New Site Launch

[[email protected]]

Hi All,
I finally launched the new site http://www.floressencetea.com. Can you please check it out, tear it apart and let me know what you think. Both good and bad.

Thanks,
Jim

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: New Site Launch

real quick

slide show is too fast...also think about making the controls more obvious and when in manual mode, the next prev buttons hide the text.

horizontal menu colors too distracting and make it hard to read...consider using same color for all except current selection

featured videos offer no compelling reason to watch them...tagline? title? better image preview?

How toxic is your... is hard to read with image background

entire site tad too busy IMO, otherwise not too bad, though site performance is slower than expected...made me think that the tabbed menus didn't work.

[[email protected]]

Re: New Site Launch

Thanks Bruce... That helps

[blarson]

Re: New Site Launch

Congrats on launching a new site!

I definitely agree with Bruce's points - specifically regarding the slide show and horizontal menu colors.

Few other things I noticed:

1. The category headers are rather large vertically - pushing the products down on the page. This along with Bruce's point (no tag line on featured vids) got me a bit confused tying to navigate to a product - should I watch the video or view the product?? (I'm always surprised how many of my site visitors are still on small resolution screens as well). Maybe move the videos onto the product pages - get the customer to view the product - then offer helpful information/content.

2. I'm always a fan of cross marketing on item pages but prefer when the user can add related items or 'customers also bought' items directly to the cart without having to view the item page.

3. On the homepage the 'Ambassador videos' looked rather compelling (more so than the featured videos). Maybe these should be higher on the page or emphasized more than the featured videos. Overall I agree the homepage is a bit busy but some good stuff/content is there so I would test which elements are helping the most and eliminate others.

Tools I like after launching new pages/site:
CrazyEgg & Visual Website Optimizer

Was some things I liked as well - nice work.

[[email protected]]

Re: New Site Launch

Thanks Blarson... Going to make yours and Bruce's points a reality.

[Mark Hood]

Re: New Site Launch

Trying to use the shipping calculator is a bit annoying because it keeps hiding with every choice. It's not apparent that you need to click on it again.

You might be better off just putting it on the basket page.

[[email protected]]

Re: New Site Launch

Good Idea Mark Hood, Thanks

[bimmerzone.com]

Re: New Site Launch

Hi
In general, a pretty good looking site.
The featured video area seems very busy
You need to title the pages better (add more description) and i dont see meta key words and descriptions too
The add to cart/buy now button just seems a bit big

other than that, keep fine tuning it :)

good luck!

[jsdva]

Re: New Site Launch

A site is never complete without validating the html and CSS:

Validate html: (http://validator.w3.org/)

You have two of the following divs/ids. CSS only allows a style to be called once on a page. Delete one, also making sure you delete the closing tag for the one you are deleting:

<div id="global-header">

I would suggest you put the following into the global header or within the head section of whatever page you need it only, since it is currently within the body tag:

<!-- Start Slider HEAD section -->
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Slider/engine1/style.css" media="screen" />
<style type="text/css">a#vlb{display:none}</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Slider/engine1/jquery.js"></script>
<!-- End Slider HEAD section -->

AND:

<!-- Start VideoLightBox.com HEAD section -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://www.floressencetea.com/mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Videos/engine/css/videolightbox.css" type="text/css" />
<style type="text/css">#videogallery a#videolb{display:none}</style>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.floressencetea.com/mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Videos/engine/css/overlay-minimal.css"/>
<script src="http://www.floressencetea.com/mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Videos/engine/js/jquery.tools.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://www.floressencetea.com/mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Videos/engine/js/swfobject.js"></script>
<!-- make all links with the 'rel' attribute open overlays -->
<script src="http://www.floressencetea.com/mm5/graphics/Home_Page/Videos/engine/js/videolightbox.js"></script>

<!-- End VideoLightBox.com HEAD section -->

There are extra closing span tags, within your Best Sellers section for each product, that need deleted. Example:

<a href="/product/Udos_Choice_3-6-9_Oil_Blend-32Oz.html#
Udos">
<img src="graphics/00000001/Udos_Choice_369_Blend-32.jpg" width="43" height="50">
<span class="Artical_Body_Text">Udo's Choice 3-6-9 Oil Blend - 32 Oz
Oil
for only $36.63</span></span></a>

When creating anchor links, such as the following, ensure there are no spaces (note the space between the pound sign and Flora):

<a href="/product/FlorEssenceTea32Liquid.html# Flora">

Finally, there is an extra closing div tag (/div) at the end of the home page, which needs deleted.

I only went through part of the home page, so it is a good idea to check all pages yourself and look for any more html errors.

Some html will not validate, such as the use of an ampersand (&) instead of the html for that character ( & ) in links, and formatting that should be in the CSS, such as valign, border, ect found in the tables of your twitter feed. The links are fixed with short links in Miva, but there's not much you can do with the formatting errors when they are pulled in with a script provided from other sites as with your twitter feed.

For the CSS, you can validate here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Hope this helps you, and best wishes to you too!

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: New Site Launch

just to be clear:

"... CSS only allows a style to be called once on a page..."

CSS doesn't care...the problem is HTML only allows an element to have ONE id and an ID can only be assigned once. <g>

to re-use a style, assign it with a Class="" statement.

[[email protected]]

Re: New Site Launch

Yes, I understand I still have some coding to cleanup, I know this will help with several problems going on. The old site was 100% perfect with the css and coding, and this one will be too soon.

Thank you