Feedback Wanted on Site Redesign!

[googlebomber76]

I'd value any feedback on this site redesign....

Irish Mobile- mobile phones Ireland

there's a few bits of content yet to be added (useful websites, yet to be updated, pm if you know any ) but the nuts and bolts of it are there....would like to know your thoughts....

thanks

 

[garycocs]

don't have time to have a proper look but initial impressions. Very nice.

Not sure about the featured items image though??? Doesnt match the other section that well????

 

[googlebomber76]

don't have time to have a proper look but initial impressions. Very nice.

Not sure about the featured items image though??? Doesnt match the other section that well????

I hope to change the look of the hompage every couple of weeks to match the latest offers etc....

I'll be changing that image in due course...

thanks for the feedback.......

 

[gav240z]

Not sure...

I'm very unsure about that site logo. It doesn't work for me.

Reason being that its not very print friendly (I don't know what direction you'll be going). I also think the brown background doesn't work with it. I'd prefer the green on just a white bg.

If I was you though I'd seriously consider another typeface and something non-italic.

Perhaps even consider having black text for your logo, with a green symbol, or something green around it for the (Irish green / relationship).

The images in your product catalogues are very large (compressed with HTML) which means very slow load times for those on a slower connection. There are several image libraries in PHP that can help with this.

All your pages titles are the same which is not good for SEO.

Other than that I think it looks ok.

Sorry if it comes off a bit rough (can be hard to read true intentions over a forum), but just wanted to be honest.

 

[Drang3d]

What about text and search engines? Too much use of images

 

[googlebomber76]

I'm very unsure about that site logo. It doesn't work for me.

Reason being that its not very print friendly (I don't know what direction you'll be going). I also think the brown background doesn't work with it. I'd prefer the green on just a white bg.

If I was you though I'd seriously consider another typeface and something non-italic.

Perhaps even consider having black text for your logo, with a green symbol, or something green around it for the (Irish green / relationship).

The images in your product catalogues are very large (compressed with HTML) which means very slow load times for those on a slower connection. There are several image libraries in PHP that can help with this.

All your pages titles are the same which is not good for SEO.

Other than that I think it looks ok.

Sorry if it comes off a bit rough (can be hard to read true intentions over a forum), but just wanted to be honest.

I'm aware of the image load times, that'll be fully sorted in a week or so....just waiting to fill the whole site before I do a batch compression.....

The seo optimization is being worked on.....

the logo has been a constant problem for me.......i've 6500 fonts and can't find one I like and I haven't the budget just yet to hire an expert to design one for me.......

thanks for the feedback......i'll probably be going back to the drawing board again with the logo......

 

[googlebomber76]

What about text and search engines? Too much use of images

On the home page maybe but I think there's a good bit of text in the product descriptions......is that not enough? By next week sometime there should be 100+ pages on the site....i'm hoping that will keep google happy.....what do you think?

 

[littlegreenman]

Looks very nice. As landing pages go however, its not very search engine friendly? Your keywords are littered with the word "phone", but there is no mention of the word phone (in text) in your page. In fact there is no textual content at all. As you are using tables, maybe use a summary attribute. Your image directory location seems a bit odd src="../../../../../images/. Perhaps use an image caption. When I click on PayPal I'm brought to An Post.


Products: Displaying 1 to 10 (of 65 new products) you can barely see this text (a darker color perhaps). As you have 3 x 4 colums down, perhaps you should show 12 instead of 10 products. It looks a bit gappy.

Looking at /index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3. Because your images are different sizes they resizing the container the product is sitting in. Perhaps have this changed to an absolute size in CSS?

When I went in to view the source of the page, it looks like you have a page embeded within the page. "3 is Ireland's largest". A HTML tag within a HTML tag isn't a great idea. bit...

Contact Us form could have a little bit of info about you. The warning on leaving a field empty has left me blinded for life. Perhaps something subtler.

On the upside, its a lovely design and is quick to load.

Regards

 

[littlegreenman]

Looks very nice. As landing pages go however, its not very search engine friendly? Your keywords are littered with the word "phone", but there is no mention of the word phone (in text) in your page. In fact there is no textual content at all. As you are using tables, maybe use a summary attribute. Your image directory location seems a bit odd src="../../../../../images/. Perhaps use an image caption. When I click on PayPal I'm brought to An Post.


Products: Displaying 1 to 10 (of 65 new products) you can barely see this text (a darker color perhaps). As you have 3 x 4 colums down, perhaps you should show 12 instead of 10 products. It looks a bit gappy.

Looking at /index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3. Because your images are different sizes they resizing the container the product is sitting in. Perhaps have this changed to an absolute size in CSS?

When I went in to view the source of the page, it looks like you have a page embeded within the page. "3 is Ireland's largest". A HTML tag within a HTML tag isn't a great idea. bit...

Contact Us form could have a little bit of info about you. The warning on leaving a field empty has left me blinded for life. Perhaps something subtler.

On the upside, its a lovely design and is quick to load.

Regards

 

[googlebomber76]

When I went in to view the source of the page, it looks like you have a page embeded within the page. "3 is Ireland's largest". A HTML tag within a HTML tag isn't a great idea. bit...

