Very early website design, what do you think so far, Kershawguy.com

Congratulations -- setting up a website is a lot of work!

One suggestion: keep the list of blems separate from the non-blems. Some of your lists put them both together and then folks email you to make sure, asking, is that a blem........?
 
Revolverrodger said:
Will you ship to Canada as well ?
Thanks
Click to expand...

I will promise you that I will revisit this and see what the options are again, it is just tough when you have been burned a few times on International stuff. Being a small retailer makes it especially hard to lose the cost of a knife or two and I guarantee my deliveries, so when I have very little , if any control on International shipments, I tend to run from it. I will investigate again though because I don't like that it makes it tough on you guys too.

Dave
 
kershawguy said:
I will promise you that I will revisit this and see what the options are again, it is just tough when you have been burned a few times on International stuff. Being a small retailer makes it especially hard to lose the cost of a knife or two and I guarantee my deliveries, so when I have very little , if any control on International shipments, I tend to run from it. I will investigate again though because I don't like that it makes it tough on you guys too.

Dave
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Hello Dave,
I absolutely understand your concern, but Canada isn't exactly Iran or China...
Two companies (KSF and TKC) ship to Canada for a limited cost (6$) and that is where I buy most of my knives now.
I bet you will get MANY orders from Canadians who are tired of paying the insane prices they charge for knives up here.
USPS ships to Canada and I never had a problem in all my orders.
Thanks for taking the time to think about us Canucks, I appreicate it alot !
RR
 
If you are taking constructive criticism, I would like to offer mine. It is all very nit-picky stuff, but you may find it useful.

There are too many numbers around the price. I checked out the blem page and I see that you list old price, new price, savings, and savings as a percentage all next to each other with the same font, color, and size. It is very clustered and there is too much information to take in at fist glance. IMO the actual price of the items should be the most important figure.

Another thing to consider is your background color. Black on white is not that attractive, and it actually strains the eyes a little. When you get new customers to your website through search engines and whatnot, they wont spend very much time deciding if your site is a good one. It takes about 15 seconds for someone to judge a book by its cover, so make sure your cover is nice to the eyes as well as being easy to understand.

If you look at the kershaw website, you can see that they have a lightly pinstriped background that breaks the contrast between black and white. I noticed that you have diagonal pinstripes for your background, but there is a secondary background layer that takes center frame which is completely white. -That puts all your products and product information on top of a plain white background. I would consider experimenting with your background contrast.

You can always look at other websites that you like to get ideas for how to change yours.

(ps, I dont buy my kershaws from anyone else!:thumbup:)
 
The Government said:
If you are taking constructive criticism, I would like to offer mine. It is all very nit-picky stuff, but you may find it useful.

There are too many numbers around the price. I checked out the blem page and I see that you list old price, new price, savings, and savings as a percentage all next to each other with the same font, color, and size. It is very clustered and there is too much information to take in at fist glance. IMO the actual price of the items should be the most important figure.

Another thing to consider is your background color. Black on white is not that attractive, and it actually strains the eyes a little. When you get new customers to your website through search engines and whatnot, they wont spend very much time deciding if your site is a good one. It takes about 15 seconds for someone to judge a book by its cover, so make sure your cover is nice to the eyes as well as being easy to understand.

If you look at the kershaw website, you can see that they have a lightly pinstriped background that breaks the contrast between black and white. I noticed that you have diagonal pinstripes for your background, but there is a secondary background layer that takes center frame which is completely white. -That puts all your products and product information on top of a plain white background. I would consider experimenting with your background contrast.

You can always look at other websites that you like to get ideas for how to change yours.

(ps, I dont buy my kershaws from anyone else!:thumbup:)
Click to expand...

The pages with product were just put there for something to put on the page to see the set up, I will be responsable for all photos text and background, so it is not the way it will be, Thanks I am playing with ideas for home page and he has added stuff since I first posted this, it has changed, I need something that says Knives, Ha.
 
