Advice appreciated on slowly evolving 1st website 1

[lucasm]

I'm working on developing a page for a friend of mine who is a craftsman, he is trying to start selling his silver jewelry online. The page is

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com

and my latest work in progress versions are at

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com/wip

basically I'm wondering: what have I done wrong so far?

I know the menu design needs work - I want to be able to have clearly readable labels on the menu buttons. I'm also wondering if it will look better without the buttons, and just a simple, understated css menu.

 

[trollacious]

The mouseover effects with the buttons are strange, sometimes the buttons disappear and don't come back for quite a while, and sometimes they do, and sometimes they switch to the lighter color of stone. The red text with the turquoise stone background doesn't show up very well. A lighter color and bold text would make it easier to read.

Lee

 

[CliveC]

Maybe this is a good time to validate before you repeat errors.

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com/wip/

Clive

http://tubularity.com

http://PalliativeCareConsulting.org

 

[lucasm]

trollacious: I've been trying to figure out why that is happening, and am starting to think I would be better off with a menu that doesn't use images, just a nice color

CliveC: I ran the page through the validator, and it seems to come up with these "anal retentive" issues about closing <br> and <img> tags - is it really necessary to close them?

 

[Baldwin238]

To be valid XHTML, yes. Breaks must be closed by <br /> and images <img src="url...." alt="" />

Jeff Baldwin
(New fan of designing stuff on the web)

http://golf.jbaldwin.net

http://jbaldwin.net/powell/index.html

<--- Not Completed Yet

 

[ChrisHunt]

it seems to come up with these "anal retentive" issues

If you're going to declare an XHTML doctype, you've got to abide by XHTML rules - including closing all elements. If you don't like it, just use an HTML doctype instead - the page will work just as well.

Design-wise it's hard to advise with so little to go on. Certainly red-on-turquoise doesn't give much contrast (and may be totally illegible to some colour-blind people) but the graphic button approach may work well with your content.

Personally I like to use plain CSS-styled text wherever possible, it looks clean and modern but involves a lot of square corners. If your friend's jewellry is all sinuous curves it'll be difficult to get the look right. I think the idea of making the on-screen widgets look like items of jewellry themselves is worth pursuing. If you do it, you'll need to learn how to make antialiased curves in your graphics program, as your current ones look really pixellated and ugly.

Also, you should put some padding around your page, rather than everything butt up against the edges. It makes the page look cramped even when there's nothing in it.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[lucasm]

Chris: thanks for the tips. I'd like to try to use those turquoise buttons, but I need to figure out why the mouseover effect isn't functioning correctly.

 

[CliveC]

Unfortunately images assumed to be in cache are often not. This is generally a problem with IE. Since you have no control over how a user's options are set, you cannot rely that images are actually in cache.

Clive

http://tubularity.com

http://PalliativeCareConsulting.org

 

[imstillatwork]

As a suggestion, I would say build your complete layout with with content for one page, then go back and add color / logos / images / etc.

 

[lucasm]

The problem is that we don't have the content ready yet, he is still working on making enough pieces for us to photograph and put on the site - collections of bracelets, pendants, etc. So I'm twiddling my thumbs working on the other stuff and trying to figure out how people will submit orders.

 

[imstillatwork]

I see. In that case, try making some of it up, at least as a 'place holder' for different sections. Even if the indroduction text is just 'xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx...etc' It gives you somethign to judge font sizes, location, etc with.

make up a fake 'contact' page, 'about us', 'categories', 'product detail', pages. later go back and replace your fake text with real text. I will make up Items that dont exist sometimes, just type something in!

Without having something taking up that empty space, it's really hard to design it. (for me at least.)

Are you going to use a merchant account or paypal or what?

 

[lucasm]

good idea, I'll get started on that soon.

he doesn't want to use paypal or anything, just personal checks and money orders to a PO box I guess. He was hoping to find a way for people not to find out his name & address, he has some security concerns, but I'm not sure how that can be done.

 

[imstillatwork]

not really possible. They need to know a business name or personal name (can easily get personal name from a business name)

besides, I wouldn't send money to anyone that I can identify as being a person / business / organisation somewhere.

If he's really got something good, try selling on ebay also, it can help get some traffic to the web site too. not a lot, but a few hits a day is great for a very new site.

 

[lucasm]

okay, I've made some progress, added real items to the page using a mysql database and php. Right now the item links just go to the jpg, but I am planning on making a view window that loads the corresponding picture when the user clicks an item (without opening a pop-up) - I think I'm going with some like

http://www.nigenet.org.uk/stuff/thumbtastic/

but instead of clicking thumbnails, they'll click the text description.

Also, on the front page I am having trouble getting those three
images which are currently centered in one column into two centered rows, rings and pendants in one row, with miscellaneous below them. Like this:

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com/images/layout.jpg

Any thoughts?

 

[lucasm]

don't go to

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com

- go to

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com/wip

 

[TruthInSatire]

I know the "fake content" post is old, i don't come into this forum often.

The fake content is a good idea. check out

http://www.lipsum.com/

it will generate false latan place holder text for you along with some history on lipsum. cool site, I use it a lot.

Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.

 

[imstillatwork]

thats a cools little site. I'll use that for sure.

 

[lucasm]

Okay, the main site

http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com

has gone public now, I've been seeing a bunch of search bot traffic, and I'm going to work more on getting more text onto the site (need to get some help from the guy who makes this stuff on that front). Does it matter that all the current text (item descriptions in the "Title" tag for each thumbnail) is generated on the fly? I would assume not, and assume the bots would see the same content as any regular viewer. I'm planning on redoing the ring and pendant photos and giving them the transparent background of the bracelets, stones and miscellaneous items. I know I have more work to do on cleaning up the code to make it valid xhtml, and I'd appreciate any suggestions on improving the look and usability of the site. Thanks.

 

[ChrisHunt]

That's a huge improvement on the last time I saw the site - well done! A coupla suggestions...

1) Give [tt]height[/tt] and [tt]width[/tt] attributes to your thumbnail images - at the moment the layout jumps around as each image is rendered. Alternatively, you could add this rule to your CSS (assuming all your thumbnails are the same size):

div.thumb img {height: 60px; width: 60px;}

2) When you want to give half and quarter sizes to rings, there are entity codes you can use to get the proper characters, rather than having to say 1/2, 1/4 etc:
[ul]
[li]&frac14; = [&frac14;][/li]
[li]&frac12; = [&frac12;][/li]
[li]&frac34; = [&frac34;][/li]
[/ul]
Use them like this:

title="Item #29: Walrus ivory in sterling ring, size 10½"

3) You need to give visitors some clue as to how to order this jewellery. A link from the item pages to some kind of ordering page is the bare minimum - you should probably be looking to move towards some kind of shopping cart sooner or later.

4) Do the stated prices include postage & packing? Do you ship anywhere in the world, or just the US? Heck, are those US dollars or Canadian or some other kind - it's a world wide web, remember!

5) Who/where/what is Walking Bear Crafts anyway? I think people will want to know a little more before they part with any money.

-- Chris Hunt
Webmaster & Tragedian
Extra Connections Ltd

 

[jazz88]

Another thing I noticed is the poor quality of the logo image, e.g., the "jaggy" outline. I realize that often clients give you their logo printed on a bussiness card and assume it's o.k. In my opinion it's something worth fixing. Also the quality of the thumbnail images could be improved by adding saturation and sharpening them properly. (P.S. potential customer input: I actually liked the jewelery but if I can't order it on-line then I would hardly e-mail someone to get.)