small business site needs unbiased opinions

[jgnyc]

This manufacturing firm only has three retail products for sale and wanted to start selling online with a low startup cost. I configured a PHP shopping cart script for them and set it up to calculate UPS shipping, feed to Froogle, and to use Paypal for payment processing. The whole project was relatively inexpensive and they are just paying for basic hosting on a Linux/Apache host. It suits their needs, but I'm wondering if it looks unprofessional compared to larger businesses with more high-end e-commerce applications. Please give me opinions and ideas.

http://ttdindustries.com/

Thanks!

[InfoSourcing]

Hi,

It is simple and serves the purpose to sell online, however just because it has only 3 products don't make it look like they don't have products or so ..

Consider the following

1. Have the navigation on left side on all pages such as

Browse
Work Platforms
--> The Sink Surfer
--> Dash Surfer
Farm Equipment
--> EZ Horse Trainer
--> Contact Us

Keep the right side navigation restricted to Featured Items/On Sale and news/events section

Add some reviews about customers who purchased previously, you can also add more about the Company as they manufacturer and are providing direct sales ...

Overall looks fine, using php you can get started for small business owners ...

[vbeal]

I would agree with the above comments. Adding that type of a left-hand navigation would really add to the site - in fact I find it odd to visit a Web site without any left-hand nav. That is where I automatically look to maneuver through the Web site. I think the solution provided above would work perfectly!


The only other comments I can offer would be in regards to the quality of the product images. All products are shown in use, but a more retail package/look image for each item would be nice, and some images showing the products in use are quite blurry. I especially noticed this on the the pictures with the horses and farm tractor (ezhttractorgoing.jpg and ezhttractorhay.jpg). On the photo with the tractor you actually can't even see the product in use because it is a poor quality image. On another page dsphotorichard.jpg looks like a bad scan from a newspaper, and ssphotoproduct.jpg is noisy, it has shows lens glare spots, and just is not a professional looking picture at all. In ssphotoplumber.jpg you can see stains on the cupboard, and it looks rather unappealing. Some of these images can be brought up to a somewhat professional quality with an image program (i.e. those stains can easily be removed with a clone brush, most programs have an artifact or automated noise removal function). I think that if you add professional photos and images of the products in use, it will leave visitors with a more positive view of the products overall.

Good luck!

[jgnyc]

You guys are right. Regarding the nav - I don't really like having the categories and not the products there; I don't know why I didn't think of doing it the way infosourcing suggests above.

The photos came directly from the manufacturer and I didn't realize until now how much they have to do with why I think the site doesn't look professional. I keep looking at it going "what's wrong with this site? what's wrong with this site?" Now I can see that the photos have a lot to do with it.

Thanks!