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Pack-Secure
08-22-2012, 06:29 PM
This is a new site design for us, please let me know what you all think.

pack-secure.com

vangogh
08-23-2012, 02:40 AM
First thing I noticed is something a little weird. When I first loaded the page it was too wide to fit in my browser for a moment. Then the size got smaller and everything fit fine. I refreshed the page and the same thing happened. It ends up looking fine, but thought I'd mention it.

The first impression is the site is fine. I won't tell you it's the greatest site, but it's far from the worst. It looks like a perfectly decent site and isn't going to scare anyone away. It looks like your standard ecommerce site. It seems trustworthy enough. All good, if not remarkable things.

The next thing I notice is it's obvious what you do which is great. I'm not going to be confused wondering if I'm in the right place. You have the right company name and your tagline and the image of the boxes reinforces that. However, it would probably be good to answer the question why you as soon as possible. Why should I get my packing supplies from you instead of say the UPS store or FedEx. What's your selling point? I see the every day discounted prices? Is that the main message?

I think you have too many categories. There's a not so obvious principle that says the more options you give people, the less likely they'll make a choice. Too many options makes decision making harder. For example I need a box. I'm not sure though if it's a regular box or a bin box. Now I'm confused which link to click. Perhaps it's only for an instance, but it's never good to confuse your customer even for a moment. If I pick the wrong one I may browse, not find what I want, and leave. If there's just one category for boxes I don't have to think. I click boxes and now I'm deeper in the site. I see 29 main categories. Try to get the main categories down to about 10. Once people start clicking deeper you can offer more options. Once you know I'm looking for boxes offer me more box categories.

Speaking of categories. When I click into the box category, the images just seem to be there randomly. Here I looking to organize my stuff by putting it in a box and I'm presented a somewhat disorganized group of images of boxes. It sends a message that you might not be so organized, which gives me the perception you might not be able to handle my organization needs. Make all the images the same size and display them in a grid. Make everything align in columns and rows.

I like the background color and texture behind the main content. It reminds me of cardboard, which I assume is why it was chosen. It helps reinforce who you are and what your business is all about. Good choice.

There's an image of a shopping bag next to My Cart. Make both consistent. Either change the working to My Bag or My Shopping Bag, or use an image of a shopping cart. Little consistencies or inconsistencies may not seem like a lot, but they do matter.

Good job including the credit cards you accept and the GeoTrust and BBB logos. You might want to move one or all higher up on the page at the moment I'm deciding whether or not to checkout or even add something to my cart. That's the moment when I need to know the transaction will be secure. Good that the wording of the check button is Proceed to Pack Secure Checkout. I realize Secure is part of your name there, but having the word secure helps the customer feel they can trust you. The GeoTrust logo right below will likely increase that secure and trusting feeling.

I'm not sure Policies warrants an item in the global navigation. It ultimately leads to a single page. The link at the bottom of the page is probably enough. You can include a link on select pages like checkout where people will be more likely to want the information.

Tell me more about you on your About page. I see lots of information about the products you carry, but I already know that information. I clicked About because I want to know something a little more personal.

I'm not crazy about the fonts you're using for the headings. They don't suggest packing to me.

Overall it's a decent site. Like I said it's not going to scare anyone away. It comes across like most ecommerce sites I've seen. Without looking at your code, I assume the site is built on one of the usual shopping cart applications or services. That's good in the sense that things will work and it'll meet some standards I have about ecommerce sites. On the other hand it's nothing remarkable either. It doesn't necessarily distinguish the site in any way. I did a search in Google for "packing and shipping supplies" and Google returned over 13,000,000 results. Many of those sites are going to look very much like yours. So why you? What distinguishes you from the rest? That's an important question to answer and it's something you want your site to do as soon as possible and then reinforce that answer with everything you do.

Hope something in there helps.

Pack-Secure
08-23-2012, 03:44 PM
Thanks very much for your detailed insight. I will have my team read your response also. As for the pictures being different sizes, we are currently working on that issue. I will also work on incorporating some of your other suggestions.

