Redesigned Site - What do you think?

[nm-motorsport]

I've just redesigned my site and uploaded it yesterday. I've taken out all the faults I can see except for one which is where the shipping message in the View Basket section repeats itself in the top panel of the box around the cart.

I'd be interested to see what you think about the site in general and any suggestions to stop the duplicate message would be most welcome. I have lots more co0ntent and products to add then I need to get to work on SEO which I know nothing about

[nm-motorsport]

The site is www.nm-motorsport.com by the way.

[los_design]

Standard design so not much to critique on this apart from the fact it busts out of my 1024 monitor...

The page is toooo wide

Regards
Daren

[pinbrook]

A brief look at the site shows it to be another smart theme out of the box, thus no real design to discuss,

To me the colours clash, at the very least I'd change the theme colurs to match the logo

[nm-motorsport]

Daren - DO you mean you have to scrol from left to right to see the whole page? If so, how do I alter the width?

Jo - Interesting point. I'm not sure that I know what colour my logo is to make it match- maybe I'll have a fiddle with it

[Duncan Rounding]

...I'm not sure that I know what colour my logo is to make it match- maybe I'll have a fiddle with it

Try CPick, a free colour picker if you want to grab some colours from your logo:
http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/software/software.htm

[nm-motorsport]

Duncan - thanks - that's a useful little tool. Unfortunately, the graduated blue on the header clashes with the lighter colour scheme that matches my logo. I intend to put some photos in here rather then the graduating blue so will change the colour scheme to coincide at teh same time.

[BPJ553]

Having NM Motorsport plastered across each image in big letters is a bit of a turn off to be honest. If you are really worried about your images being pinched it could be made more subtle. Like having the lettering almost transparent, but still readable.

[nm-motorsport]

Ben - I must admit that it was the invisible type of image I wanted originally but couldn't get my photo editing software to do it (or rather I couldn't work it out). It was all done in a bit of a hurry some time back as one of my main competitors was using lots of my images on their website and ebay shop. Another thing for my to do list.

[george]

If you need to use a wide site fair enough, but you don't so get it squeezed in a bit so folk with the 1024 setting can at least see the cart contents which is completely off the edge of my screen.

Theres loads of tweaks to the Smart theme on here (use the search for `Smart`) regarding positioning etc so get your head down sunshine. You've done the hard yards getting your site online (well done and all that b*llocks), now to jazz it up a bit.

For a Brucie Bonus heres a site for a good, simple, and FREE transparency thingy... http://www.faststone.org/ what you need is the FastStone Photo Resizer 2.4.

I'd jazz it up a bit by sticking in a mugshot of Nige or even a tyre track or something across the background.

Just do it bit by bit (carefully), and good luck.

I'll be checking back for progress so get crackin'.

[pinbrook]

or even a tyre track or something across the background

only do this if you like naff.... sorry its a bad idea IMHO - design suicide

[george]

only do this if you like naff.... sorry its a bad idea IMHO - design suicide

Sums me up then, cheers.

[pinbrook]

the rest of the ideas were constructive... don't be too disheartened

[george]

The site don't say `cars` to me... and its a subject I was into in a past life.

Maybe a greyout image of a car or something, I just think the white is too bland.

Hey, but what do I know.

[pinbrook]

The Smart theme is very difficult to make look like anything but the Smart theme. It doesn't lend itself to anything. You are right it doesn't look like cars.

Compare this to the other site today asking for comments - again a theme out of the box - Best Seller - but this one does a far better job of hitting its target market - carpartfactors.com

Compare these 2 sites - given they are both out of the box, how much work has the smart theme got to do to be equally as good as the best seller theme - for the given common target market?