and button graphics altogether and just go with text for navigation. That big blue Killer skin nav bar is too much focus to steal from your primary purpose...selling fish stuff! The same goes for those big graphics in the center. They do nothing and go nowhere. What they do is distract us from looking at what you're selling and since we have about 5 seconds to grab a vistor's interest...well, you get the point. Also your box text is too light and fades into the orange background. Why all orange? Give the middle column a different color to draw focus. White would be nice! Welcome to EliteReef.com? We know where we are so don't waste that very valuable piece of real estate to tell us. Put your most important statement there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest vrakas Posted August 3, 2006 Share Posted August 3, 2006 Sorry but the orange background really makes my eyes run Did you try my suggestion for the .org forum? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EliteReef Posted August 3, 2006 Share Posted August 3, 2006 Ok, so I think you were right about the orange. So I took care of that. I did check out the .org forum, and there were some noce skins, but none that really fit me. But I've tweaked the layout of the sideboxes, cat menu, etc. and I think I'm happy with the overall layout now. Still not set on the color yet, so that may change. As always, thanks for the input, as it is always welcome P.S.- I've also got my print guy working on a new logo for the top header.. Matt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.