Opinions please

[Zebra]

Hello,

Just wanted to get a few opinions on our site before I put the rest of the products on in case there's any template glitches etc

Please don't hold back if you see something you don't like or something doesn't work/look right/missing as I've tried to make it how I would like my ideal site to be, simple, clear, intuitive and of course have some great products on!

Only a few products there at the moment, namely in the SpongeBob, classic mini and photo frames; 5" by 3.5" categories.

Points to note; Banner will be proper rotating javascript/flash not the current gif and I'll put details about the loyalty points scheme on the FAQ page at some point.

right then;

click here (http://bp36.betapark.co.uk/)

[petad]

Generally a nice clean looking site. I like the rounded edge images (how did you create these?)

As you say it is still work in progress, some of my comments below probably refer to stuff you have in hand, and much is just my opinion that other may not agree with. Hope some of it helps:

- include pictures with your categories (you may well be planning to do this throughout, as I've just seen some on the Volkswagen ones). Text only category descriptions don't look too good.
- I'd make the header banner clickable and for it to take you back to the home page
- I find the header image a bit too big/in your face. The blue is too dark for my taste and I think it detracts from the brightness of the pictures
- you still have the standard description text in your contact us page
- I assume that you haven't fully implemented the e-commerce stuff yet, as when I tried to check-out it gave a page saying that there was a problem with the website's security certificate.

Best of luck with the site.

[Mike]

I find the use of the watermark on the images very distracting but apart from that it looks really good.

Like petad I also got the error message about the Security Certificate on checkout.

[Zebra]

Thanks guys, yes checkout isnt set up yet to prevent any purchases by prying customers lol, there's usually a blanking page which I removed to let people here have a look at the site.

Mike; I'm not sure about the watermarks, a lot of our items are sold on ebay and I just know that if I dont watermark our images (which are a million times better quality than the rubbish ones sellers on ebay use) that they'll get stolen, I'm thinking of creating a small integrated watermark that more discrete but still makes idenitfying my images easy.

Petad; Thanks for your comments you are right that most of the above is in hand, I've considered making the banner smaller but that changes it's width and as it's our company logo it's difficult to integrate it and also make the site still look right. I will experiment with different layouts next week and have tried to use lots of white space to balance the blue out.

Must have missed the contact page and it's now on my to do list! :)

Thanks!

[mikepayn]

Mike; I'm not sure about the watermarks, a lot of our items are sold on ebay and I just know that if I dont watermark our images (which are a million times better quality than the rubbish ones sellers on ebay use) that they'll get stolen, I'm thinking of creating a small integrated watermark that more discrete but still makes idenitfying my images easy. :)

Thanks!

We sell on eBay as well and use a bit of HTML code in our listings which disables the right click and prevents copying images. It does not stop people grabbing the image with something like "!Quick Screen Capture" (http://www.etrusoft.com/buynow.htm). If you want the code, give me a shout and I'll disentangle it from our template.

Regards, mikepayn
Carhampton eMart (http://www.carhamptonemart.co.uk)

[Zebra]

Have made a few changes to the site, namely the header layout and the logo is now 1/3 width with space for two banner ad campaigns. Thanks for the advice on that, upon reflection the full width logo banner was a bit OTT although it did make the site look nice and uniform!

Mikepayn if you have a look on our site you'll see we have no right click on images and no left click on text. We don't have a pop up message as I like the discreetness of simply preventing the customer from clicking. Will stop casual thieves but not determined image stealers, still it's better than nothing but thanks for the offer of your code :)

If you could email me the ebay code that would be great :) I can send you the code that we have on our site as the carhampton emart site doesn't have any click protection (checked in FF and IE).

[petad]

Have made a few changes to the site, namely the header layout and the logo is now 1/3 width with space for two banner ad campaigns.
Looks a lot better imho - nice site.

PS - I'm still interested in knowing what tool you use to create the nice rounded edges to the images...?

[Zebra]

Looks a lot better imho - nice site.

PS - I'm still interested in knowing what tool you use to create the nice rounded edges to the images...?


Hey,

Thanks for the compliments, hopefully it'll be live soon and I'll be able to spend my time improving it rather than simply loading all the products on!

I meant to send you a message about the image creation but totally forgot. The effect can be done using a number of different software programs, I'm lucky to have access to photoshop and that's what I used.

If you have photoshop you will find this link useful click here (http://matthom.com/archive/2004/09/10/fast-rounded-corners-in-photoshop) rather than me trying to explain the process I think that site does a good job!

If you don't have access to photoshop then let me know what software you do have and I'll tell you how to do it, alternatively if you don't have a suitable image editor I can give you some links to opensource software (free!) which may be of use to you. :D

Message me if you need any help, if you only have a few images you want doing then I'm happy to do them for you.

[petad]

Thanks LeonardsG.

I use Paint Shop Pro usually, and struggle to get a clean and uniform look to rounded edges. I also have Adobe Illustrator, but am not particularly adept at that. Thanks for the offer to do some for me, but it's more an ongoing thing.

Looking at the instructions you gave via the link, I may be able to apply the same principles, to PSP, so I'll give it a go later (when the accountant has stopped pestering me for information, and the wife for invoices...)

Regards

Pete

[Zebra]

No worries,

I haven't used PSP for quite a few years now, try a google search for "rounded corner images in paint shop pro". Think you have to do each corner manually though.

Illustrator is a very powerful (and complicated) tool but not great for image editing, I think you can do it tho *does quick google search* ah try this.... clicky (http://en.allexperts.com/q/Adobe-Illustrator-1027/rounded-corners-illustrator-CS2.htm)

Message me and let me know how you get on, I'll have a look and see if theres a simple opensource tool that does this, I'm sure someone's created one!