Quick site check please

[Infolink]

Hi,
Got a new site up - maybe a few people would take a look and care to comment ;-)

There are a few more pics to go on there yet.

This is not a "smutty" site, not in any way - its aromatherapy, candles and incense type stuff, albeit aimed at the gay marketplace. Actually very nice products.

** It would be great if I didn't get too many comments about the name of the site though.........!!

http://www.campoldqueen.com

** first person who asks;
1.) If that picture on the front page is me
2.) If I'm is gay - I'm not, just designed it thats all!

Gets mass-mailbombed!

Phil

[Jan]

Phil,

What a nice site - the theme looks nice in those colours. Here are a few comments.

1) When you go to a section you get a sort of flashing effect as the brown background is covered over with the lighter colour.

2) This is probably a font thing that you can do nothing about but I don't like the spacing on the 'Can't decide' section. I find the gap between the n and t a bit large.

3) You should consider adding something that you let the customer click on either the picture or the writing to get through to the shop, the little products box is a bit difficult to stop in the midst of all that campness.

Otherwise it look very nice (although I think that the enourmous red logo advertising your site at the bottom of the pages looks a bit ot of place - can't you do something more sepia like with it)

Regards,

[NormanRouxel]

On my laptop the main logo "sitelogo.jpg" the image of the text has rather obvious compression artefacts. Same for "pppp.jpg" on the left of most pages.

It's not too clear about VAT. I woulod guess you're not VAT registered as no VAT details are appearing on the checkout pages. However the Info page says that VAT is included.

It might be worth pointing out at the top of every page that the price you see is what you pay.

In the checkout the text "Note that sensitive information like credit card details is not saved." The "is" should be "are" as details are plural (I think).

Otherwise no problems found in a brief tour.

Norman

[Infolink]

Jan,
Good point about making the sitelogo bit on the front clickable, hadn't thought about doing that!

I know what you mean about the background doing that quick flash, need to sort that one I guess!

Customer is happy with the Infolink logo, hehe!

Norman,
The compression stuff was actually deliberate - though saying that I've not looked at it on a laptop.
All the stuff they send is wrapped in brown paper, we were trying to symbolise a slightly crunchy paper effect there, at one point I was trying to make the background do it as well but that was just too awful!
You are correct in that the customer is non vat, I'll run past him the idea of "what you see is what you pay" on the pages.

Thanks for taking the time to look - personally I think the colour scheme really works well for the site, just recently I've gone all pastel - customers seem to like it more than clinical, though that depends on the site.

Must say V6 is nicer to work in than V3!

Phil

[kathynewman]

Phil

Love the photo <VBG!>

On the home page I was expecting the text under the Home Of bit - eg Diquiri Park Wine Club etc. to be links.

Found the very fancy scroll text a bit much on the Botanicals page (the bit above the sub sections - which starts: A wonderful selection of boxed)

Kathy

[Infolink]

Hi Kathy,

I'm way cuter than that!

The font was customer driven, it does work well but not the easiest one to scale below about 30pt without the twiddley bits breaking up.

I must say PhotoImpact is still my fave for doing those text gifs

Phil

[printerbase]

Phil,

If you go to the wine club section the wines not sold in cases have no prices and when I add them to my basket the only cost I get is carriage. Free Champagne !!!!!!!!!!

Or have you just missed the qty drop down off.

Also the swirly font, on some pages like the 'Could it be magic' where there is lots of it, I found it very hard to read and had to concentrate quite hard.

Peter

www.PrinterBase.co.uk

[NormanRouxel]

Phil,

Minor niggle time now. Re the colour scheme. It might look even better if you adjusted the browsers border and scrollbar colours to match. The sand against standard XP blue looks a bit jarring.

Norman

[Infolink]

Yep know about the Champers not being priced - there are a few bits that need finishing off.
Don't think the customer realised just how much work he would have to do in getting data together! :-)

The browser bar is in my finishing off list now- thanks for that Norman!

Phil

[Graham]

Phil,

I thought I'd cast my non-technical eye ever the site.. Interesting design I must say, I was a little confused at first with the content and was worried my company's firewall might bounce the URL with a name like that!!

I agree that your logo at the bottom does stand out a bit - however, I guess that's the intention.
You're right though, the colours do work well with the site and it's a brave choice..

All the best with it.
Graham
http://www.fragrant-home.co.uk

PS.. That picture does you no justice at all I'm sure
;)

[Infolink]

Hi Graham,

You can access the site as daquiri-park.com as well - actually I had mentioned that to the customer that it could be an issue for some people!

I took a look around your site seeing as it was a similar set of products - I've got the candles in tins to put on COQ shortly, though they are going with slightly different fragrances.

There are some really nice items that will be on the site soon that they are still sorting out info on!

Regards

Phil

[Graham]

It's good to look around sites that sell similar products, especial those done using Actinic....
I'm not sure how well the candles will do, we only opened this week. But I like 'em anyway..:p

Graham

[Infolink]

Graham,
It will take a while for you to get established and decent search engine rankings - a good few months.

Don't get disheartened when a hundred orders dont start from day one - my site diygear.com stated off as just a demo site, really to show people what I can do for them - without any advertising whatsoever and a bit of search engine optimisation here and there it is now doing a good few thousand a month turnover - to the point where I'm starting to wonder just what it would do if i put some effort into it!

My main thing I tell customers - get it GOOD on Google and the rest will follow!

Phil

[Charlesn]

Most of the logos seem to be really badly jpegged, loads of noise around them. I would probably use gifs to keep the file size down and just use selective colours. I'd think about about making the text darker too, I've looked at this on both my Mac and PC and its not great on either. The Mac is using a huge 24 inch screen running at 1280 x 1152 and the PC has a 17" flat panel. The flat panel struggles a little with the lack of contrast, and the big screen really shows up the compression.

Otherwise, nice site, quite like the whole camp nostalgia thing going on (I'm not gay or owt!)

Cheers
Charles