Mary

vangogh
08-23-2012, 03:53 PM
Glad I could help Mary. Hopefully others will chime in soon with additional thoughts and opinions.

Pack-Secure
08-23-2012, 11:59 PM
Additional thoughts and opinions are surely welcome.

KristineS
08-24-2012, 01:07 PM
I got the same resizing problem that Vangogh mentioned. It was only for a minute and then it fit my browser fine, but it was odd.

The large picture on your home page looks very pixelated to me. At first I thought it might be an effect, but it looks more like the picture is poor quality. It was hard to read the words on the Fragile tape around the one box, and the picture just looked blurry. The pictures of the products were much clearer and sharper.

I agree with Vangogh again about the pictures being a uniform size when you click on a category link. It does look kind of scattered and disorganized otherwise. I also think some of those pictures could be better quality as well. Maybe it was just my browser, but some of them looked blurry.

Another thing I noticed was when I clicked on a picture of a particular product I was taken to another page with the same picture of the product and a buy button and then had to click again to get a description. It's likely I'm considering a product if I click the picture, but clicking probably means I want more information. Putting an intermediate step between the picture and the product description may cause some people to drop off. I'd eliminate the second picture with the buy button, or make that your main picture.

Overall, it's not a bad site. The main thing I noticed was the picture quality. Just for reference, I'm viewing this with a PC and Firefox 14.0.1.

Pack-Secure
08-24-2012, 04:12 PM
Thanks much. We tried to eliminate the second step picture with a redirect, but when we did seomoz analyzing they pointed that out as a mistake. I guess our web host is not geared towards the ability to go straight to it. As stated before we are working on our pictures, but thanks for the reinforcement. :)

As for the main picture, I was trying to make it look sort of like a painting, but I see what you are talking about on the fragile label. Do you think that coloring over the fragile label would be a better approach?

KristineS
08-24-2012, 04:53 PM
I'd just go with a straight up photograph. Your website is very clean. There's nothing arty or fancy about it. Trying to place an effect in the middle of that is just distracting. I think just a plan photo of the boxes would work much better.

HireLogoDesign
09-10-2012, 01:13 AM
The font style seem out of place in the side bar module headers. and 18 seems so large for font size in the navigation. That is my personal preference though.

The image in the middle needs to be changed for quality. As stated before a simple photograph may help you with that. If you are to use more descriptive "business graphics" they need to be the same quality as if you were using a photograph alone.

I'm torn between yes or no with the page fold, but it is done well and not annoying when moving my mouse.

The main content area background is maybe too dark or too grainy. I'm not even really sure it is necessary. Plain white seems fine, but textures are sometimes hit or miss.

Elabusiness
09-10-2012, 02:19 AM
I just go through the website and found whole website is good and navigational part of website is also fine with good colour scheme. But images need to be of better quality and products should be with more description to know more about the products.

Pack-Secure
09-10-2012, 02:22 AM
Thanks for your taking the time to look at our site. We have changed the home picture. Opinions?

As for product description, can you give me an example? I felt most of our descriptions pretty thorough, but being human may have missed some.

Thanks again all.

KristineS
09-10-2012, 12:58 PM
Much better picture on the front page. Much better.

Pack-Secure
09-10-2012, 04:04 PM
Thanks Kristine :)

webdesigner
09-13-2012, 01:03 PM
Hi OP!
The site has a decent look and easy enough to navigate and find what your customer are looking for.

The negatives:

Pop-up discount keep showing every minute
You could use a better product images
The cardboard background on content area looks tacky to me (IMO) a solid color should work just fine
The "Blog" area need some work on its right sidenav
Logo could use some work :)


If i'm purchasing shipping/packing items for my company, I wouldn't mind all the negatives (except for the pop-up)

Pack-Secure
09-15-2012, 07:10 PM
Thanks all for the feedback. We have made many of the changes suggested. We are still working on improving our pictures, that is a long work in progress (so many pictures).

If you all have any more suggestions, other than picture quality, I would love to hear them.

