75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

[Karen Mac]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Sheyrl

I was digging around and your personalized page with the blue background is better than the yellow.. I even think you could take the tone of that dark red thats in your buttons and use it as a background, maybe with a thin blue border.. or vice versa.. like a frame.. if you follow me.. Just a thought.. to tone down the brightness just a tad..

Karen

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Okay, Karen . . . switched that page over to matching red background and blue border.

http://cust-m-cartoons.custmcartoons.com/personalizeditems.php

I'm not real sure if I like that or not. I know red is considered a "power color", but when I was managing apartments we were told to stay away from red in marketing because it was too intimidating or scary for people. Although, my products are maded in the USA, so maybe this color scheme would work.

Do you think the blue border is too much?

I'll keep working on my product pages because I have so many to do. If all I need to do is go in and make a final decision on the background color and republish, that won't be so bad.

Maybe some other Vodies will chime in and give me their two cents worth on color scheme. Haven't heard back from Beth yet either. She must be busy today.

[Bethers]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

You must have missed my two messages above Karen's???

I also thought red was a good idea to try - but like the bright yellow find it too much. However, you might want to put a border around the page in red I suggest the red border be sized from 5 - 10 somewhere) - then the blue background? I think that would give it some pizzazz.

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Just realized I'm wearing a "red" shirt in my photo! I also changed the sizes of the pictures on my Cartoon Designs page.

http://cust-m-cartoons.custmcartoons.com/cartoondesigns.php

Chris pointed out that the images were fuzzy, so I think I figured out how to use the Pix Resizer. Could you let me know if the images are loading faster?

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Sorry Beth . . . those must've come in while I was watching "The Apprentice".

I'll do up a page with "red" border and blue background and post that one for you guys to take a look at.

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Here's a different page with red "5" border with blue background . . .

http://cust-m-cartoons.custmcartoons.com/cartoondesigns.php

This is also a page with images 3 across rather than 4.

BTW: Do you ever get "demoted" for asking for help all the time?

[Karen Mac]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Sheryl .. that works too! I like both ways!

Too much red can be over powering.. but I use alot of red on charming and at xmas time on my other sites., its a WARM color to me. <shrug>

Karen

[Collectors-info]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Hi, Sorry was a bit slow getting back. Looks a lot ,lot better with only 3 images. Also removing the blue BV shape bar with the rounded ends is a bonus. You can do some nice things with BV shapes, but anything with rounded corners is a no/no unless you need it to look like a carpenters saw.
Backgrounds! Now there’s a personal decision? For me!
Light green looks a bit washed out?
Blue seems bright?
Yellow was very bright.
Red seems to blend in with the site a little better.
But all of these depend on what size screen a visitors has & how bigger dose of colour they are getting. Decisions, eh!
Have a look at some big brand sites. They will have spent a lot of money making sure that colours are right for the products.
On some of the pages I see that when you click on an image it goes straight to the order page with the larger image. (Works well)
18 – 21 image per page feels comfortable as well. You won’t want more than this as the loading times will start getting slow.

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Good morning Chris & Karen. Thanks for weighing in on the colors. I think that's going to be my biggest challenge!

Karen: I think both the red background and blue background looked good too. I'm kinda up in the air about the border around it though. If I ever went to change my color scheme that would be difficult to remove/replace on so many pages.

Chris: You mentioned 18-21 images per page . . . my concern going with the 3 across images is that I have three categories that have lots of images: hobbies (34), sports (34) and occupations (42). Did you feel that those were now too long? I hate to do the Next Page thing on those categories, because I've heard it's a no-no to do that.

http://cust-m-cartoons.com/hobbies.php

http://cust-m-cartoons.com/occupations.php

Not sure what you mean about the BV shape with the rounded corners . . . I don't think I had anything like that.

[SChajin]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Hi Sheryl,

Your site looks great and loads very quickly for me (DSL) good job and I see you changed the colors.

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Thank you Sharon. Color choices are tough aren't they?

The links to my category pages above was wrong. Should have been:

http://cust-m-cartoons.custmcartoonscom/hobbies.php

http://cust-m-cartoons.custmcartoons.com/occupations.php

Do you think there are too many pictures on those pages?

[Collectors-info]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Hi, Colours are a pain, I know after about 4 changes. lol. But seeing as the theme is jovial, I would keep it bright’ish.
You have some similar colours to eBay & they got it right? Try some of theirs. They must have somthing right.
Talking on eBay! If you look at there pages, they seem to have about 50 thumbnails per page. But these are no more than 2kb each to help with quick loading of the pages. I bet most of eBay pages are between 200 & 300 kb max, visitors will leave a site if pages are to slow.
If you have 34x10kb = 340 + header 72 = 412 +sundries like text & so on 100= 512 This is not to bad with images. But 50 images maybe pushing it a bit unless the image kbs can come down a bit more, without los on quality. The 2/300 target was acceded with just the cartoon images alone.
Take one of your images & past the url into this site http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/ & press optimize. You might be supprize on how mach you can save. & maybe get the 50 on one page.
With the changing of colours on your site, if you have it set up the .php way from Navals post, you should be able to change everything from one or two pages, accept the white area where you have your cartoons.?

[SherylT]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Thanks for the link for the optimizer! I'm definitely going to bookmark that. I checked out a lot of my pictures, and right now most are 11 or under, so I think they'll be okay. Will definitely use this on my next site.

It funny you should mention EBay because that's where I got my "inspiration" for the colors in my logo. I've decided to go with the colors that Beth suggested. All will have red border and blue background. I'm working on my last category page now which is "occupations". Then I'll start on the individual product pages.

I didn't know that I could do background set up in php too, so I've done each page individually. Will no better next time.

Thank you for your input. I'm hoping to have site finished so I can change nameserver and move from present hosting by the end of March.

[Collectors-info]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Good luck with the site, i am sure thing will chage a few times yet.

[Karen Mac]

Re: 75% Finished, Awaiting All Comments!

Sheyrl,

Dont hate me but.. That rounded image on the bottom i think would look better just squared off, as one side runs to the square and the left side doesnt. Other than that I think its looking great!

Karen