please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

[meveret]

I have a set of products and would like to make an online store that will work to move the product. Any comments are welcome, don't be shy, what do you think of www.fireglo.net or www.messagefromtheheart.net. Fireglo links to messagefromtheheart because fireglo was the existing site while I worked on the new store. I am new to this I have 4 sites I have created over the last 6 months. What do you think, any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thank You
P.S. has anyone else had success with zen-cart?

[whiteshepherd]

Re: please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

It is looking really good ... pages load very slowly ... how big are photos? someone with more knowledge than me will be able to help you with the loading times but I am on broadband and the front page is still trying to load ...

Some of the text in new for June on the front page ... it is hard to tell where it starts and finishes for each product ... maybe considering defining it more easily for your customers somehow ....

good luck with it all .... I really lik what you are doing

[micheleros]

Re: please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

Michael,

I had no problem viewing your site at all the images loaded very quickly.

Just a few comments:

Your 'welcome' at the top of the site, doesn't fit in with the rest in that the font is too small and it's right up at the top of the page, when you actually have a huge area to play with. I would consider changing the font to a larger one and maybe design it so that the graphic itself fits in with the feel of the rest of your site.

Your menu buttons at the top may look better if you again increase the font and also space them so that they are in line with the centre section of your site. Sometimes white font can be hard to see, especially for ...ahem! Seniors.

Product Reviews: Rather than saying that 'there are no current reviews' it may look more professional to put 'coming soon' in there rather than the above.

The main part of your site seems to justify to the left too much showing a large white area that may look better if is was more centred as the further down the page you go the more noticeable it becomes as you don't have anything on the left or the right to balance it.

Conditions of Use: There is no text on this page.

Newsletter Unsubscribe: This I'm confused with....I couldn't find a place to 'subscribe' to your newsletter, so it may be better here to ask people to 'subscribe' and if they do then include your unsubscribe in the newsletter itself.

Sitemap: For presentation purposes you may need to increase your font here, centre everything and make sure you have adequate spacing between the headers as at the moment it all runs into each other.

By the way, let me know how you did your currency thing, I think that is really good that you can hop between currencies instead of inputting a value.

Other than that it looks great!

Hope all this was helpful.

Michele

[Mouke]

Re: please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

Hi Michael,

The pics for me load moderatly quickly, they phase in as I scroll down but no major problem.

I find the black font on a purple background in some areas of the site hard to read, on my laptop I have to tip the screen back & forth to read it.

Some of the side adverts like the FireGlo advert in the sponsors section seem to encroach onto the main page...thats the sponsors bit highlighted in blue on the left...I see you have another on the right at the top for Zen cart, which also encroaches, along with the categories section on the other side the top menu bar. Why have two sponsor sections anyway?

In the categories section, personally I would like to see the new products link at the top, flashing with fairy lights (ok not that far) but prominent. I always check the new stuff link on a site to see how up to date they are & I presume its stuff you want to promote & sell from potentially new suppliers so you can negotiate bigger discounts.

Are you looking to add more languages? if not why is the section there?

Looks good overall though, plenty to draw a customer in and keep them for a good while, which means less time on a competitors website!

Cheers

Dave

[larazovich]

Re: please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

Hello.
Interesting site, and interesting product.
First impressions:
Your site starts off saying something about 'with our deepest sympathy we have created...'
That was my first indication that the site was about permenant floral arrangements, a rather serious subject.

To me, the contrasting colors and the site arrangement don't reflect an adequate level of reverence one would associate with a product being marketed to people in the midst of grieving.
I might suggest a softer overall look, colors more muted and complimentry rather than bright and contrasting.

Also, your font size is really small, which is hard to read.

I was a bit put off by your asking me to log in, too. You might ask yourself why someone would want or need to log into a store of this nature. It makes me feel like you want to 'hook' me somehow.. cookie my site for some other advertising need..

It looks like you have used a template for your site that might possibly be suited for another type of site - not just the colors, but the set up with the side colums looks upon first glance as lots of advertisements. I realize it isn't, mostly, but I don't think this is the impression you wnat to give people.

Your product photos - I think they might show better on any other color than black, again, something softer. Most likely they wont be seen against black, ever, and they tend to look alittle harsh shown in that way.


Additionally I think some of your visitors might find the fundraising section to be alittle offensive - day glo t-shirts on a site for funeral arrangements?

I hope you do not take offense at any of my comments - that is not my intention. I am one person with one point of view.

I think this product has significant sales potential, but I believe you have not done it justice with this particular mode of presentation

I wish you luck with your endeavor.

[Collectors-info]

Re: please review www.messagefromtheheart.net

Hi, cant get my head around this one. A lot of your thumbnails are at very high in KB’s & load real slowly. If you go to this page http://messagefromtheheart.net/index...index&cPath=20 a lot of the thumbnail images are around the 1 meg each. & should only be about 5 kb for this size image. So I don’t know if there is something you can adjust in zencart to change this. But a lot of your pages are really slow loading. This is the same on some of the other pages.
The strange thing about the page, is when you put some of the pages through an analyser, a lot of the images don’t come up as part of the page. Its almost like they are in iframes, but I cant see the frames.
To you, the site will seem fast as you will have all the pages caught up in you computers cache. So loading times after the 1st visit will be fast.