I'm glad your getting a site up. I prefer that thumbnails show the whole picture, not just a small portion of it. my .02
 
I know squat about web sites but I think the KISS principle applies. From what I have seen I like yours.
 
Hi Dave -

The site is very intuitive and easy to use. I exercised the shopping cart, added and deleting entries, changing quantities, viewing the images etc. in a couple of browsers and it all worked flawlessly.

As mentioned above, the colors are the only thing that I see that might be changed, but you mentioned that you are working on that.

Thanks for allowing is to preview your site!

best regards -

mqqn
 
Like it; got it bookmarked!
Will visit again,soon.
Very pleased for you,Kershawguy!
 
Dave, the site is looking great..... I'm not too sure that the endorsement by that no good, rat fink Thomas is gonna do you any favors though ;)
 
Looks like your headed in the right direction on the design.
Clean and simple and easy to navigate.

Glad to see you have avoided using too many fonts, something many folks do...because they can!...but it usually makes things look awful. 2 to 4 different fonts is about all you need.

One suggestion I would make is to back off on the RED. It's annoying to some folks. Generally its best to save RED for those things you really want to draw special attention too.
For example, on the home page, I would eliminate all the red except for the "Shipping in USA always FREE".
Properly combining colors is always a bit tricky, and somewhat a matter of personal taste.
I tend to prefer earthtones with color added sparingly to liven things up.
The top banner on the home page is a perfect example...I think what you have there is very nice.

I agree with The Goverments comments about the prices. They seem a bit cluttered. I'd experiment with spaceing, font size, and color to make it more readable.

Black text on white background is probably the most readable to the most people....there is a reason books have been done that way for quite awhile.
On sites I've designed I tend to stick to that when there is a lot of text information.
That being said, a nice background color can make things look attractive and still stay readable. I'm not a big fan of patterned background where a lot of text is involved, but if you keep the patten subdued, it can work.
As long as you don't put white text on black background I'll be happy. :D
Or my real favorite...red text on black!:eek:, a great way to drive folks away.
 
Alann45 said:
Looks like your headed in the right direction on the design.
Clean and simple and easy to navigate.

Glad to see you have avoided using too many fonts, something many folks do...because they can!...but it usually makes things look awful. 2 to 4 different fonts is about all you need.

One suggestion I would make is to back off on the RED. It's annoying to some folks. Generally its best to save RED for those things you really want to draw special attention too.
For example, on the home page, I would eliminate all the red except for the "Shipping in USA always FREE".
Properly combining colors is always a bit tricky, and somewhat a matter of personal taste.
I tend to prefer earthtones with color added sparingly to liven things up.
The top banner on the home page is a perfect example...I think what you have there is very nice.

I agree with The Goverments comments about the prices. They seem a bit cluttered. I'd experiment with spaceing, font size, and color to make it more readable.

Black text on white background is probably the most readable to the most people....there is a reason books have been done that way for quite awhile.
On sites I've designed I tend to stick to that when there is a lot of text information.
That being said, a nice background color can make things look attractive and still stay readable. I'm not a big fan of patterned background where a lot of text is involved, but if you keep the patten subdued, it can work.
As long as you don't put white text on black background I'll be happy. :D
Or my real favorite...red text on black!:eek:, a great way to drive folks away.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions, yes the homepage will look completely different, we have been experimenting and it will change drastically, the prices and that stuff were throw there to have something on the page, I am all about simple things , that's why I don't charge shipping, I like the one price approach. Most of the red text will be going away also.
 
I kept typing a reply and not posting it because I thought I sounded overly negative, but Alann45 pretty much said what I wanted to say about the text. I think dark text on a light background makes for the most easy to read text. Patterns/images under text is generally awful.

The other thing is, I think your header image is overcompressed. You can see the compression artifacts, and that looks bad.

When you roll over Products Page in the main menu, the dropdown menu spills outside the main content area. Not a big deal, but I think it would look neater if it didn't. When you hover over the text in the dropdown it changes color, but it's so subtle it's almost unnoticeable.

Your text (self-intro, Thomas W's quote, product descriptions) needs to be proofread.
 
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