Please evaluate my new website: www.goldadiamonds.com

[ikorzha]

Please let me know what you think of my website: www.goldadiamonds.com

Unfortunately we are a little late to the market and now have to work extra hard to attract buyers.

I am interested in any suggestions for design and security improvement and ease of use.

Thanks

Igor.

[(jj)]

Without going past your first page, I can see 2 things that my cause you loss of potential customers.

From your index
Due to limited recourses available this web site only
supports Internet Explorer 5.0 or better

1. Limiting your audience to only those who use IE is not a good idea, many Windows users are running other Browsers and then there are those running Macs or a Linux variation. Not to mention all of the PDA and other users that you are alienating.

2. What links that I could see (using Mozilla) all opened in a new browser window. You should never open internal links in a new window, only links that would take your visitor away from your site.

Did you actually mean "Recourses" or "Resources"?

[Mirzabah]

I agree with Jack - bouncing non-IE browsers is a big no-no. In one site I set up for a client recently nearly 20% of hits were from non-IE browsers with Mozilla/Firefox making up the bulk of that figure.

Also, redirecting your primary domain to goldadiamonds.dynalias.com doesn't look very professional either.

[ikorzha]

Unfortunately to design for NON IE business involves a very large expense (Timesince) since for IE the literature is much more readily available.

Based on statistics that we run non IE browsers so far no more than 5%
But if business ever picks up we will redesign the site to be NON IE friendly.

[YvetteKuhns]

Unfortunately to design for NON IE business involves a very large expense

It is free to download Mozilla. View your website and see how it looks. Change anything that doesn't look right. Ask for help on the forum if you need it or look it up on a search engine. There really isn't much expense in that.

The site has a large blank space on the right side for higher screen resolutions. You can center your contents to have a smaller margin on each side, if you cannot change your code to fill the screen for a higher resolution.

The logo and website design is very unprofessional which is not good when trying to sell expensive products. I clicked images and could not view an enlarged image. Gems are often photographed with a velvet background in deep purple, royal blue or black. I saw no sparkle and the tiny image at the top does not stand out like a larger image in the center of the screen would.

I do like the alternative color backgrounds for list items for easier reading and the ease of navigation. The business info, guarantee, payment and privacy info are included. The site needs a nicer appearance including more attractive images of the jewelry. If it doesn't look good, people will not buy it.

[Mirzabah]

Unfortunately to design for NON IE business involves a very large expense (Timesince) since for IE the literature is much more readily available.This is simply not true. It is very easy to design sites that work on IE, Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape, Safari and Opera. There is an abundance of literature on that very subject, though you don't need to buy any books - a few minutes of googling will tell you all you need to know.Based on statistics that we run non IE browsers so far no more than 5%
But if business ever picks up we will redesign the site to be NON IE friendly.Is that 5% of hits or 5% of visits? If you are bouncing non-IE browsers, then you see an artificially reduced number of hits from non-IE browsers. You need to look at visits.

[ikorzha]

Thank you guys for your valuable input.
Your criticism is quite fair - no arguing about it.
I will put more emphasis on correcting those deficiencies ASAP.

Meantime, can any of you suggest a decent server site ASP.NET tree control to replace the one I’m using. It seems that the ones I looked at are all based on IE "url behaviors" which are not supported by non-IE browsers.

Thank you again for your comments.

[ikorzha]

The main purpose of the site is to compliment and support our eBay auctions.
We are closely watching server stats - it seems that vast majority of eBay customers are using IE!

[Mirzabah]

Meantime, can any of you suggest a decent server site ASP.NET tree control to replace the one I’m using. It seems that the ones I looked at are all based on IE "url behaviors" which are not supported by non-IE browsers.There are a number of Javascript-based tree controls that will work on all the major browsers. I've built a few myself - it's pretty easy.

Spend a bit of time googling around.

[ikorzha]

With all due respect, I have to emphasize the word descent.
Such things are rarely free.
But thanks anyway.

[Mirzabah]

With all due respect, I have to emphasize the word descent.I hear you, but there are some good ones out there, and you can usually hack them into shape if you can't find one that meets your exact needs.

[MacTech]

I did the same site thing on applelegal.com which is hosted on powweb but not my own account, anyway we put an anti-ie btw :P anyway you should imo have a link to view the page with its inperfections anyway even tho of course it won't look right.

[insert long argument about why ie is bad even tho you have to design for it in mind]
[insert talk about hacks for ie]

anyway i can't evaluate it, sorry.