Suggestions for improvement (Don't Pay Retail)

They have: 426 posts

Joined: Feb 2005

Please review this site, how can it be improved. Would you buy from this site, does it look trust worthy, only i have had virtually no sales.

dontpayretail.co.uk

They have: 38 posts

Joined: Nov 2006

Very nice layout the colour scheme is good I like the site alot and can't really find anything that I think you should change with it... Good job

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

There are a couple of things you could do to make this more SE friendly. There is very little real text at the top of the source code. Learn how to do CSS layouts so that the navigation appears at the bottom of the source code (basically involves using positioning to put the navbar up at the top when it really appears at the bottom of the source code. You're already using positioning for most of the layout so this should be no problem). You could also change that top header to a text instead of a graphic. Those are good keywords there Smiling You may want to do the same with the left side navigation (you could easily do something that looks almost the same but is plain text with the graphic in a CSS background).

The title tags look good but there are no meta tags. Here is a good article posted today about why meta tags are still important.

Lose the visitors online stats - that just shows that nobody else is shopping here. Not good.

The design is okay. I think it's good enough for what you're doing here. You could put in some more calls to action, like changing the "add to basket" button to say "buy now!". You could also call attention to any added value with a graphic or bolded text. Like the delivery included bit. The light blue-green link text is a little too hard to read against the background. I find that in cases like this it works fine to just darken that colour a bit - you wont' even be able to tell that it's different from the outer background colour.

The source code is a bit of a mess. All CSS should be in an externally linked file instead of included in the page. Same with the javascript. I also notice that there is an image map on that top header which is sort of baffling.

Overall this is okay but not brilliant. You shoudl probably look closely at your competitors and see what they are doing that would help them to sell product. I imagine this is quite a competitive market.

demonhale's picture

He has: 3,278 posts

Joined: May 2005

I use firefox and I think the page has a very long white space at the bottom of the content. I like your color scheme, and the layout is direct that people can easily buy stuff on this site. Although you need to add more professional touch-ups on the header area and add content rich information just to get the site indexed better. And some people do actually read before they buy.

Next, my own input would be, to improve the header area, and you need a professional logo, the oval BG for the logo is too big and the texts are too small... The main links at the top looks like its not part of the site at all. You need to use the same approach on that area as you did the left navigation. I think some minor tinkering could do the trick...

Want to join the discussion? Create an account or log in if you already have one. Joining is fast, free and painless! We’ll even whisk you back here when you’ve finished.