New Site - Looking for Feedback

di11on

Hi folks,

I've just launched an online shop selling wooden toys and trains - I'm looking for feedback from the community here.

Link: www.woodentoys.ie

Because the stuff I sell can be quite heavy, I'm expecting a lot of my stuff will only be competitive to Irish buyers so I'm particularly interested in how Irish people find the site, in terms of:

- General appearance
- Quality perception (what is the initial feel people get - does it look professional?)
- Performance
- User friendliness
- Quality of information and products.

I'd be really grateful for any comments people have.

Thank a million,

Di11on

majiktripp

Hello,
The site is very nice,good layout and graphically very pleasing too, and yes this translates into the general quality feel of the website itself and it does come across as being very professional.
Very user friendly as everything is simply laid out and very straight forward to use and find.
The product information is on par with the rest of the site,very good!
Over all a very nice website with a good selection I might add for some natural classic alternative toys for the kids!

di11on

majiktripp wrote:

Hello,
The site is very nice,good layout and graphically very pleasing too, and yes this translates into the general quality feel of the website itself and it does come across as being very professional.
Very user friendly as everything is simply laid out and very straight forward to use and find.
The product information is on par with the rest of the site,very good!
Over all a very nice website with a good selection I might add for some natural classic alternative toys for the kids!

Thanks a million Majiktripp - I really appreciate the feedback!

mcaul

Some good / bad feedback

Good
Colour scheme and general layout very good. Site is attractive to the eye. Easy to navigate.

Bad
Shipping costs not mentioned. You need to go all the way to order confirmation to get the shipping cost. For Ireland Use Fastway, they charge from €6 - €8 per box to 32 counties with next day & tracking. Charge the customer €4.95 and absorb the balance into the margins. - Shout this on your front page.

Similar to UK - get a quote from GLS or interlink and charge €12.95. Interlink will be about €15.

Rest of Europe - Don't bother with - too expensive to ship small items that can be got in local markets.


Bad
Most people will want to buy a full set, make these the first items they see. Example on the wooden train category, a few pieces of track comes up first and it is not until product number 22 that an actual train set appears - get this to 1st position.

Here's my site (being launched next Thursday) http://www.giftmaster.ie/shopdisplaycategories.asp

Still some changes to be made & pic to be uploaded.

You not selling competing stuff so I've no problem in giving some advice.

di11on

mcaul wrote:

Some good / bad feedback

Good
Colour scheme and general layout very good. Site is attractive to the eye. Easy to navigate.

Bad
Shipping costs not mentioned. You need to go all the way to order confirmation to get the shipping cost. For Ireland Use Fastway, they charge from €6 - €8 per box to 32 counties with next day & tracking. Charge the customer €4.95 and absorb the balance into the margins. - Shout this on your front page.

Similar to UK - get a quote from GLS or interlink and charge €12.95. Interlink will be about €15.

Rest of Europe - Don't bother with - too expensive to ship small items that can be got in local markets.


Bad
Most people will want to buy a full set, make these the first items they see. Example on the wooden train category, a few pieces of track comes up first and it is not until product number 22 that an actual train set appears - get this to 1st position.

Here's my site (being launched next Thursday) http://www.giftmaster.ie/shopdisplaycategories.asp

Still some changes to be made & pic to be uploaded.

You not selling competing stuff so I've no problem in giving some advice.

That's really helpful information - thanks a million - I'm definitely going to look at the shipping options I offer!

Thanks again,

Di11on

mcaul

Try www.skippertoys.com nice range of stuff made in Ipswich. Small family firm, excellent quality.

Eoin

I think it looks very good overall. I would only have a couple of things to mention:

Lose the Times New Roman font for the page headers. It's primarily a print font, and not a nice one at that.

The light blue link colour (hover) on the white background - not enough contrast, I would make it a darker blue.

Your HTML is not valid markup. Site still works fine, but if you looked in the Webmaster forum here, that's one of the first things that would be said to you. I got 170 warnings on one of the pages. Most of these seem to be URLs:

The likes of this:

[html]<img src="imagemagic.php?img=includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_buy_now.gif&w=60&h=18&page=" width="60" height="18" border="0" alt="Buy Now" title="Buy Now">
[/html]

just needs to be changed to this:

[html]<img src="imagemagic.php?img=includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_buy_now.gif&w=60&h=18&page=" width="60" height="18" border="0" alt="Buy Now" title="Buy Now">
[/html]

di11on

eoin_s wrote:

I think it looks very good overall. I would only have a couple of things to mention:

Lose the Times New Roman font for the page headers. It's primarily a print font, and not a nice one at that.

The light blue link colour (hover) on the white background - not enough contrast, I would make it a darker blue.

Your HTML is not valid markup. Site still works fine, but if you looked in the Webmaster forum here, that's one of the first things that would be said to you. I got 170 warnings on one of the pages. Most of these seem to be URLs:

The likes of this:

[html]<img src="imagemagic.php?img=includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_buy_now.gif&w=60&h=18&page=" width="60" height="18" border="0" alt="Buy Now" title="Buy Now">
[/html]

just needs to be changed to this:

[html]<img src="imagemagic.php?img=includes/languages/english/images/buttons/button_buy_now.gif&w=60&h=18&page=" width="60" height="18" border="0" alt="Buy Now" title="Buy Now">
[/html]

Thanks Eoin, appreciate that - I'll look into the code that generates that HTML.

You're dead right about the Times New Roman - I detest it myself!

di11on

Thanks again, all, for your feedback. I just wanted to let you all know that I've acted on most of the recommendations:

eoin_s wrote:

Lose the Times New Roman font for the page headers. It's primarily a print font, and not a nice one at that.

Couldn't agree more - corrected this - there was an oversight here where the H1 H2 and H3 classes weren't in the css file.

eoin_s wrote:

The light blue link colour (hover) on the white background - not enough contrast, I would make it a darker blue.

Made this a darker blue.

eoin_s wrote:

Your HTML is not valid markup. Site still works fine, but if you looked in the Webmaster forum here, that's one of the first things that would be said to you. I got 170 warnings on one of the pages. Most of these seem to be URLs...

I've tracked down the main offender in this regard and corrected. There are still quite a few remaining errors which I will get around to resolving eventually

mcaul wrote:

Shipping costs not mentioned. You need to go all the way to order confirmation to get the shipping cost. For Ireland Use Fastway, they charge from €6 - €8 per box to 32 counties with next day & tracking. Charge the customer €4.95 and absorb the balance into the margins. - Shout this on your front page...

This was a really valid point. I've revised my shipping methods and charges completely and displayed them on the front page.

mcaul wrote:

Most people will want to buy a full set, make these the first items they see. Example on the wooden train category, a few pieces of track comes up first and it is not until product number 22 that an actual train set appears - get this to 1st position.

Also a very valid point. I created sub categories so you can find the complete sets much more easily.

Thanks again folks,

Di11on

edit: corrected a bazillion typos!