~ Cheers

Mary

vangogh
09-19-2012, 12:27 AM
Mary, the site is definitely looking better. I'll offer something good about the pictures. They look much better now that they're lining up better on the site. Still more work to do and I know it takes a lot of time, but it's definitely getting better.

I still think combining some of the categories so there are fewer of them would be good. Again why boxes and bin boxes in the main menu. I would think all you need there is boxes and then once inside the section you could point people to bin boxes. There's a potential downside to this in that it probably changes all the URLs for the bin boxes. There aren't a lot of them though so I don't think the issue would be major or anything that would cause problems beyond the temporary.

I'm still noticing the site is still a little too wide. If my browser is open less than about 1400px wide I need a horiztonal scrollbar. It looks like your images are too wide in total and forcing the site to become very wide. There's a quick fix. In your css you can set

img {max-width:100%}

The downside is it might throw a few other things off near the images.

The site is looking better since you first asked us to take a look. :)

Wozcreative
09-20-2012, 10:43 PM
In general it is an ok website and does the job. The site does look like it was put together with a small budget however as the developer didn't use an experienced designer for the aesthetics of the site and tried to do it himself. I've seen much worse cases by all means, this as I said is a decent looking one and will do the job but is not high end.

I've put together a bulleted list of what I found that can be fixed:
• Some of the things that don't work is the paper texture used for a secondary background. I think if you stuck to a very light beige, white or gray, it would work better. There is already a texture of the wood in the background behind the whole site, so the secondary texture is too much.

• No consistency with the fonts chosen throughout the site.

• The main thing, as a consumer that bothers me is the quality of every photo of your product. They are terrible, and some much too small.

• Why are there no titles of each product? It seems to show the description, but no title?

• Description formatting when you go into the details of the product is not consistent or done well enough so that a user can easily skim through it. You should consider having the designer put in some formatting (typographic treatment), as it just looks like it was just pasted in without care.

• This is just a suggestion to make it more user friendly.. re-order your navigation so that it is more familair with every other website people go to.. for example, you have Contact us in the middle.. and blog at the end? Should be switched around for better user experience.

• FAQ Page - you should first list the questions, or allow a search box, given that this is a new website, you may need to add quite a bit more FAQ as there are a number of products and categories people may be asking about. Also format the text there.. so that the Q is easily legible from the A.. at the moment it is all the same font and style making it difficult to skim a long texted page.

• Policies - when I click here, I am asked to click again.. and then it takes me to policies, you shouldnt let your consumers have to do more work than a single click to get what they are looking for :)

• Subscribe to our newsletter section on the right - add some text or an example of what someone would get if they subscribed, it is a good idea to even offer something for free.. like a coupon, to entice someone to subscribe. As a consumer, I wouldn't want to be giving away my email address so easily without haven been given a reason to, or an explanation of what the "newsletter" will be.

• The developer didn't put any header hierarchy

• I don't know if I would use the word "buy"... it is kind of archaic, instead use something like "add to bag"

• Someone also mentioned something about the logo needing work.. there is some spacing, alignment and perspective issues on that. Also it's quite big, should be about 2/3 or half the size it currently is.. remember, people know what site their on, they don't need a big siren screaming at them.

Pack-Secure
09-21-2012, 02:48 AM
@ Woz: Thanks for pointing out your thoughts, as for our Logo I am very pleased with the work that the company did to make that for us. We just had the Logo added two days ago, sorry we did not go with your company, but they offered some examples, where you did not.

Wozcreative
09-21-2012, 08:38 AM
@ Woz: Thanks for pointing out your thoughts, as for our Logo I am very pleased with the work that the company did to make that for us. We just had the Logo added two days ago, sorry we did not go with your company, but they offered some examples, where you did not.

That's ok, just pointing out the spacing issues it has and the size it's currently showing on the size. The P and the S could be placed in the boxes with the same margins all the way around. Right now there is too much space below. The perspective also seems off to me as well, not sure if anyone else sees that?

