www.LittleChooChooShop.com

[LittleChooChoo]

I just put up our new website. I am not actually professionally trained as a web designer. In fact, my degrees are in accounting and business administration. But I had taken courses in computer programming in the past so I simply taught myself HTML and learned a little graphic design to create this site.

Therefore, I need some professional critiques! So far customers seem to love it as I've gotten nothing but positive feedback but I want as much input as I can find. I know that the pages are fairly large so I set up a quick loading graphic minimized site that can be accessed via a homepage link but please let me know how the load time is on your machines. It seems to be very quick via my home and work broadband connections. The shopping section can be accessed (even though the button says coming soon) but all I have up is a basic product search...If you'd like, please feel free to give me input on my search design as well.

www.littlechoochooshop.com is the URL.

Thank you very much for your help!

[The Old Sarge]

Any particular reason you use Active X?

Some people, myself included, do not like to download that sort of thing, particularly on a business machine.

Hence, I can't give you much of a review. What I can see looks fine.

I cannot find a place on the screen to right-click to get your code but I have one critisism:

Is there a way you could make your columns a percentage value so they "flex" with whatever window size (within limits of course) a visitor arrive with?

[JPnyc]

Well the idea is a good one but the background makes the text a little tough to read. Also, why are you using flash for the feedback? That seems pretty wasteful to me. As someone who tends to surf with activeX disabled (IE can't load flash without activeX) I would never have known it was there.

Overall it's not bad but it needs some usability tweaks. The links have no hover state

[LittleChooChoo]

I heavily considered basing the width on screen % but the boss liked it this way because it got nice and big on his screen to read so I just left the right column without any terribly critical information so people won't have to go over to it over and over again with 800x600 resolution.

I think IE makes you download ActiveX to see Flash and the Contact and Feedback forms on my site are flash simply because I don't know to program mail forms in any other way so I bought a program to create flash forms.

[JPnyc]

No, if you have activeX disabled, you just see an empty space with a tiny red X. Nothing is prompted for DL, at least not here. Flash is best left for pure eye candy and window dressing. It shouldn't be used for much beyond that, in my opinion.

[roban]

I found the text difficult to read because of the textured background and I could not find any products that you sell. The site loaded slowly (in Fire Fox) and there was no navigation to any information that as a railroad modeller I would be interested in. As a first time visitor I probably would not come back.

You have to make it incredibly easy for someone to find what they are looking for. You have about 5 seconds to grab a potential customer's attention and if you fail to do that, they are gone and most likely will not be back. If your store is not ready, I strongly suggest taking the site off-line until it is.

You have a very specific niche and you have to present yourself as an expert in the field. If there had been some information about railroad modelling, even though I'm not interested in it, I would have read it just to learn something. Putting a site online with clever backgrounds and flash is just not going to make it today. You have to offer something that folks cannot get anywhere else or at least they have to come to you for information or knowledge in your chosen field.

[LittleChooChoo]

Thank you very much roban for the tips! I can't believe for the life of me that I didn't think of putting more generic model railroading information on the site! I'm preparing an entire knowledge base with helpful hints for people getting started in the hobby, creative ideas for experts, a rundown of hobby facts (what are the scales, what makes them different, what is DCC, etc.), a page of new tips, and a list of resources and general knowledge of the hobby.

As for the background...I went ahead and softened it to make text even more readable. And the shopping cart is online now but half our aim is to show people why they should come to Spencer and see our store so I feel the site was perfectly reasonable without the cart. In fact, our last website never had online shopping.

Thank you very much for all your input.

[roban]

It's looking much better. I wish you much success with your store.

Can you make the text in the nav bar a little cleaner. Sorry but I'm anal about these things. It gets really fuzzy especially when you get into the smaller font.

Oh yes and don't forget 'alt' text for your images. Remember spiders don't read images.