Feedback please

[julieh]

Hi, new user to actinic, but have managed to get a site up there!! Please would you have a look and let me know what you think. Any suggestions very gratefully received.

Thanks in advance.

site: www.sportsmedonline.co.uk

[acompton]

Hi Julie, Welcome to the forum.

You've put together a nice looking site. I always like the 'clean' look. This just my observations. Apologies if this looks a little savage after all your hard work. Its mostly things that have been reported in this forum before and are known to help with sales.

Visual things:
The athletic figures in the logo are good, but the name doesn't look right (and could be bigger?
In the menu, the longer product descriptions result in a menu box that is wider than the graphic at the top of the menu box so it gets repeated.
Paypal and Matador items at the bottom are not centered in the main area.
Text and graphics not centred in the boxes - looks a little odd.
Images in the section lists are being compressed (widthways), presumably by the browser. Most evident on the Cold Therapy page.

Things that often get pointed out:
No assurance of credit card security on the Home page (PayPal).
Money-back guarantee (should be hypenated) - is this your offer or are you complying with a standard?
No About Us or Contact Us on the Home page - they should be easily available
Your logo should have a link to Home - its a common convention that people expect.
The Google ads take you off-site - this is considered an unwise practice.
I found this spelling in the T's & C's:
Although Royal Mail aim fo rnext working day delivery, they cannot guanrantee this so please allow up to 5 working days

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk
Great board games and cards games you won't find in the High Street

[jxm28788]

I agree that the contact/about us should be on the home page. and I would put all your contact details on the contact us page, as they are currently hidden in the T&C's.

As a user I would be miffed to have to search for 'contact us', and then would think you were hiding something because there is no address/phone/email on that page, just a form.

You do have 'free delivery this month', but no explanation in the T&C or elsewhere of what it would normally be...

You have a box saying that you have 'secure / safe shopping' but don't back it up in any way. *why* is it secure? do you have encryption? SSL? Secure payment systems etc etc etc

[julieh]

Images in the section lists are being compressed (widthways), presumably by the browser. Most evident on the Cold Therapy page.

[julieh]

thanks for the feed back

Thanks Alan and John for your feed back - very useful. I'll start and work through them now.

Two things I'm not sure about how to solve:

The compression of images in the hot & cold section - should I just make them smaller? or might I be better resizing them and having them in 2 coloumns instead of three.

With regard to the product descriptons being wider than the graphic - this only seems to happen on the home page, on the other pages the words wrap, how can I make this happen on the home page as well?

I'd also like to say what a help the forum has been. Its helped me solve so many issues, now its my first port of call instead of spending hours and hours trying to work out how to do something. I also find it very useful just to browse through to get ideas.

So thanks again guys.

Julie

[jxm28788]

Two things I'm not sure about how to solve:

With regard to the product descriptons being wider than the graphic - this only seems to happen on the home page, on the other pages the words wrap, how can I make this happen on the home page as well?

I'm not sure why that's different - the code looks the same to me for both pages... and I don't know how the yahoosections work (is that a v8 thing?)

[jont]

I'm not sure why that's different - the code looks the same to me for both pages... and I don't know how the yahoosections work (is that a v8 thing?)

yahoosections is available in v7 and v8 depending on the theme in use.

The issue is down to different table and column widths in the primary templates:

Act_BrochurePrimary.html

<td valign="top" width="200">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="150">

Act_Primary.html

<td valign="top" width="150">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="180">

As the <table> is nesting inside the <td> the width needs to be the same (assuming no padding in the parent) or smaller unlike the Act_Primary which is wider (180 inside 150)

[acompton]

The compression of images in the hot & cold section - should I just make them smaller? or might I be better resizing them and having them in 2 coloumns instead of three.

Try it and see. The site looks effective with the three-per-row layout. Perhaps just resize the images that look odd when squeezed to fit in the table.

Alan

[julieh]

Feedback thanks

Hi Jont, thankyou that seems to have worked. The product table now looks fine. I remember now messing about with the table widths!!

Hi Alan, I think you're right about the 3 column layout, I'll resize the images that don't work.

Thanks again for your help.

Julie

[jont]

I remember now messing about with the table widths!!

In my old age I now take notes as unable to remember what I have done 12 months past and the nested template nature of Actinic makes it a Krypton Factor-esque minefield

[julieh]

Hi Jont,

Very good advice about making notes. When I remember I print out a "before and after" when making changes to templates - with the emphasis being on when I remember!

Julie