Afternoon,

I am new to this forum and was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to review my gift website:

www.thecountrygiftcompany.co.uk

Many thanks
Vicky

Only thing I found is on the "Links" page, browsing with MSIE 7, there are a lot of unrecognized characters in the text. Also, on the bags section, when you click more to get information about a specific bag the image above the stock number is not displayed.

__________________
The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

Vicky,

1. I hate the lavender/purple background on the homepage. It looks tacky.

2. The pulsating heart (animated GIF) looks cheap and you obviously did not have it bespoke, but ripped it from another website.

3. Why do you have a link to Cath Kidston? Do you wnat me to buy from you or them? Get rid of it.

4. Ditto for Boden.

5. No, I don't want to "vote" for your site. I came to buy "country gifts" not to vote in some stupid contest. Get rid of the vote button.

6. It's nice that you're listed on FreeIndex, but why do you insist on sending visitors AWAY from your site. Get rid of it.

7. I don't understand the photo at the bottom at all. And the little white box makes no sense aesthetically.

8. Interesting menu. And, I don't interesting = good.
a. Home Page button should do one action. Take me to the homepage. I never seen a pulldown on a homepage button. I got all confused. Change the Contact Us button to About Us and move the Home Page sub-menu to About Us.
b. Product Groups? What are you General Electric? Just use Products.
c. Login? To what? And the green color on the button does go with your site at all.
d. Links. There you go again. Sending people away from your website. OK, I understand (or think I do) that these are local businesses. Then show me that. Have a map with YOU on it and then where these others are located in relation to you. That way I can stay at the Hotel and then walk down the street to go shopping in your store.
e. Sign Up? For what?

9. Get rid of the Websites at work link on every page. Again, don't send people AWAY.

,dave

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

I recommend:

www.oscommerce.com
www.zencart.com
www.joomla.org with their shopping cart package

The three best by far.

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http://www.waterfuelconverters.com | http://www.bgevolution.com/blog

The centering of all the content on the home page is not a good idea. If you want to put the affiliate links on that page (not a good idea for a home page) put them below or to the right of your content. Centering text makes it hard to read. The text is way to big on the home page. It is also image heavy over a minute to load on dial up.

There are a lot of html errors.

Thats all I have time to look at.

R

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Hobby Webmaster by choice.
No good website is ever done.

Hi Vicky,

It is not clear what you are selling upon first glance at your homepage. If you are selling 'gift baskets' as your tagline implies, show a picture of a gift basket. The gift menu, however, shows other items besides gift baskets. Change your tagline to represent the purpose and scope of the site. What are you selling? Why buy it from you?

Place multiple images of products on the homepage.
Screen real estate above the fold is largely wasted with messages of greeting and no information about the site or persuasion to buy anything.

Visually the site looks amateurish - partially because of the centered text. You will look more professional and therefore more credible if you use left alignment for text.

It is questionable to have a search function on a site with so few products. However, if you keep it, place it directly on the homepage so visitors can get busy finding what they're looking for. Your current implementation is highly unusual - not a good thing on the Web. People want to feel efficient on the Web, so stick to what they know. I would encourage you to dispose of search and stick to a clear menu of gift categories and occassions.

As with the search field, place the login field on the homepage in the upper right. If you want them to sign up for something - promote it. Sign up for our newletter - sign up for emails with special promotions - as the other gentleman pointed out - sign up for what?

I would also encourage you to dispose of much of the top navigation and provide persistent list navigation starting on the homepage to the specific categories and occassions like: SHOP BY PRODUCT with a set of links to products types and, SHOP BY OCCASSION, with occassions links. Make sure your 'occassions' links are true occassions. Current links listed: children, for him, for her, 'Soap of the earth'?? are not occassions. Label navigation correctly so people can find what you offer. Your probably need to add a SHOP BY recipient.

When displaying products, the more button is confusing. When clicking 'more' I expect to see more products like this. Remove the button, make the images clickable to enlarge for better detail and replace the 'more' button with a product details link.

The only navigation that should be in the top horizontal is an About Us, which should provide some information about why you are in this business and what you want to provide that others aren't providing - sort of like a mission statement, but don't call it a mission statement - and CONTACT US. Also a shopping cart - don't call it a 'basket'. The other links don't make sense. If you do keep the drop down menus, make them solid. The transparent menus are difficult to read over the top of the text behind them.

I hope this is more helpful than discouraging. Good luck.

Nina