Hmm, Site Review

[Faulkds]

Hi,

I noticed that a previous member requested people to make comments about there website.... The advise that came from this looked very helpful...

I have just finished creating a motorcycles parts site and would appreciate your comments also. The website is

www.4-motorcycles.co.uk (http://www.4-motorcycles.co.uk)

Thanks for you time... and please dont be too cruel with your comments
;)

[jxm28788]

nice logo! :cool:

just wondering why the subsection 'helmet fun' has a subsection of the same name? and that subsection list products but no pictures - is the site still in progress?

I'm not sure the 'select a section' is much help, as a 1st time visitor I have no idea (other than a vague recollection of seeing a list of 2 sections on the home page) what is in 'section 1' and what is in 'section 2'. btw - why 2 sections? was that a design decision or a workaround to an actinic limitation?

I think the catalog goes down too deep. If I want 10" motocross tyres for example, I have to click section one, then tyres, then motocross, then 10". Maybe you could cut one level out by having details of all the sizes at the motocross level?

personally I think it would look better if the dark blue bits had borders to separate them from the stripey background - but I'm no expert on site design - did you see my 1st attempt...? :D

oh, and not sure about the button text - all the t's look like L's to me...

sorry the comments are mostly negative, but hopefully constructive and will lead to some discussion from those with more experience...

[jxm28788]

oh, and when you're in the sections (eg. accessories) and there are tabs along the top to help you go back (eg. online catalogue, section1), then the text on the ones with white backgrounds also goes white when you go to select it with the mouse - making the text invisible...:)

[Faulkds]

DONT HOLD BACK!!!! :)


The reason for the two sections is because of the time it takes to download all the product images. Resized them etc for the web but ok for me as I have broadband but not for 56k Dial up users.

I want to keep the high quality images...

There is approx 1500 items on the site and the only way to get the product images on the site is by cutting and pasting and scanning in catalogs... I will get there.... hopefully.

The site is up and taking orders, I dont have a lot of time to play with the design but will be making a new one soon. Trying to get the feel of how actinic works etc is quite time consuming... The templates that come with the product are very basic but workable.....

Its all a matter of time and ideas...

PS appreciate you comments and have taken them on board... You have some good ideas and it would seem my formular of the site is ok but just needs tweaking.... PS the logos are spot on....


Think i took on a little too much when building such a large site...

[jxm28788]

yes, it was a bit slow for me to load and I have adsl. It's quicker this time so I guess the images have been cached...

Maybe you could have more sections but with logical groupings (spares & fittings, tools, clothes & accessories etc) and have those on the home page - you could then breakdown the main sections further - like clothes & accessories into clothes, luggage, accessories, helmets, mirrors etc

Also try to get some of those snazzy pictures on the home page, the table looks...well...a bit lame, compared to the rest of the site and let's face it, that's what the customer will see first. If they don't like the first page they'll be off before they get to see you better graphics of the sub pages.

be careful of copyright issues when scanning the images...

I have the same problem when setting up my site, as my site design and actinic knowledge was zero. I also got my first attempt up and running, but am now redesigning it to look better...

How long has it been up, and are you getting many visitors/orders?

[Faulkds]

Its only been up for 2 weeks. I had loads of probelms with getting a world pay account. Im getting an average of 180hits a day and its not even advertised... I had no knowledge of actinic before so this was my first attempt. I think your right about the main index page. Im still have probelms with the mailing system. Actinic say that the email system is really robust but I see alot of people with mail issues...

Before I really start to push the site i have to sort out the functionality of it.... However, now I have the bulk of it done cleaning up the design wont be too much of a problem.

I have another two on the go at the moment. My motorcross site is going to be even bigger....

The images I have used are from my supplier so should be ok for copyright.

[Faulkds]

I think the best approach to the design is keep it simple, clean and consistant. Professional images and a colour scheme that works... I feel I have that... The background with the lines is incorrect, the site was refreshed and this was the background from the orginal template. Looking at the background makes your eyes go all funny. However, I was hoping it would hypnotize people into clicking on the add item to cart.... Alas, it doesnt work :cool:

[jxm28788]

wow, how do you 180 hits (wait, do you mean 'hits' or 'visitors'?) per day without advertising? It takes 4-6 weeks to get into search engine listings from what I can tell - did you start submitting early in anticipation...?

