Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi Everyone,
 I am compiling a list of ideas and improvements that i will be giving to our web designers to fine tune our website and would highly appreciate your expert advice. I will print out each suggestion and go over each with them. I hope to be able to jump in to the forums with both feet shortly and learn much more.(as soon as i wind down my construction business).

The url of our site is http://www.sellmyinventory.com

Thank you very much for your help,Paul



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Sell your excess,dead-stock merchandise quickly.

http://www.sellmyinventory.com
http://www.h1n1virusfacts.com

I like the idea, the colors, and the design. The message gets across quickly. 2 things with the layout, though.

1) The dropdown list has at least one long selector, which makes the box itself too wide for the column it is in. The background image then tries to repeat into the center column. ( This is in Firefox ).
 2) The top fold ( the top half that is first visible in the browser ) doesn`t show any products. Not saying that its bad, but when showing off products, then products should be rather prominent right away. It might be beneficial to try to get a couple of product images up top if possible.

SEO on your main page.
1) You have no description.
2) Image alt tags and link title tags should be included.
3) You are importing a style sheet outside of your head tags.
4) Your "Links" box is set up as an entire page within your page, with html/body/head tags, etc. I`m not sure of the purpose in this.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Thank you Webline,
 I repaired the search dropdown already by shortening the title of the categories by deleting the words "for sale". Thank you as I didn`t even notice that as I never use the menu.
I will print out this thread and give it to the designers with your information.

I really appreciate your input.

Thank you,Paul



-------------------------

Sell your excess,dead-stock merchandise quickly.

http://www.sellmyinventory.com
http://www.h1n1virusfacts.com

A couple of things: First, the orange lettering on orange background makes zero sense, in the "links" area. They`re pretty much unreadable.

Secondly, and this is a small thing, why not have your "84 Total Ads Online" as a dynamic link that takes me to the "browse all ads" page?

Overall, what bothers me the most is the "squished" feel to the ads. I chose at random, and ended up in Collectibles. I saw the listing of all available items, but it was so crowded I thought I was viewing 1 ad, at first. Then I saw that "Sort By" and realized it was a list of all things.

I clicked one item, the Snowberry Cuties. Aside from the picture being rotated sideways, I got the description fine. But everything on the bottom half of the page about ratings, voting, messages, and so forth, made no sense to me at all. I suppose it`s important, and maybe if I took the time to really examine everything on the site there`d be an explanation, but as a casual visitor?...nope, no clue.

All in all, it`s a good idea, and I think it can grow and work with some marketing and word of mouth. But it needs to be a little more user-friendly for the visitors like me. I`m not sure how easy it is for the sellers, I`ll assume it`s reasonably simple. But it seems to me that it`s the "buyers"---the casual visitors---who will drive the growth of the site, right?

You have some weird alignment things going on .. like the navigation is doubled up on 2 lines for one item but then there`s extra room at the end ... the categories are wrapping poorly ... etc.