Our store

You're in charge, it's your own teddy bear. However, stay in charge. The logo, the background, and the orange at large work well together, and, yes, what you have is visually up to snuff against what the big boys often blow anyway regardless of whatever they spent. So far only one observer seems to have a dislike for orange. The orange happens to contrast nicely with even the stark white and is accordingly instantly legible (look at the OC default cyan text, ditto the Forum moderators' cyan names, to see how, yes, cyan is a v. nice color, but, no, thin cyan is not best against stark white).

Remember that your trademark can be in different colors. The mark itself is a design that may lend itself only to black-and-grey or two greys in colorless print, or only to colors that contrast well with different backgrounds. When a TM or SM is eligible to be registered (in use for a prescribed prerequisite time), then anyone drafting the registration papers will pay attention to broadening the claims, such as to include design variants and color variants that under applicable law (at the time) can be brought under one registration. Plural registrations for variants are all the more expensive.

Perhaps the objections (one strong, one weak) to orange arose over color balance. You can take a screen capture into a graphics program and fiddle with hue (there will be a Hue slider) to see what the balance between red and yellow in the orange does for you. Then you can bother with masked or selective recoloring to see what adjusting the orange itself in situ does for you. You may wind up with the original orange, you may wind up with it shifted. You do not NEED someone else to try that for you, just get paint-dot-net or photofiltre (both freeware) and tinker.

Ditto background. If you swap out logo colors relative to their contrast against shifted background hues, you can reach alternative treatments just to have at the ready for occasional novelty.

I happen not to like forty acres of stark white populated by thin lettering, and I would dispense with the stark white panel. You can play with a screen capture to see how tints or greys work for you. If you really like the white, particularly after seeing what happens without it, then use the white.

Visually it is pretty well there. However, proofread e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, and rewrite where warranted (above).

Thank you I do appreciate your opinion.

I'm actually in the process of registering our logo/brand as a trademark. I know it's strong and hopefully we can compete. So far we seem to be able to and we are attracting alot of punters because we are not "the big boys" which is a positive.

I have been building our social offerings, too with Facebook being very popular for our customers and nearly at 2000 likes. I'm pleased with that progress.

Over all the more time I look at it, the more time I spend over thinking it - I am working on our f.a.q and really giving good solid information.

I've asked our solicitor to write up our terms, legally - so we know we are 100% compliant.

I am now working on a community forum and blog and trying to integrate that into the store aswell. Although having to pay a developer, I dont mind this investment.

Thanks for the support guys, its really great to see that! Appreciate it

Jolly good, with a solicitor already on board he will instantly see whether you're jumping the gun on your side of the Pond. On our side of the Pond a TM or SM must be used for at least a year before application (and even the significant application fee) will even be accepted for registering it. And if the encircled R is used before registration, then all is woe, the TM or SM cannot be registered afterward. (Copyright here works t'other way, mark, then register.) The roads into and from Blunderville are boobytrapped.

Meanwhile, adding tiny TM sans-serif just beside or below the logo signifies that it is a formal TM, and on both sides of the Pond both common and statutory law afford the mark in use so marked (TM, SM) more than a minor modicum of protection. He'll happily fill you in with nine yards of that sort of thing.

I gather he passed muster, he likes orange.

Yeah hes seen it already the logo and hes happy - theres nothing like it at the moment. So we are very lucky!

If you don't want to "waste" all that money on a solicitor you could draft it and give it to them to check

UK business forums are a good source as is the FSB if you are a member

It wasn't the solicitor that he didn't want to spend unnecessary money on. It was "a design firm to redo" that he wanted to avoid. He has a solicitor; who even likes orange.

Yes he does like the orange

I don't mind about the solicitor. I know then its been doing properly as I don't really have a clue. Id rather help support another local business. Its just short of £1000 which isn't too bad considering.

I've had quotes of £8000 to redesign the look but the design firm kept pushing magento on me and I don't like Magento.

