Eternal Goth - Gothic and alternative clothing store

Hey guys,

Recently I've been working on an OpenCart based website, and I think it's about done for now, still working on some changes in the background though.

I'm a bit of a DIY (Do it yourself) person so all modifications where created by myself and put directly into the code (No VQMods etc) except for a couple of things such as PHPMailer (I needed secure SMTP).

That's also one of the reasons I chose opencart due to it's opensource nature and clean and easily modifiable code .

Just wondering if anyone here would like to check it out, and provide some feedback .

All feedback is welcome as long as it is constructive. Feel free to ask any questions aswell.

URL: http://www.eternalgoth.co.uk/

You should scrap the welcome section at the homepage and replace it with a product module such as sales.

From what I have learned in recent web design is to stay away from dedicating a section to welcoming the customers. That should be changed to something that has to do with your products. Besides that it looks good.

Disagree with kill Welcome: it's already between two outboard product panels and moreover goes away upon hitting a category, it's short, it provides de minimus orientation ("Hey, Maude, look where I just landed!"), and it does NOT try for yet another silly and overblown "MIssion Statement" ("Oh, really, we're now on a Mission, are we, and laying yet another trite egg to show it?"). I would preface "the newest" with "among" (you're talking about a planet's worth of domains), reduce the next to say just, "We do our best to provide the best in quality, pricing, and service that any discerning Goth could want," delete the next outright, and, so as not to suggest that you're watching an antiquated "hit counter" while nobody visits, cut the last to, "We will give you an introductory blanket discount of 5% while this notice remains here." I would definitely reduce the vertical extent of the footer.

Hi,

Thank you both for the feedback . I would like to address a couple of the points, and get your opinions if that's ok .

lipps199 wrote:You should scrap the welcome section at the homepage and replace it with a product module such as sales.

From what I have learned in recent web design is to stay away from dedicating a section to welcoming the customers. That should be changed to something that has to do with your products. Besides that it looks good.

I somewhat agree with what you are saying. Although I feel if it were to have no "welcome" and instead just had products it runs the risk of bombarding the user with either repeated content or cluttered content.

The "welcome" is not static, it has a fully functional semi-blogging system behind it which will in future be used to announce various company news or latest events etc.

Please let me know if you feel this would resolve the issue you have mentioned.

butte wrote:Disagree with kill Welcome: it's already between two outboard product panels and moreover goes away upon hitting a category, it's short, it provides de minimus orientation ("Hey, Maude, look where I just landed!"), and it does NOT try for yet another silly and overblown "MIssion Statement" ("Oh, really, we're now on a Mission, are we, and laying yet another trite egg to show it?"). I would preface "the newest" with "among" (you're talking about a planet's worth of domains), reduce the next to say just, "We do our best to provide the best in quality, pricing, and service that any discerning Goth could want," delete the next outright, and, so as not to suggest that you're watching an antiquated "hit counter" while nobody visits, cut the last to, "We will give you an introductory blanket discount of 5% while this notice remains here." I would definitely reduce the vertical extent of the footer.

I agree with your points here. I will look into the welcome post and revise it's content to be worded a little better.

Although, as for the footer I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean there's too many links at the bottom? or that the copyright text block is too big? Please let me know.

Thanks to both of you.

I see a blog-fed or otherwise fed welcoming entry that does not swamp the landing page as okay and advantageous. I see a welcoming message as fully appropriate (among other reasons and examples) not only for giving prospective customers a nutshell's worth of why to look and to remember you, but also for orienting prospective customers who for whatever reason may have either searched for something "Gothic" but entirely different and realized that what you offer is actually available somewhere, or as parents searched to see before worrying too much what the teenagers in the house are actually up to and where it might stop.

