I think I am ready for review of my store/webiste

[Curve Appeal]

Let me know what I can do to improve.

www.curve-appeal.com

[Curve Appeal]

sorry.. i just realized that I posted this in the Logo review.

[weslinda]

Well first, I do like the logo. Second, I like the look and feel of the site, brighter and softer than before, and much more welcoming.

My major concern is from the code standpoint, invalidated code, lots of tables, and no page organization using header tags and so forth. Definately a visual improvement, but the machine underneath needs some polishing.

Finally, I'd like to file one more complaint, and that is I think I got busted by a co-worker checking your page out. How do I explain that one? Guess I'll say I was shopping for my wife... hee hee...

Oh yeah, tell your web designer and shopping cart company to get their name and link to them off of your pages. It doesn't benefit your site in any way to be marketing their product or services.

[SurfYourName]

I think it has a great look and feel. Nice product listings. Good job!

Erik Bledsoe
Affordable Web Design Packages, Web Site Management, Free Hosting and Domain Name

[Dubbya]

Nice looking site!

You've got a clean layout, great colors and everything is easy to find.

I'd suggest adding an underline to the links in the nave menu though. Just make it visible on a mouseover.

Aside from that, you might want to spiff up your "About Us" page. The text is pretty sketchy and doesn't read well, take an opportunity to add a descriptive paragraph or two with some more information suggesting why users should shop at your site.

Here's a great article from Jacob Nielsen.
"About Us" -- Presenting Information About an Organization on Its Website (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

[Curve Appeal]

Thank you all so much for your input. I would like to ask weslinda.. you said "My major concern is from the code standpoint, invalidated code, lots of tables, and no page organization using header tags and so forth. Definately a visual improvement, but the machine underneath needs some polishing."

I am so completely dumb founded, b/c I hired a graphic designer who is supposed to be great in CSS/html.. so to think that my codes are messed is really going to bother me, but I would not know how to check that or fix it.

Any suggestions?

[weslinda]

Curve, well there are lots of ways to check various things, but the key in the long run is to cleanup the cart code as much as possible.

To check the HTML code of your site for validation, you can go here. Result for http://www.curve-appeal.com/ - W3C Markup Validator, that's just your home page.

Second, in pulling your code, there appear to be a number of images without ALT tags, or information in the ALT tags.

Regarding the CSS or use of, they do use it, but the actual CSS is in the files, not pulled from an external CSS file, which is also a concern as loading this much code on each page will slow your site down to some degree, perhaps not visually noticeable, but it does affect things. Reducing the CSS in each page will also improve the content to code ratio of the page, improving your search results.

These are items that as your business grows, you'll want to do what you can to improve them, and tune them, and get your site rising up the SERPS. The other key is that you'll want to begin tune and tweak as you move forward. This is a core planning piece to long term success as a business. It is neither inexpensive or an overnight fix.

While much of this could be completed fairly smoothly, there are lots of things that are long term, ongoing efforts to your success. With some work, things can come through nicely.

[hostBrain]

I say GiddyUp on the visuals !

Not too crazy about the navigation shifting down on hover.
And when you mouse-over inbetween links, it starts to gyrate like crazy.

Also, the registration page should be locked down via ssl

[Curve Appeal]

I say GiddyUp on the visuals !

Not too crazy about the navigation shifting down on hover.
And when you mouse-over inbetween links, it starts to gyrate like crazy.

Also, the registration page should be locked down via ssl

I agree with the navigation shifting down on hover. I have no idea why it's doing that, or what I could've done. I noticed it doesn't do it on all the categories.

When you say registration page.. do you mean "My Account"?

[Dubbya]

the registration page should be locked down via ssl

Good eye hostBrain!

You're right, the registration page, in this case, the "My Account" page and any page requiring users to log in should be secured via SSL.

Curve Appeal, you've already got the GeoTrust cert installed, implementing security on these pages should be a cinch.

While there are two camps with regard to secure logins, you should be aware that any data transmitted via an unsecured form could possibly be intercepted. It's an easy fix to implement SSL on login or registration forms and any scripts or pages they submit to.

Most sites secure the scripts that their forms submit to and subsequent pages used to edit user information but neglect the login page. Very common, but not the best scenario and usually the first thing a security auditor would suggest you fix.

In the back end, check to make sure your administrator's login page and administration pages are secured as well. There's no sense securing the front end of your site if the administration pages can be accessed. They're the pages used to view and edit all sensitive user and company data, the pages hackers target.

From a user's perspective, you'll want to look into fixing the "mixed content" dialog box that pops up during the checkout process (this page contains both secure and non secure items). It's due to your image locations being pulled from the "http://" part of your site. You should be able to fix this by removing absolute paths in the image sources.

I also noticed that the secure icon doesn't show up on the bottom browser taskbar. I see "https://" in the URL, so it appears the page is secure but having the "lock" icon in the taskbar serves to build user trust.

You might want to check with GeoTrust to ensure that you registered your SSL certificate with the URL specified as "https://" and not "http://".

Furthermore, (wow, I've been waiting a while to use that word!) implementing an SSL certificate check (tells users that your site is registered with GeoTrust and that your cert is valid) with the GeoTrust image would build additional user trust as well.

These are all small changes but if you can implement just a few of them, your site will be a lot more polished, professional, credible and trustworthy.

That's my .02.