site comments please

[super cat]

could you take a look at my site and tell me what you think please. it's taken 2 months so far.
any possible changes e.t.c


also the view/source wordpad......., why is the keywords, meta name e.t.c horizontal instead of vertical?

thanks.

[Duncan Rounding]

I'm still a newby to Actinic but here's what I noticed when I had a quick look using IE6...

You might want to consider changing your checkout and cart pages to be in the same styling (logo etc) as your product pages - but you may not be finished with those yet.
Also your cart totals and items on the pages is not visible (looks like same colour text as backgorund maybe).
Otherwise clean and tidy.
I think the html formatting that see different in wordpad is just the white space removed. Also be careful using wordpad - it's ok to view with but not to edit - use notepad rather.

Duncan

[calmncomfy]

Had a quick look. Seems very professional to me, I like the clickthroughs from pictures. Pictures are good and clear. Product descriptions are concise without being too brief.

I felt the home page could be improved by being a bit shorter, perhaps some of the home page info on certain product groups e.g. colour & size choice (I would expect that anyway) could be given at the top of the product pages with an introduction fragment.

An eye catching home page banner for special offers to take customers to that page from the home page, where they can get the details could save some space on the home page.

If you are very confident your quoted prices on the home page are cheaper than all of your major rivals they are a good idea for the home page, but if not, it may deter potential customers.

Hope this helps

[super cat]

thanks for those consructive comments..., i agree with them and have taken notes.
i'm still getting used to actinic and i'm on this site almost daily getting tips e.t.c.

thanks again. and feel free for anymore comments.

[gary in jersey]

looks great...!

everything looks very pro..
you may want to turn your best sellers into links


Issue: How do I create a link straight to a product in the store?
Solution: It is possible to take people straight to a specific product with a hyperlink of the following form:
<a href="http://www.myserver.com/cgi-bin/ss00000x.pl?PRODREF=12345&ACTINIC_REFERRER=http://www.myserver.com/acatalog/&NOLOGIN=1">Click here</a>
Where:
· http://www.myserver.com/cgi-bin is the URL of your CGI-BIN
· ss00000x.pl is the name of your search script with the 'x' replaced with your CGI ID number
· 12345 is the product reference of your desired product.
· http://www.myserver.com/acatalog/ is the URL of your store directory.

Notes:
ACTINIC_REFERRER is used to tell the scripts where all the images etc. can be found
NOLOGIN is used to bypass the login page (if you have customer accounts). This is optional.

You can use this functionality to create a small form in the page where people can search for their desired product by entering the reference number into a text field. The HTML for this would have the following form:

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://www.myserver.com/cgi-bin/ss00000x.pl">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="ACTINIC_REFERRER" VALUE="http://www.myserver.com/acatalog/">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="NOLOGIN" VALUE="1">
<P>Product Reference:
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="PRODREF" SIZE="20">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" VALUE="Lookup">
</P>
</FORM>

Please note that if you are putting this form within the main body of the page, you would need to enter </FORM> above the code and:
<FORM METHOD=NETQUOTEVAR:CGIMETHOD ACTION="NETQUOTEVAR:CGIURL">
<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="SHOP" VALUE="NETQUOTEVAR:SHOP">
after it in order to not disrupt the main form that controls adding products to the shopping cart.

[super cat]

Gary,
thanks for that..., very good idea.
looks a bit complicated for me but i'll give it a go next week when i have a few hours to spare
unless there is an easier way

[super cat]

Cracked it!!!.........., re: links direct to products

i'm trying to add my logo to the paypal checkout pages....., any ideas how to do this?

Also, i'm using Dreamweaver..., does anyone know why my links are a dull grey colour??

thanks.

[calmncomfy]

You can select the hypertext to be whatever colour you like. Go to
Design|Colors

then on Link, visited link & active link, you can either choose from the preselected drop downs or type in a hex code colour. for the hex codes, just surf the net and find a site something like http://homepages.uel.ac.uk/1698n/colours_hex.html
Theres loads of them!

good luck