home decor website review

[computerwiz5]

Hey All,


I am looking for 25 people to review my ecommerce site. If your interested can Pm me or just simply reply here. I don’t want to give out the url publicly, but u can write your opinion and suggestion here after your review.

Thanks
Danny

[NEWUSER]

send me the URL

[jatticks]

send me the URL
Josh@lifesessions.com

[Kitchensink108]

I'll review it.
(kitchensink108@gmail.com)

[jatticks]

First impression is quite good. The white background is what they say works best with e commerce sites. The purple color scheme is easy on the eyes and works well.
Clicking around the site seemed was easy enough… I got a feel for your site quickly and easily. I think you still have some work to do in putting in item names and descriptions. The pictures are sharp and show off your merchandise well.

My questions start here… Your top banner could use just a little more work. The pictures are okay and could be clearer. Looking closely I can almost make out something that says ‘170 Designs’ what is this all about? I also don’t understand what Division of SSL&S is all about and is a bit confusing. Instead of putting ‘Division of SSL&S’ I would put something that describes what you sell.

At first I thought that you were selling wine by the beaded wine bottle covers presented on the first page. I would include a bit more about what you sell, why it’s unique, where it’s from, and any other good bits. I also can’t make out where you are located. Do you have a shop somewhere? An ‘About Us’ link would be great.
There are a bunch of broken pics scattered throughout the site. When opening up images to get a larger view, there is something saying …Current Parse Time: 0.028 s with 14 queries. Can you get rid of this? I think it should say ‘close’ on the bottom. Also, some of the larger pics need to be clearer. I wouldn’t buy a piece of furniture unless I was sure of the build quality, design and dimension. Ideally, I would like to see a full page photo with different views of the object, a close up version to show design and build quality and a clear description of the size, wood used, color, weight, etc.
The light bulb page (even without pictures) looks like it’s going to be really overwhelming. I think something with dropdown menus might work better there.
Villadec – Does that stand for Villa Décor?

I think the site is a great start. It really needs some color to spice up the pages a bit. The purple borders could be mixed up with another lighter or darker color to add more dimension. The pages flow nicely and navigation is easy. It will all look better when the item names and descriptions are put into place. Again… it’s hard to place what kind of store you have… you have an unusual collection of lamps, lamp parts, and other furniture. I like the fact that everything is free so far.
I wish you luck in this venture!!
J.Atticks

[Marko Peric]

Sure, I'll take a look at your site. Drop me a PM with the URL.

[computerwiz5]

jatticks, thanks for the review, i know i have to work on the names and such to promote seach engine listings.

Also, i am aware of that banner, it was a mockup some one did for us. What should the text under the site be, so people will know what kind of products we sell?

What do you mean by broken pics, can you explain further?

The debug information on the botom is temporary.

The about us page is a must and will have to do it soon.

The light bulbs situation cannot be chnaged, as we will have a bigger selection soon. I do noy know what contribtuion to install to handle this alternative anyways.

I will have many picture sof the furntiure items of course, this is ok for the start, i am still trying to get everything together.

Anyways,
Your inforamtion was very helpful, thanks

Danny

[jatticks]

Funny thing, when I check you site at work many of the pics do not load and have little boxes with a red 'X' in it. At home the pages look better and the images load (all of them). I use Firefox at home while at work we have IE on win2000 server. I'm not sure what the story is.
The Lightbulb page is full of squares with the 'x' in the middle here at work. At home, things look much better. Sorry I can't help further with this.
Good luck with your site.

[YvetteKuhns]

You can send me the url. I love home decor. ;)

[YvetteKuhns]

Using a prebuilt shopping cart like osCommerce forces you to work within its limitations. The sites often look similar to other e-commerce sites. But it looks okay. The header banner is the same width as the contents below, but the horizontal links menu between the banner and main contents is a bit wider.

One of my clients sells home decor and also chose purple and white for her color scheme. Personally, I would prefer a shade of green that makes people think of landscaping and homes. Purple, violet, lilac and other hues of that color do not appeal to some audiences and can be considered feminine, at least here in the US.

