Opinion on new site please

[KarenBM]

After MONTHS of working on my site I have finally gone live. I would really appreciate your opinion, but please remember that I have yet to submit to search engines etc. I have also yet to get the payment provider sorted out, and I need to add descriptions to some of the products. BUT I'm almost there - at last!
URL: www.charmedcardsandcrafts.co.uk

I await your replies with fear and trepidation and thank you in advance.


Kind regards
Karen

[MDS]

I await your replies with fear and trepidation and thank you in advance.

Isn't that the truth

I like it a lot, good colour scheme, nice & easy to navigate, fast.

I did notice some of your product sections are all images left of description, some are staggered-maybe do them all the same for continuity.

Really nice site

[pinbrook]

My main comment is the font used, I have a partially sighted friend who would not be able to read the text on the site at all

[KarenBM]

Thank you

Thank you Mick and Jo for your comments.

It made me very happy to read that you liked my site Mick, when you have looked at it for months on end you wonder if people will find it as pleasing and easy to navigate as you do yourself I staggered the product section where image width differed, but I take your point about the inconsistency. I shall have a rethink.

Jo, your comment about partially sighted people finding Tempus Sans ITC difficult to read is a fair point, but this is the reason why I increased the default font size throughout the site. I am particularly fond of Tempus Sans ITC and think it goes well with the look and feel of the site. I didn't want anything too stark or modern.

Thanks again, I really appreciate it. And thanks to you all for the help you have given me through this forum, both contributors and Actinic's awesome support team - I simply couldn't have done it without you all.

Kind regards
Karen

[pinbrook]

Hi Karen

Whilst I agree that when designing a site alot of people create a site they like the look of. Using a font such as Tempus as a font is ok if you don't mind alienating a percentage of your potential shoppers.

There is always a trade off between design and functionality - and what you like and what works, do you remember the famous dotcom bust of a clothing store Boo.com, they created a wonderful site but no-one could use it as it was too slow. It had rotating displays of the items, great for product info, but no-one could get to the checkout. Do you ever watch "Property Ladder" on Channel4 - Sara Beeney goes on and on - don't get personal - renovate the house to the market and not to your taste.

Nowadays accessibility is the buzz word, therefore not wise to ignore.

Although you have increased the size of the font throughout the site, any visitor can do this by using View Menu - text size on the browser.

Hope this helps

[KarenBM]

Hi Jo

Through my computer studies I have learned the importance of a user friendly interface, and agree with everything you say. Perhaps I can include a feature that changes the font globally to, say, Verdena, at the click of a button. I shall have a little think.

Re Sarah Beeny - whilst Sarah is a lovely girl, and certainly has some great ideas, she and I very recently clashed over important design issues; but I guess that's another story altogether. Suffice to say I am not altogether convinced of the validity of her approach.

Kind regards
Karen

[pinbrook]

Perhaps I can include a feature that changes the font globally to, say, Verdena, at the click of a button. I shall have a little think.

if you could do this it would be excellent, I'd love to see how you do it. It could be a very neat feature.

I guess the easiest way is to give visitors a choice of CSS. does anyone know how this is done?

[Mike Hughes]

do a search for 'stylesheet switcher' in your favourite search engine and you should find plenty of ways to do this.

Mike

[delboy]

Hi Karen,

I think your site projects the sort of ambience that you feel when you walk into a well appointed card & gift shop. I take on board what Jo says but I think you would lose a lot by changing the style (especially the font). I think it adds value and separates your site out from the "me too" presentations of some others in a similar business. So as far as I'm concerned, love it!

You know that wooden stake I said you might have to drive through the country selection. The problem's back. I did a dummy purchase and got to the second checkout screen before the "select shipping destination" error message came up an I couldn't progress further. When curing this problem on my site I found that I could make the problem go away by doing a template edit but then something like 5 hours later, the problem would re-occur. Probably down to a session timeout on the server. I also found that by deleting the Actinic cookies on my PC I could fast track template editing and checking to eliminate the 5 hour wait before I was sure that the changes I'd made, worked.

Good luck with the site.

Delboy

[KarenBM]

Hi Derek

Thank you for your kind words. I used to own a card and gift shop and tried to replicate the look and feel, Tempus Sans lent itself perfectly for the purpose. I wanted a site that reflected my personality and the products I sell.

I just tried a dummy run on my site but couldn't replicate the problem, yet it obviously still exists. Difficult to sort out a problem that I cannot see, so not sure how to progress with that now. I shall fiddle about with the templates a little more. Thanks for that Derek

Kind regards
Karen