Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I will appreciate any comments you might have
Thanks You!

I like the concept and design very much.  I can`t quite put my finger on it, but the page seems a little too bright.  A more muted shade of white for the background, darker text, or a little more color on the background might help.

For your checkout process, I would like to see PayPal as an option.  For relatively unknown sites, I feel more comfortable paying through PayPal instead of giving out my credit card number.  Also, I would prefer providing my phone number be optional instead of required.  You may not have any control over those features since Yahoo provides the store service.

I really like the product line.  Keep up the good work.


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Helping new computer users have a safe and fun internet experience. www.newbiesecurity.com

Looks great to me.

I don`t believe it. This is the 3rd out of 4 sites I`ve looked at tonight that look great.

I`ll reserve my comments on the checkout process. All I was looking at was the design.


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Get Your Name in ".com" at the International Internet Authority

Interesting site! I had a problem reading the gray menu items on the all white-on-white theme, but I like how that white brings along the idea of "modern."

I also didn`t much care for how the page I`m on stayed gray, but the red replication went to the top. Yes, I get the idea, but why not just turn the gray red right in the menu instead of making me have to look someplace else? Easy enough to do, I think.

The site is really sparse. That`s fine too, as it also brings the idea of "modern." However; there can be such a thing as too sparse. You have an email icon and shopping bag. Good, and probably many people will understand. But to make sure, why not put some bubble-help so that when I hover over the icons I know for certain that it`s "email to a friend" and "shopping cart." (At least that`s what I assume they are.)

I really think there ought to be some content on the main page. First, it`ll dramatically help with SEO, but also it`ll fix the idea of "modern" in the visitor`s mind. I think "New" should be "New Products" for the same reason, to make it clear and unambiguous.

The "Press" tab was a mystery to me. I assume it means that you`re getting picked up somehow in published magazines? While it`s interesting, the many thumbnails took some time to download, even on a DSL line. Then when I clicked one, I asked myself...so what? I`d like to see a fraction of those on the page, with some content that promotes why you`re proud of being in those magazines. Then, after about a few, have a "more..." button in case someone wants to really read about all your other references.

It`s good to self-promote, but a long list of pictures really isn`t promotion. It`s more like a bibilography, or list of footnotes. WHY are you proud to be showing in "Child" magazine, for example? How did that come about?

(Under the nit-picking heading, "News Letter" is spelled "Newsletter." Also it should be "Mom & Dad," not "Mom + Dad.")

I`d like to see the "Home" button a little larger (and also a darker shade of gray), but I really like that I can click your logo and arrive at the Home page. Not so many other sites do this.

Overall, it`s a nice site but it doesn`t really tell me what it is you`re doing. I know you`re selling SOMEthing...and it appears to be toys or something. But I`m not picking up the unifying theme. That`s where content would help. Remember, search engines only examine words and phrases, developing an evaluation of "relevance" based on the number of occurrences of a key phrase. Your site has no key phrases.

:-)
my two cents....
craig

 

  I think it look s very good,modern and simple!

Couple of suggestions Pazit - within the image <img> tags in your site code, you can add the attribute "alt", which allows you to describe the image in question.  That text will pop up when someone hovers over the image, it also gives search engines something to chomp on when they`re spidering your site - it`s good practice to include that for all images, especially those great products.

And because I can`t get off images, I noted that quite a few rendered somewhat pixelated; looks like the image size is the same as the coded size, so it might just be a matter of reformatting some of the pictures, but it makes the site look less professional.

And I might be echoing some other comments, but a bit more of a text title or description for items when you`re browsing them would be helpful.  Pictures don`t always tell the full story, and I found myself wondering if I`d want to stick around as a consumer if I knew I had to click open every product that remotely interested me in order to get some better idea of what it was all about.


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chuck fuller

Thank you so much for taking the time, looking at the site and providing a
constructive critique. I must say, I am new to startupnation and very
impressed of how powerful a tool this site is and how helpful it can be to
small business like mine.

p.

I have a couple suggestions, and I apologize if they were already covered above.  It looks like you used SiteBuilder to create the site, so I understand that there are probably some limitations on what can be altered.

1. Keep your body text black.  Gray text may look clean when viewing the page as a "design", but it`s not as usable on the live pages.  The product descriptions along with the images is really what will sell the product, so keep it easy to read.
2. When selecting a category, such as "Kids", I would keep the sub-category headers in the page consistently placed (currently, some are top-right aligned..others are bott0m-left aligned).  Also, I would link these as well and make it clear that they are links (use underlined blue)
3. When inside a subcategory...like "Nursery furniture"..the page links are graphics and the current page is shown in gray.  I would use simple underlined text links for this "page-through" navigation.  If you stick to the graphics, the "red" graphic for the "other page" is confusing.  I`m conditioned to think the highlighted "red" page is the one that I`m currently on.
4. Add labels to the shopping cart icons in the top-right corner.  It`s not quite intuitive what these graphics actually are.

Overall, I think the brand and the design is strong and I love your logo.  I think with a few usability tweaks the site will perform very well.

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Brian Cleveland,
Web Producer,
StartupNation

 

  I like the modern clean design.  I would add a phone number at the top of every page and maybe user reviews on individual products and tell a friend feature.  Also on the product images. Would it be possible to http://www.modernmini.com/nursery_files/nurseryfurniture/nur seryproducts/nfTAoibo.html

have the images when clicked on to become larger show in the same screen instead of opening up a new page?

  I really like it as a consumer it is not intimidating at all.  If you plan on using Google Adwords you might want to consider using there Google Checkout as they are offering free processing on all orders through Dec. 31.  Once that is over however for every $1 you spend in adwords you get $10 in free processing charges.  Which I think would help you out w/ your big ticket items. 

Hope this helps,

Tom

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God Bless, Tom www.YoParts.com

my thoughts.

• kill the grey text. stay black on that white background
• clean design feels almost ikea like
• make sure all your images are optimized. some loaded slowly on my insanely fast internet connection (seriously it`s a 4 MB pipe, think 4 T-1`s)
• check your links throughly. a couple product thumbs nails were not pointing to the proper pages (ex. http://www.modernmini.com/kids_files/kidsproducts/weely_bug. html)
  
• browsing is a bit confusing. some places lead to product detail pages while others are just categories which leads to product listings.
• add alt text to all your images. you missing on some great stuff there
• hide the table borders or make them thinner. some places it looks good but others it`s goofy (like your about us / policy pages)

Stuff i`d find a way to add

• contact form, not everyone likes clicking email links
• search form
• full site map with products much like a directory system or tree view for fast browsing
• actually make the link for the free shipping offer go to a separate page to promote that, and not your policy page
• find some way to add in just a bit more color the site almost feels to sterile
• make the mailing list stuff pop-up in a new smaller window
• tell me more about your store and stuff on the home page to draw me in.

good work!