New Memorial Card Website - Review Needed

TreasuredCards

Hi All,

I'll be out of work soon, so decided to try and develop an e-commerce site before it happens. Love some feedback on the site!

The site allow you to create and order memorial cards, funeral thank you cards and bereavement cards online.

http://www.treasuredmemorialcards.com

Thanks in advance.

cormee

TreasuredCards wrote: »

Hi All,

I'll be out of work soon, so decided to try and develop an e-commerce site before it happens. Love some feedback on the site!

The site allow you to create and order memorial cards, funeral thank you cards and bereavement cards online.

http://www.treasuredmemorialcards.com

Thanks in advance.

Great structure/hierarchy.

I'd get rid of all the red, too vibrant for the subject matter, maybe a dark blue, the brown you use in the header (#5B544A) or something else a little more sombre.

I'd also change your 'Create & Order Online' to <h1> text, And I'd change it to a serif font (maybe left-aligned), would strike me as a more suitable font for this type of site. I'd also change the text to say ''Create & Order Memorial Cards Online" for SEO reasons.

You have 4 h1's you should only have 1 on a page, so change all of them to h2 and see my comment above re the h1

Move the Realex banner to the top of the side panel

If you can change the 'Create Now' buttons to text with a CSS styled background.

Looks neat and business-like overall though.

Scotty #

First impressions... very good.

The site is well laid out. It's clean and tidy and the links are informative.

There are one or two things that caught me eye...

• The site title in the header. I'd use a more elegant font.
• The large "Create & Order Online" text. I'd centre it over the two boxes rather than to the page. Maybe a 'less plain' font too?
• The right column. You have a bit of space to make these 'ads' wider.

Functionality seems fine. The Useful Information links seem concise and useful.

Overall, I like it and wish you every success with it!

PS: I'd be interested to know what system you used for it? Did you build yourself or hire someone?

alexonhisown

Hi
I worked in memorial stationery for a good many years, so my review will be more from a customers point.
You dont say if you can supply a printed proof, I know a lot of customers like to see what the actual card looks and feels like.
I did some test cards, if I dont want an address on the card there is a big gap between name and date of death, I would prefer less gap and either more leading overall or the option of having a small 2 or 4 line verse underneath age or rest in peace.
The font on the front of the cards is ok in the wording you have on sample cards but if I change it to any other wording it is sometimes unreadable.
I notice on bookmarks you have a white photo frame which is ok on dark cards but on the light cards I cannot see frame
I dont know if your website is finished, but why do you have the same verses and prayers for acknowledgement cards, your acknowledgement cards are basically memorial cards with Thank You etc on front
It wont let me process any order without uploading a photo, what if customer does not want photo
My personal preference for online payment is PayPal, I always try to order from sites that have PayPal
Sorry for being so fussy, but I know how fussy some customers are

Scotty #

alexonhisown wrote: »

My personal preference for online payment is PayPal

Mine too. But we are the exception rather than the rule. The VAST majority of Irish consumers do not like PayPal.

TreasuredCards

Hi Guys,

Many, many thanks for the replies. I build the system from scratch, working closely with an Irish website developer and a programmer who is based in England.

There are of course some limitations to the workflow and memorial card creation, being in the print business currently, I know that not all permutations are going to be possible with an online system and that people who do not want photo included or want more information in that the system cannot allow will be a limitation. I did want to develop a much more flexible card creation ability but like most new businesses ... budget prevails.

I picked Realex for one major reason and that was the inclusion of Laser as a payment option, in current economic climate I felt that the ability to order without deduction from a Credit Card account was a major plus.

All points taken on-board many thanks!

alexonhisown

Good luck with your new venture, hope it goes well.

tricky D

Try to squeeze a bit of height out of the header.

Link the logo to the homepage on all pages except the homepage. You can then omit the Home link from the navbar.

It's better for the users if you can give some idea of the pricing on the category blocks. Price is key purchase decision making info, so try to put them in the right places which here is before the 'Create Now' button. While you have a range of prices, some idea is better than none.

On the right hand side move the elements up and I would reorder to have Free Delivery first (free is too good to have below or near the bottom).

On the product type pages, again get the pricing in there. And again for the individual card pages put pricing in before the 'Create Now'.

It's a good idea to outline the process as the user proceeds. I would put a list of the processes on each process page with a highlight to where the current step is.

On the Prayers and Poems, don't use centered text, it's easier to read if it's left aligned.

Much of the text is too small considering as much of your target market will be older with more vision issues.

Try to get the text blocks in Useful Information & Links into a tighter grid for readability/try to align the headings horizontally. Use rel="nofollow" in the links.

Some of the pages have some font tags which would be better handled in an external css file. There's also inline css on some pages which again would be better handled in an external css file.

Contact page has Reset before Submit, should be the other way around. Email address is not a mailto:. I would suggest putting your basic contact details at the bottom of every page along with a copyright notice. After sending a form in the resulting page is the form again with a thank you message. You could relink users back into the site. Change 'revert back soon' to something more like 'will get in contact/touch soon'.

You have 404 page which could have a sitemap.

Wrt payments, I want to pay by CC, others will use PayPal or Realex. Ideally you should have all options.

Check your links (Coping With Bereavement page has broken link to Hospice Foundation) and other pages also have broken links.

Many of your text blocks have hard linebreaks when letting paragraphs do the work might be better. It causes a dodgy break in Funeral Etiquette a few lines up from the bottom of the middle block. Might be browser dependent.

Use <strong> instead of <b> and <em> instead of <i>.