I think I Need some help!

bugnbelle · #1 (**permalink**) 04-14-2007, 06:17 PM

My website is a small ecommerce website that falls into a specialty niche of custom boutique clothing sales. I am in the process of building the inventory after installing a shopping cart (I had a rudimentry pay pal shopping cart before). I already have excellent placement on one of my search terms and am trying now to position myself for others that I'd like to rank well for.

I spent all morning working on the homepage and tweaked it quite a bit. I ran it through sitereport card and I can't get rid of the HTML warnings (I have 60) I took their "corrected" code inserted it and it still did the same warnings. I read what they say my warnings are but I am not an HTML guru by any means and I'm just clueless on what the problem is. And does it even matter?

Also my load time report card is like 1/10. But I have no idea what to do about that. Does that mean I need fewer images? I think it looks pretty good right now. I had quite fewer before I started revising this morning and I still had an abyssmal 1/10. Maybe someone can give me some input on that?

Otherwise any other suggestions would be highly appreciated. Please be gentle I'm a novice at this!

www.bugnbelle.com

Thanks so much!

sub_kovert · #2 (**permalink**) 04-14-2007, 09:20 PM

Hello bugnbelle,

I love the photographs you have used, but I think you could make them slightly smaller to get more shown on the homepage.

I would try to keep the site layout consistent throughout the website. The navigation and main menu 'jump' to a different layout when you click on a product category. Why not base the site on the homepage layout, changing the content area when a product is selected?

Some of the text also seems rather large, I would suggest dropping it a size or two,

Cheers

MikeinFlorida · #3 (**permalink**) 04-15-2007, 08:49 PM

You've got a long way to go to make this a legit web site. Good for a start though. The text needs to be reduced in size. The pictures need to be resized so they look good not something out of Walmart. You need to explain in the written word what the site is about and ad text to the site to rank in the search engine's to start. It's not bad for a start, but watch your colors too. Good luck!

bugnbelle · #4 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 05:58 AM

Thank you both for taking the time to review my site and respond.

I am nearsighted and the fonts on most websites are always IMHO too small... so apparently I've over compensated, I will take that to heart in future.

I pretty much considered myself a legitmate website when I got my first order and fullfilled it. I'm sure you didn't mean to be that offending in your comments...But WTH?

I stated pretty clearly my "niche" and as the sites you put in your sigy are clearly real estate... well...you have your niche and I have mine. Do you have a 3 year old with a mom who likes to shop? I don't plan on buying a house any time soon so maybe we are at an impass.

As for the WALMART comment. Clearly that is very offensive BUT I will say I have been lazy. Currently my website is NOT my primary selling avenue and resizing photos can get very tireing. I also have hit a "glitch" in my shopping cart where it goes wonky (is that okay.. I don't want to use an unacceptable webmaster term) and it resizes in a well.. wonky way. TOTAL PITA. I have a limited amoiunt of time in each day so it's load it and live... or don't load. How many days do you have product sitting on your couch w/o being loaded.

Do other sellers get to the point where it's OKAY I load it like this and live with it or it's not gettiong loaded? I mean honestly I figure what is there to lose?

BTW I'm EXTRA feisty on Sunday nights!

weslinda · #5 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 03:50 PM

Actually, I think your site is visually attractive and easy to read. The #1 issue I see is that your images are too large, as in their file size is too great. By compressing them a little more in JPG or PNG format you can really cut down on the file size and allow for a faster loading time.

Regarding your HTML errors, we can help if you would like, and it won't cost you too much. We've done this recently with other shops and it's helped considerably. It is important as valid code allows everyone to load your pages more quickly and with greater ease.

Regarding whether you look like a legit store or not, your store looks very nice. A bit of heavy weight on use of graphics, but not bad overall.

Finally, we can also help you improve your rankings for other search terms. I think you are well on your way with an attractive site that simply needs some fine tuning, not a complete overhaul.

bugnbelle · #6 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 06:01 PM

What you recommend for compressing them more? I am currently resizing them to 400 px wide then I do the "save for web" feature that is in photoshop elements. I hate to make the pictures too small b/c then people can't see the detail. Would you recommend doing some kind of a pop up picture with smaller thumbnails? I always think it's a PITA when I'm shopping online and have to click to enlarge each picture, but I know people with dial-up don't like having to wait either.

weslinda · #7 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 06:17 PM

I'm not familiar with Photoshop elements, but when you export a document with JPEG, you can define the % of loss vs. compression. The more you compress, the smaller the file size, but after a bit, you lose quality, you find a perfect middle ground for that.

If you'd like help, just let me know. Send me a PM.

bugnbelle · #8 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 06:43 PM

I was just editing and when I "save for web" that effectively exports as a JPEG. Anyways I usually do "high" which on the picture I was just doing was 44.17K and if I do "medium" quality it is 20.75K and doesn't appear to be much lower in quality. When I have time this weekend I will try redoing all the pics on the homepage and see if I can make it process faster! thanks for the suggestion!

weslinda · #9 (**permalink**) 04-16-2007, 06:59 PM

Changing those images up will help, the background images, and fixing the HTML will be a big step towards useablility.

jebacch · #10 (**permalink**) 04-18-2007, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by weslinda

Changing those images up will help, the background images, and fixing the HTML will be a big step towards usablility.

I strongly agree with You

_____________________________________

montažne kuće http://modus-kvadrat.com.hr

pagetta · #11 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 06:10 AM

i think your site looks really sweet the graphics and colours suit the content completely.

I agree about the images i'm afraid though - its such a pain (i had a part time job helping out a web firm when at uni my job was to resize compress and make nice their product images - there were thousands so i know how dull it gets!) but would be worth it - make them all the same size with the same border for a start - consistent design makes a site look so much more professional. they are great pictures by the way!

also your text probably is too large but size it with ems so that anyone near sighted like yourself can resize the text through the browser.

when you click through to a product list the page is probably a bit wide too (IMO)

its nice site though - lovely products!

sub_kovert · #12 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 12:24 PM

If you ave a lot of images to resize (either actual pixels or file size)you can do these in a batch. Photoshop is good, but I also use a great, lightweight program called Pixresizer

http://bluefive.pair.com/pixresizer.htm

Another option is ImageMagick

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php

You can do everything with imagemagick including joining images and adding borders etc. This is amazing software and free!!!

Idea Guy · #13 (**permalink**) 04-19-2007, 04:19 PM

Hey bugnbelle nice site...! I like the colors you used. Simple and sweet.. ;)

bugnbelle · #14 (**permalink**) 05-04-2007, 06:11 AM

Finally... with 3 kids under 5 at times things move slowly around here.

This is revised but not in my mind finished, homepage. I've toyed with scrapping it all together and going with the shopping cart generated homepage or a Wordpress hybrid something. This is IMHO difficult to maintain BUT I know it gets good feels from the search engines.

For your reference the old one....

http://www.bugnbelle.com/indexmaxed3.html

The revised one...

http://www.bugnbelle.com

I know I still have work to do any suggestions are appreciated.

sub_kovert · #15 (**permalink**) 05-04-2007, 05:56 PM

I think this is a huge improvement, The layout looks much better and text size is perfect.

How about styling the links on hover - both the menu and the content links.