Looking for some input please

I have a site that will soon go live. I'm waiting on some information from the client. It is for a small boutique here in New Orleans. I took some pictures and information from their old site and put it in the staging site for them to get a better idea of how it looks with their products instead of iPods. Also, I'd like to hold out for 1.4.8 before going live.

Anyway, one place I would like some input on is the product detail page. I changed out Thickbox and used Fancy Box, I added the jQZoom and jCarousel mods from Qphoria. I like his mods mucho. I just want some input if it is overkill with everything going on by the image. Also, I got the Vortex template as my base and modified it from there.

Please be honest, even if you think it's poo.

http://fairy.itlogic.org

Ok

one thing though the text use for the menu headers would turn me away as they are hard to read and will be worse if someone has bad vision

I agree a little bit with easyhost. Overall, I think you have a great start. I wouldn't consider it done and if I were the client, I would be happy but would expect some major changes in the coming weeks/months. If you want to stand out today, you really need to get with the times and what others are doing. Take your queue from the largest companies like Amazon, eBay, Crutchfield, and others. A quick search on Google brought up some very interesting websites that would not be hard to compete with:

http://www.trendytagboutique.com/
This website seems too generic.

http://www.artfulwears.com/
This website is not clean, it has a very "wacky" layout and would definitely turn people away from buying.

When buying online the first thing that I look for is not HTTPS (SSL), it's the website and does it look professional. I want the company that I am buying from to be professional. If the website is professional, then the owners, customer service, and other people that you *might* have to get in touch with at some point during the transaction will care more. It's all about presence.

I have a few years of eCommerce and building websites under my belt. What I would do?

1. Add a featured content slider to the home page. You can feature some dresses or different sections of the website. (Check in contributions. I posted a jQuery based slider that works very well and is easy to customize)
2. Get a bit more "creative" : http://fairy.itlogic.org/index.php?route=account/login - When I get customers, I don't necessarily want them to know that the thousands of dollars they are paying me (or even hundreds) was for me to "theme" an open-source piece of software that I got free (there is a difference between free and open-source). I want them to know that they are getting their monies worth
3. Remove the spaces from your URLs - While Google will index these, having spaces is not recommended. Replace the spaces with a hyphen or underscore. Exampe: http://fairy.itlogic.org/dresses/black% ... %20ruffles would be http://fairy.itlogic.org/dresses/black- ... th-ruffles This looks better overall
4. Move the "shirts hanging on rack" picture to the template for each page and change it with each catalog or page. Make it more dynamic
5. Theme the "cart" page a little better.

For some examples, you can check out one of my sites: http://www.12voltsupplyhouse.com. You can also PM me if you would like more direct/personal help.

Thanks guys that is helpful. As for the font, the client picked that one. I may play around with similar ones that are a little more readable.

I do have a slider for the header, but only have the one rack picture for now. Actually that is just a temporary picture I pulled off the internet. I just wanted something there to get an idea of what it would look like. I do like the idea of having a different header for each page.

I am a little apprehensive to change too much of cart functionality right now. I know 1.4.8 is coming out soon and if I start diving into the code, more than just styling, I don't want to have to do it all over again when I upgrade. Otherwise, I agree and intend on changing some other things that you mentioned.

Finally, I'm trying to get something somewhat quick so the client can start populating the database with their products and start marketing. From there I will work more on "modernizing" it.

Again thanks and keep them coming, good or bad. I like honesty.

Lots of people like me have a difficult time reading so try to clear up some of the text so its easier to read. The words "Home" "On Sale" "Categories" etc are very difficult to read. The default letters like dresses, tops, bottoms are easy to read. I also think you logo should have a little color in the dragonfly. I like the yellow dragonfly in the photo. Make the dragonfly in the logo have that yellow color. Also, I would crop the main picture top and bottom by at least 50%. We know what cloths on a hanger look like. It takes up too much room and the colors you choose are "Warm" colors where your site uses "Cold" colors. It is a conflict. I think using all "Warm" colors would work better. Instead of using a black background, use a leather brown. The more I think of it, the fairies are a whimsical theme, the cloths are contemporary and the site font is almost medieval, the borders around the product is too busy. Maybe if you just fixed the fonts and made the main picture black and white it would work more in unison. Sorry, I know my site is right out of the box but I just thought I would give a second opinion. Please don't be mad or take it personal.
Thanks
Scott

Not Appealing to me,

You have tooo much gothic style that takes away from the accual products.

The frame that you display some of the products within is to distracting that I cannot even focus on the product!

The website is waaayyy to sloooww to load your pages.

You might want to take a step back and simplify it.

Todd