Site critique, please!

[Mali]

Hi all,

We are just about ready to go live, just fixing a few final site details though I feel like I could spend months continuing to "fix" everything so I'm trying to just get it up and get started. I'd love to get some feedback from other WAHMs, shoppers and anyone else who has an opinion! Some things I know need to be fixed: the white line on the main page (it just happened when I changed some text and I'm waiting to hear back from my website design companyso hopefully it wil be gone soon!), font inconsistency (I'm trying out some different ones to test what they look like- let me know which you like best). So here is the link for the preview site:

http://www.monkeybeanz.com/index.php

TIA, I can't wait to hear some feedback from the pros!

[Ame]

great idea!

First of all...it looks great and ready for launch BUT you asked for critique so here are my suggestions:

eliminate the large white space above the text on your home page (above your daughters pic)

add a favicon (little image next to the url)

add some images or line breaks to the text on the about us and policies pages

thats it - other than the text inconsistencies you mentioned

way to go!

[Mali]

Thanks for the suggestions, I love the favicon idea. How do i do that? I googled it and found many places that you can create one for free - any recommendations on a good one?

[Mama Dragon]

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

[Ame]

:

[kokonutmama]

I'm using Safari, and I had a very small issue: Wherever there's a link, my pointer flickers to the little hand to indicate it's a link, then goes back to the arrow. I think this is usually a CSS issue, having to do with the order in which things are defined. It's just a little annoying.

Otherwise it looks good to me. Really good. Your shippng isn't enough, you'll loose money on it, I think. And I'm always suspicious of a contact page that doesn't have an email address, or phone number listed on it. I love contact forms, but even just typing out the email address would give me a better feeling. On your About page you say you're a stay at home mom, lol, now you're a work at home mom, mama!

You might consider posting this on www.ozzu.com. There are tons of folks there who will really rip your site apart to find something to suggest. Plus, putting your link in your post there will get you started with the search engines finding you... as did posting it here ;-)

[i*wish]

I'm totally not qualified to critique but as a shopper I can say that I like the way the site looks....clean and organized. It's appealing in the color scheme and I like the monkey logo (that's what I would put up next to the url..favicon? i think).

I agree with pp about the contacts page....

Good luck and congrats!

[eepster]

I love the over all look of your site and products, I only have two suggestions.

First some of the photography is a little amateurish, slightly out of focus and the flash reflecting off the red wall. I realize that trying to fix this right now would probably be time consuming and hold you up, so I would just put it off till you have an opportunity to retake them. They are not anything I would delay for considering it is November, and you need to launch to catch the christmas season.

The second thing was that I also would want to see more contact info. People get paranoid about giving their info to an entity that doesn't have any contact info.

[Mali]

Keep 'em coming, you guys are great! I agree with the fact that some of the pics are not great. We had some last minute product switches and additions so just have to use our "living room" photos that certainly are not the best. We'll get them all fixed but I do just want to get it all up!
I definitely will put in the contact info, I hadn't really thought about it before (hence the need for feedback!).
kokonutmama, do you know how I should fix the flicker effect? I use zencart and really know nothing about this stuff! Can you actually click on the links? Thanks again everyone.

[kokonutmama]

NICE ZEN! Mine all look like they're straight out of the box, you really put some time into making yours look custom.

No, I don't know how to fix it, and wouldn't bother if I were you, unless it happens in other browsers, too. Safari users are pretty rare. :-) I checked it in Firefox and it's fine there, and I checked your css, you've got the defines in the correct order. I am rreeeeaaalllly not very knowledgable about web design so that's all I can do.

By the way, NICE ZEN! did I say Nice Zen? Nice Zen.

[Mali]

Thanks kokonutmama, though I can't really take credit. The website design company I worked with were really great about listening to what we wanted and looking at our sketches and trying to work it out in zen. I was super picky and am surprised sometimes that they don't just ignore my e-mails now!
I've changed a few things and am having above mentioned website company give it a final test once over as I am not at all confident about my ability to pick up any glitches that might have occurred before we go live. I'll keep you all posted.

[Neth Naneth]

Anything that I thought was previously stated but I wanted to wish you the best of luck in sales.

[_betsy_]

The product photos are too small. They don't say "click me!" to me.

Great looking site, though! Love the monkey!

[lalaland42]

I like your site. My few comments are:

1. Make the product pictures a little bigger. They are way too small.
2. When you click on a link (for example, clothing) in the navigation, the text on the following page is too small. The text I am talking about begins with, "Since these are all Monkey Beanz samples..." I had to resize it twice to read it (although I read with my glasses off so resizing it once is not a biggie).
3. On the one-sized clothing items, I would probably state that somewhere in the description.
4. On the clothing items with options such as sizes, the word Size and the drop down box is aligned a little funny.
5. Is your policies page entirely in bold? It is difficult to read.
6. On the product detail page, there is an image link that says: :listings: I was confused as to what this was supposed to mean.

I really do like the look and feel of your site, I think it will be great once it is ready to go live.


BTW, I am running Firefox.

[Mali]

The font is currently the biggest PIMA as for some reason I now can not seem to get the policies page to not be in bold and the font sizes are either that really small one (which I totally agree is too small) or one that is readable but I think looks ridiculously large. I'm hoping my website design company can help me out cuz nothing I do seems to make much difference and I don't know enough to figure it out!
I think I'll try making the product images a little bigger to see if they pop out more. Previously I had the images on the product page as the floating prodcut image (these are now on the actual product page when you scroll down) but I got some feedback locally that the pics with the kids were more motivating to click on and then see the detailed product image on the product page. Anyone have any thoughts on that?
Thank you all, this is such a huge help to get your ideas. Hopefully I can get all these kinks worked out and be up this week.

[Jacksmum8]

Just wanted to say good luck! You products look great