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.

 

[lucasm]

Chris: Thanks for the tips about the thumbnails and 1/2,1/4, etc. codes - I'll add those today. One of the challenges is that my client has always worked with people giving him checks or cash - and he's wary of trying paypal or online shopping cart payment techniques, he just wants to correspond with a customer through email and have them pay through check or money order. I'll have to talk with him some more about this.

Jazz: by logo image do you mean the bear? because the "walking bear crafts" text looks okay to me on firefox and IE. I will do some anti-aliasing on the bear because I do see the jagged edges there. And with the thumbnail images, are you seeing quality issues mainly with the ones that still have a texture background, or also with the stones, bracelets, and misc.?

 

[jazz88]

Yes, I mean the bear figure. And yes I refered to the thumblails on the brown textured background. Did you save them in sRGB color space ? (you should) you could also blurr a bit the textured brown background but not the rings of bracelets themselves. Just a suggestion.

 

[lucasm]

I'm actually going to get rid of the textured backgrounds (make them like the no-background images) and re-photograph those items. I'm not sure what color space they were saved in, I'll check on that.

 

[imstillatwork]

in firefox the rollover menu works fine, but it is slid over to the left, so is the product pages, while it seems most of the site is geared to be centered.

looks like it's really coming along though.

For searchability, I would insert the page title / category name right underneath the menu as an h1, then use css to make the h1 take look like whatever you want.

| MENU | *RINGS* | STONES |
< h1 >Rings < / h1>

rest of page


I would also finish it up with a footer of some sort, maybe something that matches the style of the menu.

Great start. With some good text content I think it has a chance to make some sales.

Keep checking back, I'm sure we can help with anything that comes up.

 

[lucasm]

Imstillatwork, I'm working on making an "Information" page which will have some pictures and text, and I think I'm going to add an "About Walking Bear Crafts" paragraph as a footer to the front page (I have the text ready for that, just trying to figure out how to present it)

My next major hurdles are: integrating Zen-Cart shopping cart code with the page, using a paypal payment process, and figuring out how to enable custom orders with that - since they hope to get most of their business from custom orders as opposed to inventory. In the Zen-Cart help file they seem to infer that https is needed, for secure shopping, but is it necessary when the customer is going to go through the paypal process? Isn't that using a secure paypal provided front end?
I'm concerned about this because my host (E-Rice.net) doesn't support https, so I might have to shop for another host before I start the shopping cart integration process.

Thanks again for all the tips, you guys have been really helpful.

 

[imstillatwork]

for paypal you don't need ssl (https) because you only send a limited amount of information to paypal, and their web site has the sll for the rest of the checkout. Zencart always a possibility.

I would suggest crystal tech as a host, they even support and provide zencart installations.

Whatever you decide to do, have fun!

 

[DaRNCaT]

You might want to consider simply using paypals shopping cart, it would save alot of hassle integrating zen cart, and I have found that the paypal shopping cart is actually easier to integrate than just sending the total to paypal and receiving the confirmation code back and dealing with it.

On another note, I found the graphics/ page VERY slow to load. Have you optimised the images? They really only need to be 80% jpgs for the photos not 100% quality, as the extra 20% makes no real noticable difference on a computer screen (it's only needed for printing)
Have a look here for a speed report which might help in sorting out the lag on load time

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.walkingbearcrafts.com/

(is the header PNG optimised for the web?)

I'm viewing the page with Firefox, and the menu is squashed to the left, which just seems wrong with all the rest of the page (main page) being centred, I'd consider centering everything just to make it look right, you could also put some cool background motifs down the far right and left hand side to give the site a more cohesive look (just watch file size, use a repeating low quality gif if possible) I'm thinking of something which is in keeping with the walking bear theme, and doesn't look tacky, (don't put it behind any of the text).

I really like the bear moving with the menu, it's very effective, and the site is certainly getting there, it's going to look great when you've finished!

----------------------------------------
Sometimes, when my code just won't behave, I take it outside and make it listen to britney spears music, and when it comes back it's really well behaved. I wonder if it's suffering from post tramatic stress syndrome now..

 

[lucasm]

re: using crystal tech, they look good, but I think that will have to be saved as a future option depending on how much business this site drums up.

I will look into using a paypal provided shopping cart as opposed to the zen-cart integration, which looks like it will be much more than what we need (I'll spend hours turning options off)

I just optimized the header graphic in photoshop, and I'll do the same with the png's I'm creating for each page as a background-image (text replacement) for each h1 (the ones suggested by imstillatwork)

I'm using a php temporary thumbnail generator page to create the 60x60 thumbs from the full sized image - I'll have to see if there is some way to bring their individual size down, I don't know if the php imagecreatetruecolor() method has any optimization options. edit - I think it does, apparently I just need to add the percentage (80,60, etc.) in the imagejpeg() part of the php page I'm using. So right now it must default to 100.

I'm working on making the front page centered, but something is blocking the menu from centering - I'm using the same css for the menu div as I use for the header div, but it stays stuck on the left. Clearly I still have a lot to learn about positioning. I may try to do a three column layout, with the header,menu, and main content in the center (which needs to be wide enough for a horizontal menu which will grow wider - adding an about page and earrings page at least), and a subtle tiled background on both sides of the content.

 

[spewn]

one way for your friend to have an anonymous business is to incorporate himself in the state of Nevada...they do not and will not disclose the members/officers (founding or not) in a corporation, plus they offer great tax benefits.

secondly, if your hosting company is not willing to work with you, then you shouldn't be willing to work with them.

tell them to kick rocks.

- g

 

[lucasm]

I'll bring that up with him about Nevada, thanks.

I don't have any complaints with the hosting company, they explicitly state that they aren't ideal for e-commerce sites, but their very low price was right for the beginning of this venture, and it may work out just fine as long as paypal remains the payment process.