Any opinions on my site?

[compendia]

Hi,

I'd really appreciate any opinions you have on my site, www.compendia.co.uk
especially the shopping element at
www.compendia.co.uk/acatalog/shop.html

I'm aware that it's not perfect and am about to embark on a good proofread, but would still love all opinions.

I've reached that stage where you're not sure whether you're adding value to your site, or just walking round in circles.
Many thanks,
Megan

[MDS]

Your right about the heat, I replied to your other thread

[pinbrook]

Ok - for me the site is too yellow, I must admit I much prefer white backgrounds.

The quality of the product images is not up to stratch they look as it they were taken indoors with inadequate lighting. The drop shadow does improve them abit.

Traditional Travel chess seems to use a different product layout as its image is on the right.

You could give some thought to standardising the image widths - I did a search on "chess" the resulting list of results was abit untidy

I couldn't make out what the Individual postage drop down was for in the search options

You should also look at the font sizing - in Firefox your product descriptions use 2 different sizes xsmall and xxsmall for example are rendered differently in different browsers

Maybe use Norman's collasping menu system to reduce the length of the left hand menu systems

spelling mistake on the catalog index page

Games for older people
Games we've solld for playing in clubs and care homes. 2 ll in sold

All of the above aside the site will work, it is quite clearly laid out, all the things i have pointed out are merely design issues and not functionality

[compendia]

Thank you, good to have some things to work on.

[KarenBM]

Hi Megan

I found your site intuitive and user friendly. Unlike Jo I like the fact that you are not using a white background, makes it stand out from the rest. I am not sure if the colour you chose works that well, I prefer a background image which has a more subtle effect.

I would stagger product on pages where image width differ, alternating between image on right and left. The difference is sizes is not that obvious then.

You could use thumbnails for search results, as I agree with Jo the existing result is a tad messy. I also agree that the images need to be brighter.

Overall verdict is a user friendly and intuitive site, I also like the fact that you have an email link against each product, must have taken you ages to implement! Well done!

Kind regards
Karen

[jont]

Have to agree with Jo regarding the background colour although it does suit your theme - may be worth using a white back ground in the table cells on the home page to block out the product sections to the left hand side.

The mouseover links are emboldening the existing link which is causing some of the layout to move around on a mouseover - this is a little distracting. May be better to either embolden the link text or remove the emboldening in the mouseover as you also have the change of colour.

The links in the welcom section open in the same window but the links in the right hand navigation open a new window - may be worth changing these to open in the same window and not have a new one opening.

Most of the product images look a little on the brown side - are you using standard interior bulbs to take the pics? That would account for the slightly brown hue. If you have photoshop it may be worth trying to dupliacte the image layer and set the merge to "screen" to try and lighten things up a little.

I like the drop shadows as they lift the images off the page - try and keep the settings the same though - some are quite solid bottom right and some are softer and extend to the top of the image and with variations in between.

These are just small things that don't affect the overall site which is very good - it was easy to get about and everything seemed to work. Your page rankings in Google are excellent - very well done.