Thanks for the tips i'll definatley have a look at them.....

just on the HTML inside the HTML....do you think that will upset google......If I change the way I write the product descriptions and pages that will mean a lot more work........what do you think, I know it's not best pratice but will I get away with it?

 

[gav240z]

Hate to break it to ya!

I know it's not best pratice but will I get away with it?

I think you answered your own question right there .

 

[mneylon]

You really need to fix your "thumbnails"

Irish Mobile- mobile phones Ireland - each one of the images is massive and you're only using html to "resize" them ie. change the display attributes as opposed to the actual file size

 

[Lottoplus]

Nice clean design,

As that's a zen cart shopping cart you've got plenty of options with the layout of your products I'd put 3 images across and two rows and then next box have new/featured products.(On my screen there's 2 products across and only 2 down on one side)

Here's a link to the image handler, its easy to install (make sure you back up before) it will improve the performance of your website speed look(no stair-effects, smooth edges) etc, Image Handler 2 for v1.2.7, Zen Cart | free shopping cart software I've tried downloading that website on dial up and it took nearly 10 minutes and you can tell the images are squashed. But the image handler will automatically resize your pictures.

 

[googlebomber76]

Nice clean design,

As that's a zen cart shopping cart you've got plenty of options with the layout of your products I'd put 3 images across and two rows and then next box have new/featured products.(On my screen there's 2 products across and only 2 down on one side)

Here's a link to the image handler, its easy to install (make sure you back up before) it will improve the performance of your website speed look(no stair-effects, smooth edges) etc, Image Handler 2 for v1.2.7, Zen Cart | free shopping cart software I've tried downloading that website on dial up and it took nearly 10 minutes and you can tell the images are squashed. But the image handler will automatically resize your pictures.

Well spotted....the latest version seems a lot cleaner...I'm not sure about the Imgae handler i'm using Zen 1.3.8 I can't find an updated version........

Here's one serious bug I stumbled across in Zen the other night....I nearly cried...If your using Zen anywhere it's definatley worth the mod http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=553018 luckily my host picked up the phone at midnight and helped me rewind the mistake......

thanks for the tips.....

 

[Lottoplus]

If you don't want to use the image handler there's another way optimise you images, similar to having extra images per product.

Zen's auto scaling can result in images with less than optimum files sizes and thus consume bandwidth.

If you want to show your images with the relevant images sizes you need to provide additional information to Zen Cart, and it will recognise the images by there suffixes of "_LRG" or "_MED" respectively(large and medium)

If you go to yourwebsite.com/images you'll see the directory’s called large and medium will be there.

If you create your images like below and ftp the medium images to medium folder and same with large

so you should have
mobile.jpg (small image"base image")
mobile_MED.jpg
Mobile_LRG.jpg

You can configure the size of your medium images and large images in

Configuration-> Images
Product info - Image Medium suffix
Product info - Image Large suffix

If you have photoshop it would be able to do very quickly with actions

Hope that helps, I did a Zen Cart store 2 years and am giving it a complete overhaul at the moment that's why its fresh in my mind

 

[3rigena]

- Site looks ok and functional

- Logo is a bit icky imo, might put some users off - it doesn't feel fresh, clean (but the rest of the homepage does) and looks a bit noobish - might cost you some trust points with potential customers imo.

-from a SEO standpoint, the site is terrible, but I guess SEO can be retrofitted or neglected for now since it's early days.

looks like it could be a cool site tho, I don't mean to sound negative!

 

[companyhotseat]

Irish Mobile Comment

HI,

Just a couple of things on the site.

You have a link picture of a house beside the home links this looks well, why not use icons for all the links going across for New Products, Featured Products, Shopping Cart and Contact Us.

The back end section looks well, for example New Products Sections or Featured Products Section. This is professional looking. This style should be adopted for the whole site including the main page.

The one primary factor which is bring down the site is the frontpage.. Your front page should have a similar but adopted layout to your New Products or Featured Products Page.. Small images look well compared to big ones.

The front page just looks like ur trying to use the space up with the big pictures because you dont have the content to fill it where this is not the case as you have a lot of products to offer in the other sections.

Try some product specific promotions on the front page! For example offer a Nokia Phone or Sony Phone. People like to see prices! If they see a competitive price they will click further.

Oh yes and previously mentined by other your logo. You might not have time to get someon else in to do it but in the mean time you can make Irish Mobile Smaller and condense it to the top left and have some writing under it.. Maybe a pic of a mobile in the logo.

I hope this info is of some use to u! My fingers are sore now!

 

[Lottoplus]

Well spotted....the latest version seems a lot cleaner...I'm not sure about the Imgae handler i'm using Zen 1.3.8 I can't find an updated version........

I'm just after upgrading a website shopping cart from 1.7 to 1.8a and the image hanndeler works fine, should really help the load times and appearence of your site

 

[googlebomber76]

thanks Lottoplus i'm going to try this, i'll do a quick pick in your honour..

thanks
GB

 

[googlebomber76]

I'm very unsure about that site logo. It doesn't work for me.

Reason being that its not very print friendly (I don't know what direction you'll be going). I also think the brown background doesn't work with it. I'd prefer the green on just a white bg.

If I was you though I'd seriously consider another typeface and something non-italic.

Perhaps even consider having black text for your logo, with a green symbol, or something green around it for the (Irish green / relationship).

How's this Gav....does it get the seal of approval?