The contact us page has a form to request info from the visitor, but NO info contact info for the business! There is no About Us page to tell about the business. The Ordering Options page needs the phone number included. The Return policy is not included yet. Gee, can't you just fake something for now? ;)

You do not ship outside the US. That should be mentioned on the home page or every page. You can simply include an American flag to let visitors know BEFORE they try to order. I would be disappointed if I shopped for 10 minutes, then discovered I couldn't order from the website.

The product images are really nice, but there isn't any info yet. The highlights images on the home page should link to their product pages. There are missing images as others mentioned and there are spelling errors here http://villadec.com/product_info.php?cPath=21_116&products_id=4635 and possibly elsewhere.

The images do not line up evenly for http://villadec.com/index.php?cPath=21 because the image heights are not the same. If you cannot make the image heights the same, perhaps you can make the td's the same height.

Add text contents and improve your keyword phrases in your meta tags to improve your search engine visibility. If you can customize your text between your title tags and your meta keywords for each product page, that would help. We do that with our customized shopping carts, but I don't know if you can do that with your osCommerce. (Yes, I peeked at your source code.)

If you are unable to add your best keyword phrases in the title or meta tags, you can definitely include them in the header code of your web pages. Lamp shades, furniture and other home decor is here. You may want to mention candleholders since many people like candles indoors or outdoors.

The category accessories is too general, but until you have more "like" items to create another category, these items are hidden here. I say hidden since some people look for a specific category and may not click the Accessories link.

Many people I have asked do not like to shop sites that require them to login. But as long as you don't have to login until or unless you buy something, that is okay. Search engines cannot login, either, so product pages should be reachable without requiring logins. This point is mentioned for others who may be reading this.

Do you offer the wine bottle beads without the wine bottles? I have a beautiful cobalt blue wine bottle with two small golden goblets next to my two-person jacuzzi tub. The beads would add extra sparkle. ;) The lamp finials are neat. I like the antique brass best and the rose would match my living room curtain rod finials, but I just got some at an estate sale. Still....

I see the chandelier lamp shades I can use for the antique brass wall sconces I plan to hang in the bathroom once I put my double bowl vanity with double mirrors in my master bathroom. My anniversary is in a few weeks and I already spent money on the antique posts for the porch. Darn. I shouldn't have looked here. :D The more I look, the more stuff I see that I like. :)

Well, I better leave some room for other people to comment.

[Kitchensink108]

The design seems fairly simple. It becomes kind of bland in some areas, but I think it works well, nonetheless. The color scheme is all good. Some of your images aren't displaying, though, (at least, under the accessories page). The navigation is self-explanatory and works well.

The Bestsellers box is extremely not-descriptive, though. I can't tell what in the world an HC-325 is without a picture or more in-depth description. The images within the banner look like they were just thrown there, not really fitting in well. I noticed, though, that whenever I go to the page I don't notice the banner much, much eyes are drawn muck quicker to the areas below it. Take this as you will.

I'm learning to not be so nit-picky about the code. Nonetheless, I think your layout would be coded much simpler without tables (divs+css are recommended). Your table layout has already caused massive problems, at least with validation. You currently have 86 HTML errors on your main page (http://validator.w3.org/), most of which are caused by malformed HTML.

Also, check out pages like:
http://villadec.com/index.php?cPath=22
that is, how you have links that say "Desk lamps Desk lamps" or "Buffet lamps Buffet lamps."

[Skunkboy]

uht oh - I was going to say to send me the link but I see Yvette has cleaned house ;) If you want, I can stop by but her and I often have the same opinions.

[YvetteKuhns]

Come on, Skunkboy! I am sure that your young male opinion must differ from my old female opinion. I am over a decade older than you! :eek:

As I mentioned by email to Danny, purple can be popular with women who will make up a large portion of this site's target audience. But choosing a color scheme that promotes trust, professionalism and the mood of the website can improve the success of the website. I sent color info links to Danny, but maybe I should have posted them here.

I didn't make a fuss about the best sellers since Danny already said he needed to work on the descriptions. He also said he will be replacing the header banner, so we don't have to beat that up anymore. ;)

To personalize the shopping cart, the default images could be replaced with customized images in different colors. Gray is so boring. ;)