Any opinions please

[paul in london]

Any comments (or criticisms!) on the general look, feel and user-friendliness of my site would be very much appreciated.

Thanks
Paul White

www.flooringsales.co.uk

[Mike Hughes]

Yup, get's my monthly award for slowest loading page with the largest GIF I've seen for a while (70K Bytes on a single GIF alone). Make it a table with top and bottom images and some text. It'll be a whole lot smaller and faster.

at 139K Bytes for evrything (including 40K bytes for your javascript menus) I can only assume that you don't want to sell to people who have modems.

Mike

[paul in london]

Thanks Mike
I hadnt realised how big that GIF was, Ill do as you say regarding the table idea.
I quite like the menu but I dont suppose there is any way I can reduce the file size of this?
Any other comments welcome!

Thanks
Paul

[anf1y]

Agree with the slow load.
1. Liked the colours but found the nav-bar roll-over brown to black didn't show up too well. Perhaps brown to the khaki on the sides?
2. Competitors should have an apostophe somewhere - probably competitors' as there are more than one?
3. Being female I went to special offers. What's so special? Is it cheap? If so, how much am I saving?
4. I don't personally like the menus that come out sideways and cover the text underneath. I know they are clever, and looked at using them myself. So well done for doing the coding, but I find them irritating!

Will stop before I have to email you a hanky!!!

[Woodhouse]

I actually like the site.

I have 1 MB broadband, so the site loaded quickly.

I like the colours, I think they have the connotations of wood. I have no problems with the black text.

With regards to this site, I found it easy to navigate, the colours were user friendly, and the products were laid out in an organised fashion.

I think the product images are really good and clear, and the more info function images are great!

In my opinion, I think it's well laid out and concise.

Only one thing to add, to get you some nice rankings, under your welcome message try and use the term wood flooring more/and words that someone searching for wood flooring would use, and possibly some brand names, it will help your rankings.

I don't think you need a hanky at all.

Good Luck with it all, if I have any friends/family needing flooring I'll pass your website details on

[MDS]

Really nice site-fast(1mb), clean & good colours for the products you are selling.

Menus and colours are fine for me.

[SusanF]

A lovely site, Paul. For me, it has professionalism written all over it. I'm not usually too keen on the fly out menus, but it works well on your site. It's good to see lots of information for each product and the site navigation is easy to use.

I do have one big criticism though. At first I thought you had no information at all on privacy, security, delivery etc - I did finally find the Terms and Conditions page, which although nicely laid out, is far too well hidden within the site. You may lose customers who cannot find this info, and as far as I can see, you can't actually reach it until already within the Checkout function. A link from both brochure and shop pages would make a difference.

Good luck with the site,

Susan.

[george]

I do have one big criticism though. At first I thought you had no information at all on privacy, security, delivery etc - I did finally find the Terms and Conditions page, which although nicely laid out, is far too well hidden within the site. You may lose customers who cannot find this info, and as far as I can see, you can't actually reach it until already within the Checkout function. A link from both brochure and shop pages would make a difference.

Good luck with the site,

Susan.

Thanks to sound advice from Susan F we have added a FAQ page to our brochure pages. Easy to alter at any time using fragments. Top Tip for today!

[compendia]

I like the thumbnails at the top with the actual rooms, a 'brochure' section with the different woods in situ, showing what kind of decor they would go with might make it easier for people who aren't sure which wood or finish they want.

[jpungar]

In general I like this site. nice use of colours and white mix.

one area you could focus on is building trust with your customers. I have read and run quite a few trust studies and found that having pictures in certain areas can really help. On your site you could have a picture of your wearhouse with people working in it could help show that you are more than just an internet site but a linked to the real world. Also by having logos of other already trusted organizations such as visa, mastercard or other payment companies will help add to user trust and thus encourage them to buy from you. hope this helps.

[jont]

Site showed OK on a shared 512k broadband over a network. Very clean and professional layout which conveys you know what you are doing in your specialist area.

Two very minor points would be the use of "our ref" - surely this is the only reference needed and I did not see any other reference numbers so it may be best to lose the "our". The "more info" icon looked like 2 seperate buttons to me and I tried clicking the left hand one with the flooring patterns and also the "more info" button and received the same info each time - may be worth merging them together so they appear to be the same button.

Other than that it may be worth obfuscating the email address on the "contact us" page to prevent spammers harvesting your email address and may be an idea to load the location map in a new browser window so your site stays open beneath.

[pinbrook]

The left hand menu needs to be addressed as it covers the product info for the first product on each page

Also a different act_primary should be declared for the checkout pages to get rid of the menu which again is obscuring the chechout process

** these are errors in firefox only

[paul in london]

Thank you very much for everyones input. I am making some changes based upon the feedback.

Mike - thanks for the table instead of GIF idea, Ive changed this
Anf1y - Ill make the special offer seem more special!
Woodhouse - Glad you liked the site, Ill add some more text as suggested. If you need flooring give me a call for a special price!
MDS - Thanks for your post
Susan - Glad you thought that the site looked professional - this is my primary aim, thanks for the advice on privacy etc which I am attending to now.
Compendia - I am considering a 'brochure section' - just getting some decent pics sorted.
Jpungar - Thanks for your ideas, these will be used soon.
Jont - Thanks for the post, I will be dropping the "our" today!
Pinbrook - Hi Jo, thanks for your post, how can I achieve this?


Thanks
Paul

[pinbrook]

Which menu system do people prefer -



the old one?


or the new one?

any other comments on the rejig?

[george]

If my opinions worth anything, I prefer the second menu system. And the additional white space with the smaller fonts seems to give a more professional appearance to the 'site.

Improvement. :tick: