Seeking website critique for online jewelry retailer,
www.ShirazJewels.com

-Designed from a templatemonster.com template. I have been told it is
"obviously" designed from a template. Why? Is that not
recommended?

-Content area designed by professional web design company. I have been
told it is "obviously" not professional, how so? And I have been
scammed by a web design "chop shop."

-I have been told customers will be afraid of placing online orders on
such a website, beside the lack of trust marks (I plan to add verisign
logo and better business bureau logo) what else can I do to gain trust?

-What are your thoughts on the design scheme? Rather than the standard
white background 2 dimensional e-retail website, the template I bought
consists of the showcase 3D logo, content area is "displayed on a
wall," on a gray background When I redesign, should I work from the
existing template and look, or redesign completely?

-Usability/navigation recommendations? I plan to move the top
navigation bar under the logo, and shorten the width of the logo to
allow more above the fold.

-Aesthetics/content recommendations?

-graphics/photos recommendations?

-Use of flash - where can I use flash? I was thinking anywhere there
are models, I would replace with flash movie of models, but I don't
want to distract from the jewelry too much

Thank you
Shiraz Jewels, LLC.

shirazjewels.com wrote:


Looks ok to me.



Looks ok to me.




You have a shopping cart link at the top, yet I can see no way of adding
anything to the cart. If I click 'Order' on an item it takes me to a page
where I have to enter the product description and *price* myself, before
paying. This is very unprofessional and I certainly wouldn't place an
order, especially for high cost stuff like jewels.



--
Brian Wakem
Email: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/b.wakem/myemail.png

On 23 Dec 2005 14:08:44 -0800, shirazjewels.com put finger to keyboard
and typed:

It looks cheap. That might be acceptable for a budget retailer, but at
the prices you are charging you should ensure that your site looks
uniquely yours.

The ordering process is convoluted and doesn't seem to have been well
thought-out. Why should I need to enter the product code in order to
add it to the cart - why can't I just click on a "buy now" button on
the product description, for example? That's indicative of a lack of
professionalism in the design team.

Trust marks are a bit of a marketing ploy, although they do work in
that sense so they're worth having. The most important thing is to
ensure that any card payments are taken via a secure server.

If it was me, I'd be inclined to start again from scratch.

It's not too hard to find your way around, although your ideas of
mocing the navigation and reducing the logo size are sound. Mostly, I
think you should sort out all the missing alt text from images -
you've got a lot of images-as-text that are used as lins, and with no
alt text you're seriously hurting your Google ranking.

Personally, I don't like the grey. It's too overpowering, and makes
the product images look dull. It also makes the bits that are coloured
look unprofessional, as they don't fit the overall colour scheme.

I think you need some more product images, and make them clearer - you
need real photos of the products, not stylised ones. If I was a buyer,
I'd want to be able to judge what the products would look like when
being worn.

If you use Flash, use it sparingly. One area you could use it is to
have moveable images of the products in use - being able to zoom in on
a ring on someone's finger, for example, and rotate it, would be
helpful. But don't replace your standard product images with Flash, or
use Flash anywhere that makes it fundamental to the functionality of
the site.

Mark
--
http://www.CorporateContact.info - phone and email contacts for Amazon, eBay, etc.
"I know I can be afraid but I'm alive"

On 23 Dec 2005 14:08:44 -0800, "shirazjewels.com"
<google_groups@shirazjewels.com> posted something that included:

Rule 1 is have something to say, and say it. That's not unique to
websites, but to *any* communications document, including ransom
notes.

Take a look at your website, and pretend that all the words are in a
foreign language. Can you tell what the website is selling? Well,
neither can anyone else. The problem with template websites usually is
that you're reversing the order - the artist/designer had no idea what
you were trying to say when he came up with the design.

That won't always be true. Sometimes, the template designer will
figure out what might need to be said, and you'll wander along and
say, "Hey, that's what *I* want to say." I think of it as being like
shopping for cards at the Hallmark shop - "when you insist on sending
the very best of someone else's words saying something other than what
you would say if you could figure out what to say"

You don't have to go to a template website to get a really bad design.
You can get it from most designers as well, no matter how hard the
designer tried. You have to figure out what you want to say, and spend
a lot of time with the designer, so he can figure out what needs to be
said. Then, if he "got it" and his skills are sufficient to the task,
*maybe* you'll get something both you and your potential customers
will like.

But when you find yourself that rare designer that "gets it", be sure
to overpay generously. You're going to want to continue doing business
with him, and there's nothing like feeling appreciated to make him
want to move you to the top of the list.





--
If we're losing 40-130 species a day,
How come nobody can itemize them?
And why can't fruitflies be one of them?

On 23 Dec 2005 14:08:44 -0800, "shirazjewels.com"
<google_groups@shirazjewels.com> wrote:

It's not obviously a template, but it's obviously bad.

Yes, you were (if not scammed) then at least "not well served".

There is no way I would ever order from this site. I would confidently
expect my credit cards details to end up in Romania if I used it. What
this site says to me is "Are these stones real?"

I've seen eBay auctions that inspired more confidence than this site.
The overall effect is that of a Geocities personal homepage, not a
high-value retailer.

The site is horrible and needs a complete re-design from scratch. Sorry.


First of all, much of the problem isn't with the site designer it's with
you, the shop owner. Have you never even used the web? Do you not know
what looks like a good site and what just looks cheap? Look at the great
paragons of usability, Amazon and eBay. Think of 10 high-end retailers
and look at their sites. Now they're no better than your site, so 6 of
these will be nasty, but _one_ of them will have got it right. And when
you've _seen_ quality, you'll know you've seen it.


As to the specifics:

Non-fluid design. I have a big screen window, but your site only sits in
a narrow stripe down the middle. Would you rent a big high-street shop,
then just set out a single table to display your wares?

Nasty 3D box thing at the top of each page. This looks like some
teenager in 1997 found a magazine cover disk with a copy of
Instant-3D-Cool on it.

Text as images. Bad. I don't want to see your florid fonts, I want to be
able to read this stuff.

Tiny white text on grey. Good body text is black on white, 1em high. You
mess with that at your peril! I don't want to admire your graphic
design skills, I want to read your content about your wonderful
jewellery. Do _NOT_ do things on your site that are making it difficult
for me the customer to buy things from you.

Underlinked links on the menus. It's hard enough to read, so don't
underline them too. There's a religious war hereabouts that "all links
must be underlined". Now that's not a bad belief in itself, but it
belongs to links hidden in big paragraphs of text, not to lists that are
obviously a navigation menu.

Wasted screen space. There are lots of odd rectangles that aren't
getting filled. This is because your HTML coders (or the template)
aren't good enough to make use of them consistently (you need someone
who really understands CSS)

Difficult navigation. I have no idea where I am in this site. The
breadcrumbs are tiny and that's all the help you offer.

Terrible use of colour. You've given me a couple of shades of grey,
whose only purpose seems to be to make the site hard to read and to look
dowdy. The Navy use exactly this shade of grey on their battleships -
but they call it "camouflage".

"Antique Enamel & Sapphire French Cufflinks"
"click for Antique Enamel & Sapphire French Cufflinks"
This is _terrible_ link text. it repeats the title that I've already
read and doesn't tell me why I ought to use this link or where it will
take me.

"PayPal verified" PayPal ? Isn't that the thing my kids use to buy
StarWars figures off eBay ? Is that _really_ the high-class image you're
after?

And now the big one: PHOTOGRAPHY.

How, in all the Seven Bouncing Hells, do you expect me to part with good
money for something that I can't _SEE_. Give me photographs. Give me
the best damned photographs your budget can possibly be stretched to.
Give them to me big on the product page and give them to me
super-jumbo-sized if I click on the "I really want to buy this" link.
At present you're charging me about a dollar a pixel for some of those
images - I just won't spend money on so little basis. Amazon give me
nearly half as big a picture on a $20 book.


Oh, and the other big one that's even bigger than the big problem.

You're asking me to re-enter a product code to buy something. Are you
_MAD_ ?! Is your site _so_ rubbish that it can't even implement a
basic shopping cart with a buy-it button? This, more than anything else
on the site, makes it look like you're a poor-quality script-kiddie out
to steal credit card numbers.


Oh well, at least you didn't use Flash !

Ah. OK then, you were thinking about it.

Use animated Flash movies of the models when you upgrade the site to
start selling me the models too. In the meantime, just show me photos of
the jewellery, not Flash of the models.

On Sat, 24 Dec 2005 00:59:09 GMT, Paul Ding <lancastir@paulding.net>
wrote:

The whole of your posting is one of the best statements I've seen of a
basic fundamental of good web design. Thanks.

shirazjewels.com wrote:


things.
And I have been
But yeah. I guess you could have done a lot better.

Can I suggest that you hire a web designer and a programer to design
you a proper website. For one thing. Your privacy policy page did not
work, I got a 404 not found error.
Which is very bad for such a website.

(I plan to add verisign

and an experienced web programer and let them take care of it.
Unless you don't want to make money.
Maybe make the middle text box white with black text. The white on gray
is hard to read. Although I think Picking colours for the web is a
harder task, due to the large amount of different screens.

still have a few pics, but they need to be more compressed so they load
quicker on dial-up conections.

distracting for those of us with loe vision.

I would suggest to have more pictures of what you offer. I think you
also need more content on thne main page. As I did not really know what
the site was about when looking at the main page. You also need to
place a darker hover colour on the navigation so it's easyer to read
againsed the gray BG.

--
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesign.cjb.cc

Writing in news:alt.www.webmaster
From the safety of the http://groups.google.com cafeteria
shirazjewels.com <google_groups@shirazjewels.com> said:

design before content is analogous to cart before horse

one of the undesirable results of this approach is this medley of markup
mayhem simply to present 4 hyper-links ...

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="0">
<!--DWLayoutTable-->
<tr>
<td width="13" height="12" valign="top"><IMG
SRC="images/logocorner_01.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=12 ALT=""></td>
<td width="70" valign="top"></td>
<td width="25" valign="top"></td>
<td width="130" valign="top"></td>
<td width="26" valign="top"></td>
<td width="137" valign="top"></td>
<td width="19" valign="top"></td>
<td width="151" valign="top"></td>
<td width="19" valign="top"></td>
<td width="72" valign="top"></td>
<td width="14" valign="top">
<div align="right"><IMG
SRC="images/logocorner_03.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=12 ALT=""></div></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="70" valign="top"
background="images/logocorner_bg01.gif"><IMG
SRC="images/logocorner_bg01.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=13 ALT=""></td>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div align="center"><font color="#CCCCCC"
size="2"><a href="javascript:;"
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('https://www.paypal.com/us/verified/pal=paypal@shirazjewels.com','','')"><img
src="images/paypal_verified.jpg" width="70" height="70"
border="0"></a></font></div></td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><!--DWLayoutEmptyCell-->&nbsp;</td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><br> <a href="javascript:;"
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://www.jewelersboard.com','','')"><img
src="images/jbt.jpg" width="130" height="37" border="0"></a></td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><!--DWLayoutEmptyCell-->&nbsp;</td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><br> <a href="javascript:;"
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://www.jvclegal.org/','','')"><img
src="images/jvc.jpg" width="137" height="48" border="0"></a></td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><!--DWLayoutEmptyCell-->&nbsp;</td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><br> <a href="javascript:;"
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://www.gia.edu/','','')"><img
src="images/gia.gif" width="151" height="45" border="0"></a></td>
<td valign="top"
bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><!--DWLayoutEmptyCell-->&nbsp;</td>
<td valign="top" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><a
href="javascript:;"
onClick="MM_openBrWindow('http://www.jewelers.org','','')"><img
src="images/ja.jpg" width="72" height="70" border="0"></a></td>
<td valign="top"
background="images/logocorner_bg02.gif">
<div align="right"><IMG
SRC="images/logocorner_bg02.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=13 ALT=""></div></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="12" valign="top"><IMG
SRC="images/logocorner_02.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=12 ALT=""></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top"></td>
<td valign="top">
<div align="right"><IMG SRC="images/logocorner_04.gif" WIDTH=13 HEIGHT=12
ALT=""></div></td>
</tr>
</table>


I expect to see this type of work from an SME owner/manager doing their
own site for the first time - never from a pro.

--
William Tasso

Save the drama
for your Mama.

On 23 Dec 2005 14:08:44 -0800, "shirazjewels.com"
<google_groups@shirazjewels.com> wrote:

Looks okay. However, if I have a complaint, the picture text is rather
low contrast and being pictures is invisible to text browsers.

I should also like to see your address in the "About" section. It just
makes me feel reassured about buying.

Matt

--
The Probert Encyclopaedia - Beyond Britannica
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com

shirazjewels.com wrote

A very quick look. Your logo is far too big, pushing important content
further down the page.

The font colour is a bit light for me, the white against the light grey is
difficult to read.

You should use a meaningful title like "antique jewelry" for example. This
counts a lot for search engines.

Looks like you have a good business and an excellent product, you can have
a good website to match!

--
Charles Sweeney
http://CharlesSweeney.com