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View Full Version : new design : your opinion



myfrenchneighbor
02-13-2012, 03:20 PM
Hello,

I'm currently receiving a new design for my website : French Country Decor (http://www.my-french-neighbor.com).

May you compare them : the live design and the attached file.

Thank you.

Sylvain

Sylvain183

vangogh
02-14-2012, 12:07 AM
Welcome back Sylvain. :) I'm trying to remember what the old design looked liked.

The first thing I notice are the changing images. I think they're changing too quickly. Right now whenever I want to look at something else the image changes pulling my attention back to it. In general I think moving parts on web pages is a bad idea, though if the change doesn't happen to quickly I think it can be ok.

The text in the login box in the upper right seems a little too close to the edge of the box. I'd give it a little more space from the edge.

Overall the design looks fine. The home page feels too crowded to me like it's trying to give me too much information at once. It feels a little less crowded on the product pages, but there's still a lot to look at. I think it's mostly the different sets of navigation. It adds up to a lot of links all competing for my attention. I'm not suggesting you need to get rid of any of the links, but I wonder if there's a better way to organize them or maybe not have all of them visible all the time.

For example take a look at how Target sets up their navigation (http://www.target.com/) across the top. Mouse over some of the links starting with women, men, etc. Notice how they have the submenu organized. When I look at your site it seems like most of your products fit under kitchen and body & bath. You could have those two categories in the main menu and then show everything else in mega menus like Target uses. That would give you enough room to most of the links down the side into the menu at the top. It's not the only way to organize everything, but it's one possibility.

I really like the product images you have. The ones I've looked at have all been great shots and they do a good job showing off the products and putting them in a good light. Good job placing the Verisign logo right on the product page just above the add to cart button. Overall I think the product pages are done well. You might want to add a ratings mechanism in addition to the comments.

With the social sharing sites have you looked into Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/)? It's a site for sharing images and I think your product images would do well. Your site seems made for Pinterest. You need an invite to join Pinterest, but it only took a week for them to send me one and a few of us here have accounts and could send you an invite if you want. Assuming you join you'd want to add a pin it button on your product pages.

I added a product to the cart to give the checkout system a quick look. A quick look suggests you're doing a lot right. A couple of years ago I reviewed a number of ecommerce sites for part of a book and you're doing most of the things we identified as best practice. One thing you could add is the word secure to your checkout button. Have it read Secure Checkout instead of Checkout to get the message across that it's safe to do business with you.

Hope that helps. I'm sure others will come by with thoughts on different aspects of the site.

KristineS
02-14-2012, 12:41 PM
If the jpg is the new design, I like it better. I think it's less busy and the pictures are really colorful and attract the eye. It's a cleaner design.

I would also second Vangogh's suggestion about joining Pinterest. I think your site would do really well there and you have lots of interesting things about which you could start boards.

vangogh
02-14-2012, 02:40 PM
Oh funny. I think I was looking at the old site when I was reviewing it above. D'oh. I need to learn to stop posting later at night when I'm tired. :)

I agree with Kristine about the image. I do like it better than the existing site. It's less crowded, and the aesthetic fits well with your business. I think it addresses most of the things I suggested above.

nealrm
02-25-2012, 09:34 AM
I prefer the live design to the jpg image. The image looks like a standard sales flyer. It's well organized, but doesn't give the same french feel as the live design. I would stay with the live design.

DeniseTaylor
02-27-2012, 06:21 PM
Hi.

I think it is very nice. I did see a typo on your home page:

"tablecloths,French"

Should be

"tablecloths, French"

:)