I see the footer as unnecessarily tall in screen real estate. I see stacks of 6:3:3:3 links over two one-liners, the short c notice with the perhaps overly long c permissions (which will still fit together on one line on a 1024 x 768 crt) and the acknowledgment. The "My Account" items could be set beside log-in and register at top left. The others don't really need headings. The upper margin or padding of the footer can be narrowed; the upper margin or padding of the c notice band can be narrowed. "Powered by Open Source Software" can be put somewhere else or deleted. The c notice band goes full width relative to the rest of the footer, which can be widened accommodate additional columns of links and still suit desktop crt 1024x768 (laptop lcds being usually wider than that).

On the right end of the c notice bar is a relatively taller and separate rectangular area whose diagonally bottom right green is the clickable cookie controller for compliance with cookie law. That, viewed from t'other side of The Pond, is a delightful play upon some of where 1984 and Brave New World have actually gone; the government itself isn't telling us a thing but having finally learnt to spell cookie wants too belatedly to control it. Over here (too) we're still completely swamped with rampant third-party marketeers' cookies, but at least we finally have largely ineffectual e-mail opt-outs that usually aren't compliantly inserted (spam outnumbering valid missives).

Thank you for your feedback, it's very helpful.

I have bumped the EG website to the latest git branch (Internal git branch, not OC's) tonight during maintenance (2:30am to 3:00am.. gotta love being a computer tech eh? ).

Amoung the changes where a few adjustments to the footer. Mainly the copyright text has been massively shortend.

Additionally now has a facebook link aswell, with capacities to also handle twitter/google+ when configured in Admin Control Panel (can be enabled/disabled/link changed etc as you would expect from such type links)

This has also given me the opertunity to demonstrate the "news" ability so it no longer looks like a boring "welcome" message :-).

The original welcome message was edited on 04/07/13 to adjust it's text following the advise here.

As for the column links in footer, I'm currently looking into ways of either making them more efficent in some way. That is my next task, however I think for now the current set of links will suffice until I can create a better solution .

As for the cookies, it was a last minute decision as I had completely forgotton about it until 2 days before website was due to go live.. xD.

It is fully functional and disables/enables all of opencarts cookies. It's not perfect by far, but it's one of the most discrete and out of the way cookie notifications I've seen compared to some other websites which are in my personal opinion way too much "in your face" and annoying.

While EG does not set any tracking cookies (G analytics etc) at all, it's there as a "just in case" :-).

Thanks again,
Jake

Looking better and looks good. The crux of the c notice is there; it is usually implicit that you have whatever others' permissions you need (varies a tad among countries, and among attorneys). Moving Comodo to the left opposite Cookie Central on the right would free room for an additional column. I would initially match and even these up a bit:

Information / About Us / Careers / F.A.Q / Site Map
Extras / Brands / Remove Set Cookies / Special Offers / Facebook Icon Visit our Facebook
Customer Service / Contact Us / Returns / Delivery Information / Terms and Conditions
My Account / My Account / Order History / Newsletter / Privacy Policy

butte wrote:Looking better and looks good. The crux of the c notice is there; it is usually implicit that you have whatever others' permissions you need (varies a tad among countries, and among attorneys). Moving Comodo to the left opposite Cookie Central on the right would free room for an additional column. I would initially match and even these up a bit:

Information / About Us / Careers / F.A.Q / Site Map
Extras / Brands / Remove Set Cookies / Special Offers / Facebook Icon Visit our Facebook
Customer Service / Contact Us / Returns / Delivery Information / Terms and Conditions
My Account / My Account / Order History / Newsletter / Privacy Policy

Thanks. I altered the copyright notice a little, it's still one line and will still fit in 1024x768.

As for comodo and the links, I'll look into those after I've finished one of my current tasks, it has a higher priority due to it will take longer, and needs to be done sooner, and I'll be in trouble if it's not .

Thanks for the feedback :-).

I think that you should add big slider on homepage (with goth-girls models), and also information about possible sales and bargains would be good to get more conversion rate. Since product descriptions are short, maybe you could relocate it directly under Qty and "Add to basket" button. There is also space for banner under categories on left sidebar.