I've got the adverts running now to pull people in until my site starts to appear in the search listings...

and your background had no effect - see I'm wearing my hypno-resistent glasses...:cool:

[Faulkds]

The site has been up for about 6 months but in test mode... The search engine robts have seemed to pull out all my product codes. When somebody types in a product code my site is listed...

Thats what ive been told.... 180 hits meaning that 180 people have viewed the site..... it must be the site is using its hypnotic skills to pull the vistors in....

:D

Will advertise thought Motorcycle news once i feel I could cope with the demand. Thinking of listing a few products on EBAY and then a website link from there. Wont get away with it too long, have to becareful with ebay....

My friend works in a ISP which helps a lot....

[Faulkds]

Hmm, will have to check what 180 hits means.... I thought it ment visitors but could be wrong... Get on average about 3 - 4 orders a day.... Can cope with that but thats not the overal goal.

Going to look more into the stats side.... But the email problem is really starting to get to me.... This is my number one priority at the moment..... Oh yes, and plus the comments you have made...

Thanks:)

[jxm28788]

I downloaded a demo program called 'absolute log analyser'. It isn't great but it has a few useful statistics - such as how long people stayed at your site, which page they left your site from, number of *unique* visitors, etc

[garyhay]

darren, who is your ISP.. If you can tell us we may be able to help with the e-mail

[Faulkds]

The lad who is doing this with me works for the ISP who hosts it.
When a mail is generated sent from the site to say we have a new order all the logs show the mail is being sent to the aliases listed and it is being recieved. Its when the actualy Order itself is sent that it is not recieved. The logs on the smtp server show that NO mail is actually being sent from the site so it would appear actinic isn't generating the second mail.

Does worldpay need to do anythign before the full order is sent?

[Faulkds]

We have just run through some tests and created a whole new test site mirroring the other except we have taken worldpay out of the equation and are processing the ordering on our own site. Doing this both the mails are being produced and sent fine. It when we put world pay back on that only the first email is being recieved and the second with the full order isn't :-(

Definately seems to be an integration thng between to the two, maybe some settings wrong somewhere.

[pinbrook]

INDEX page

you should re name the sections product1 and product2 is pretty meaningless

either theme the sections or put them in alphabetical order.

I personally would hyperlink every section aswell.

catalog

The logo table is a different width to the body table,
your hover colour is white thus it dissapears on a white background

Other than that is not bad.

My major comment is the navigation its not that inuitive

[Jan]

I agree with Jo that you should be able to click anywhere in the list of products on the front page.

On your main section page I would use two columns for the section list (this is set in design options on the sections tab), if you could work out how to display the text below the images as well that would look really good.

You could add a nortree as well to improve the navigation(http://www.rouxel.cwc.net/actinicstuff.html, scroll down the page a bit)

The black text (which I think is for sections already viewed) it hard to read.

I like the little tabs at the top of the page that appear when you are in a subsection, if that standard Actinic or did you do that yourself?

Regards,

[jmedinger]

There does seemt o be one glaring error!!!

The items listed on the home page under each section are in the wrong place - currently, the first section under 'Section 2' is Batteries and so on- shown on the home page as under Section 1 - it was confusing for me!

Cheers

Jos

[jmedinger]

Incidentally, I designed a site for a customer recently which seems to be in the same field as you...

http://www.fastbikebits.com

If there are any organisational tips that you can take from that for product layout, then I'm sure my client wouldn't mind!!

Cheers

Jos

[pinbrook]

fastbikebits.......you need to tone down the background - just make it a bit lighter, it is fighting with the text to be seen

[Faulkds]

Thanks for the advise....

I am currently rebuilding the site with more images, better product descriptions and maybe a better index page...

As you say its not bad but could be improved....

How much would you charge to host my site?

[Faulkds]

Hi jan,

The hover colours were ok... Since having a problem with the mail system we had to refresh the design.... Guess what, the hover links have changed and we did not export the theme.

At the moment im redesigning the whole thing. I think your idea of two columns etc is a brill idea.... The only thing that isnt standard actinic is the main index page, logos etc....