Website Review and Suggestions

**Branden Thomas** · 07-31-2009, 10:58 PM

Hi, we would greatly appreciate a website review. We have tolled away hard at work to create the website. www.ribbonsbaskets.com

Thank you!

**Branden Thomas** · 08-01-2009, 02:05 AM

Any comments would be greatly appreciated, we have tolled hard and are hoping tha the site is easy to navigate. Any comment on improving the overall design, usability and SEO tips would be great!

**davemies** · 08-01-2009, 02:13 AM

very nice!

text is a little bit small

you need to optimise the size of your images - they should be 1/3 to 1/2 the filesize

**WebTraffic** · 08-01-2009, 02:29 AM

looks great.

a couple things though... your links on the bottom of the home page are too big to fit in the boxes provided, and your Call us toll-free text is out of place.

Other than that, good job!

**NewBreed** · 08-01-2009, 04:03 AM

I got to be brutally honest, the brown looks like crap, I mean literal crap. I'm just one guy with one opinion, but I think you should change colors. Besides that you have some images overlapping other images and text. Also your CSS isn't validating. On the bright side of life, I like your three column layout and the way you organized your links. Very nice and well thought out.

**TWD** · 08-01-2009, 05:30 AM

I think its a very good looking site.
I can see that your product range has lots of nuts and chocolates
and red wines and wicker baskets so to me, the earthy brown
colors seem natural.

NewBreed made a good on call on the broken layout.
Obviously it was designed in Firefox or some other decent browser but
never tested in Internet Explorer. In IE7 there are some layout issues that
will need to be patched.

There is a problem with the mouseover effect on "Gift Baskets by Holiday".
It only triggers on a very narrow portion of the menu bar.

I like the animated image gallery on in the center but
why did you choose FLASH? You could have easily done the same effect
with any JavaScript framework. Remember that more and more people
are browsing with iPhones.
JavaScript works on an iPhone. FLASH does not.

You should take another look at the order of your tags in the header also.
The external JavaScript links should come very last before your </head>.
It delivers better page load time.

QUESTION
Which shopping cart software did you use for this?
ZenCart? OS Commerce?

**wallarookiller** · 08-01-2009, 08:29 AM

Wow Thats a great site! The only thing I would change is if you go to say weddings and anniversary the title tag should include the phrase gift baskets as well. Thats a huge boost for SEO

**Branden Thomas** · 08-01-2009, 11:54 AM

Thank you for all that great feedback, invaluable to me! NewBreed, I would have to say that I am sticking with the brown. I think it looks great and as TWD mentioned, the color goes well with our products. Our previous design was designed with a green color palette but is now brown.

Thanks for all the feedback on the compatibility options, looks like I still have some more frickin menu bar issues :/

TWD thanks for all those great tips, I'll be trying to figure out how to switch the flash slideshow to JavaScript, fix design errors, and fix JavaScript header problem. I used Zencart.

**The-Pixel** · 08-01-2009, 10:38 PM

Overall I like it. Very neat and professional. I'm not a fan of the brownish / tan color you have but I can totally understand why you selected it. One suggest I have for you that would really really help your website is your footer. You have text like 'Affiliate Program Become a Supplier' that is so small that no one can read it. I strongly suggest making changes to this area. Best of luck to you and your website

**TWD** · 08-01-2009, 11:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Branden Thomas

TWD thanks for all those great tips, I'll be trying to figure out how to switch the flash slideshow to JavaScript, fix design errors, and fix JavaScript header problem. I used Zencart.

Any particular reason you went with The Zen?
Which other cart systems did you compare it against?
Whats Zen like to customize and administer?

I'm just curious thats all.
There are soooo many different shopping carts I would
like to learn about the pros and cons of each.