As for providing examples.. There's plenty examples of my work on my site so I don't do spec work. Only time it is viable for me to actually do work is once a client/designer relationship has been established, with me that means a deposit. However, I did provide some feedback on why the initial concept you suggested wouldn't work with my priving structure in my email. I was happy to work on the logo with you, so don't take it as not giving examples (spec work) as not wanting to do the job.

I do understand I wasn't your right fit for the job, so no hard feelings there ;)

Pack-Secure
09-21-2012, 03:32 PM
@ Woz: The Logo designer we went with did give us specs without a deposit and they also gave us two samples with what we requested. When we saw the way my example to them looked in actual logo format it was not quite what envisioned even though it was what I asked for.

This company was very helpful and had no trouble working about 7 Logos and reworks for us, we were very pleased. They did this all without a deposit and released copyrights when we paid.

We are very pleased with the end result and have already had good feedback from a few of our regular customers.

Mary

I also had 3 other companies willing to do mock ups for us with no deposit, but since the first company already came up with a good concept for us, we did not go ahead with the other companies.

Anyhow, thanks for your feedback, we did take out the textured look from our site this morning and it did not look good at all, so we put it back in.

Wozcreative
09-22-2012, 01:56 AM
"I also had 3 other companies willing to do mock ups for us with no deposit, but since the first company already came up with a good concept for us, we did not go ahead with the other companies."

I hope the other two didn't do any work before you decided to go with the first one :)
Not taking a deposit is a poor business decision IMHO—but still, there are plenty new designer that won't take a deposit for lack of experience or out of desperation. These people don't last long in the industry.

Pack-Secure
09-22-2012, 03:48 AM
Monitor please close this thread as it has unfortunately veered away from its original purpose.

Thanks to all that added constructive comments to help me make my site better.

~ Cheers
Mary

Pack-Secure
09-22-2012, 03:50 AM
Thanks again all if you have any additional comments please email me at info@packsecure.com

RyanSmith
09-25-2012, 06:43 PM
This is a new site design for us, please let me know what you all think.

pack-secure.com

I think it looks sufficient. It looks like you're using 3dCart. No real problems I have experienced with them... I wouldn't pay a company just for an eCom site to exist though.

I see one thing though... The large graphic in the center looks suspiciously like a marketing image from the Uline company catalog. Maybe it's just similar stock photography... or I'm not sure if you get marketing materials from them if you're a distributor... otherwise:

Are you authorized to use that? I'd hate to see someone get some angry-worded letters sent to them, or worse, by using another company's materials.

Pack-Secure
09-25-2012, 08:24 PM
Very interesting that you seem to think that we got the picture from U-Line, most people think all pictures of boxes stacked and packaging materials are alike. We got the picture from one of our manufacturer's. If U-Line has this picture, they probably got it from the manufacturer, as well.

We do not buy from U-Line, too expensive. We have many different manufacturer's we buy our supplies from for resale.

You never really said much about the website though. A view page source lets you know we use 3dcart. The money we spend with them is well worth all the features they provide. We have been with them for over 2 years and are quite happy.

KristineS
09-26-2012, 03:10 PM
Most web sites use stock photography from sites like Istockphoto. That's why you tend to see so many of the same pictures coming from different companies. No one has the time to take every photo they will use, so they either get photos from their suppliers, who generally will photograph their own products, take their own photos or buy a stock photo and use that. It's fairly common practice.

HireLogoDesign
10-05-2012, 12:37 AM
I really think you should consider removing the texture from the main content area and making it a #fff(white) or #FCFCFC(off white). As well as change the font for the side bar categories.
Also you'll have to get permission to use photos. A good site is flickr.com

Pack-Secure
10-05-2012, 07:31 AM
We did change it to white and other colors, looked terrible.

Like I said, we have permission for photos from our manufacturer.

fayt
10-13-2012, 09:02 AM
It appears you are using X-Cart, if so great choice. I don't see anything wrong with the website, normally I am very picky from being a web designer for 9 years, but I like it.