Site redesign

[GiganticDays]

Just completed an exhausting week redesigning the site layout and would really appreciate some critcisms.
Also would like to thank those whose posts on various threads has helped me get to this point particularly Norman, Jonty, Jo, Bill Campbell and Duncan. Apologies if I missed anyone

[jont]

Hi Graeme,

as in the market for a new DSLR headed straight to the camera section ... scrolled, scrolled, scrolled and scrolled ...... most users are known to give up after 3 page folds so may be worth considering breaking the section down into say compacts, bridge, dslr, memory to make it a little more managable.

I like the 5 across products per view - nicely implememented with the pseudo shadow effect.

On a 19" monitor set to a high resolution desktop the horizontal scroll kicked in after reducing the window size on a small amount - have you checked your stats to see what size users are browsing at?

The colours for the header tables in the cart are still green - maybe worth changing to suit the orange design.

Left hand navigation could do with being alphabeticised to make for a quicker location of the products.

On the whole it looks good, works well and inspires confidence in placing an order. Well done

[jont]

EOS 30D et al for body only ... may be worth covering your back stating the lens as pictured is not included (or lifting the body only image from the manufacturers)

[Duncan Rounding]

I agree - looking good Graeme. Although I also found it hard to find my way around the products and certainly wouldn't get anywhere near the bottom of the list on some pages. I would recommend you find a way of splitting some of the large sections - perhaps by price?

[GiganticDays]

Thanks chaps. I agree I need to do something about the size of some of the sections, they are unwieldy to say the least.
The site was designed on a system using a 17" TFT set at 1280x1024 which is used by around 60% of visitors. A further 18% use 1600x1200 which none of our office machines are capable of but should be OK.
What would it take to make it more accessible to the remaining 22% who are split between 1024x768 and 1152x864?
the Canon EOS BODY issue will be addressed in the next update.
Appreciate the input.
Any more comments are welcome.

[jont]

What would it take to make it more accessible to the remaining 22% who are split between 1024x768 and 1152x864

Have you tried dropping the products down to 4 per row?

[GiganticDays]

It was originally set at 3 per row but that made the larger sections impossibly long. I suppose if I address the section size problem then it might be the way to go. Perhaps if I split the sections into brands - of course that's an extra click to get to the purchase opportunity

[pinbrook]

I would work on improving the search facility.so people can search on manufacturer and features and price.

I get very irritated by sites that list by brand, if I'm looking for a camera for example my guideline is often price bracket, therefore to me it is more useful to have all the cameras between £300-£400 on one page regardless of brand, for comparison purposes, that all the cameras by fuji from £100-£600.

At the end of the day I'll be comparing a Fuji to a Canon to an Olympus, guided by price and features

[GiganticDays]

Thanks Jo.
The search facility already includes search by price range and/or section. To be honest I don't know how to change that in Actinic to add the search by brand option. I'll have athink about how I want to split up the larger sections. It's all food for thought but it's getting late and I'm starving.