Over here the kilocrown would cover about two hours of specialized legal eagle, so that's in the right ballpark. It's well worth it if you aren't up to taking on the registration maze yourself.

EIGHT?! Kilocrowns, yet? For that a body could buy a lorry and a laptop machine and show his website and take payments while making on the spot deliveries in person. There's OC, and there's everything else combined; no contest. That would be huge lumps for Magento itself, and for styling it, which is a headache waiting to happen. What you have is perfectly presentable, the theme didn't cost both arms and both legs, and it's actually pleasant to look at, including WITH the orange.

Hi FoneFactoryLtd,

I like your store but your background is very distracting to. Perhaps you should use a lighter or transparent background? You should consider optimizing your website too. I just learned to do this a few days ago. My speed rank jumped from 43 to 89. I'm still working on the sprites and others optimizations. I'm hoping to get be far in the 90's. You can check your site's seo at gtmetrix.com.

My site if fairly new. I'm still learning too. As you can see, my site is plain and dull.

My website is http://sewjewel.com

Hi there,

Welcome to the Opencart.

You have a lot of contact details in your message board footer why not also have your website URL?

There is a problem when I view your products in Firefox 22.0 on Windows 7 (see below) The products get pushed to the bottom of the page. Its like the menu bar are pushing them down there.

Good luck with your new venture I hope that it goes well.

Using Fedora 18 x64, Opensuse 12.3 x64 and Firefox 22.

There is no slide show, the little circles appears and move but nothing else. Orange is definately overpowering as previously mentioned by other members.

Randomly selecting http://www.fone-factory.co/nokia-lumia-925-black I see alot of empty white space above the product image.

Why use a .co url for a uk based company?

I think looking at it the menu on the left, with brands in is pushing everything down. Will,take a look at that.

Didn't put URL in as wasn't sure it was allowed or not. So didn't want to been spamming.

As for the .co we have the .co.uk as well as a few others.

I personally like the orange. I think it's different and unique. I know when I've shown friends and friends of friends and our Facebook audience it's come back as 8 out of 10 are happy to buy etc.

I can't see the white space, iPad, chrome and my desktop and laptop all using chrome and tested in Firefox.

Here is a screenshot I have just taken

I'm almost certain it's the brands menu. I've taken it off.

Could you try now for me please?

That is more like it. Looks much better, slideshow still doesn't work though.

I've also noticed you offer Google Checkout as a payment option?

Not sure on sideshow, it's the default one from OC.

For now, not sure how much longer we can. We like nochex but they are all only temp as waiting on Sage Pay.

I only asked as it does not excist anymore

I think it's working until November.

You'll need to refrain from going downhill according to what people have chanced to say about orange. For several reasons the logo has more punch in red/orange than in orange/white. Claiming a formal trademark in various colors is supported in practice by using it likewise, but give some thought to keeping the version with demonstrated punch on the landing page. Your 8/10 speaks for itself; the ratio here is lower. Your solicitor likes orange, even if for actual legal battles he probably does choose to wear a necktie in traditionally forewarning red rather than obviously warpaint orange). Authors Against Orange Anywhere (grassroot movements need names and acroynms) have their own biases, so look at their own websites. Cleo doesn't have orange but gave reasons both ways, hers, yours. Just above we have m3kds with acres of cold colors and white and an Upfront Merchant logo whose little shield's left half must be distracting or overpowering even in that size (just because it is not a cold color), and we have Timmy564 with minor red (oh, oh, off to one side of orange!) and otherwise acres of white augmented by the grey which is itself overpowering in several regards even in the logo (not the focus of brief comments at http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=104592). The latter is apparently being worked on at the moment, what I liked earlier is not there -- but the red, white, and grey are. Bear in mind that very few of us have commented against the default bright cyan on stark white. Your immediate bottom line on beloved dreaded orange is, it attracted attention which is perforce advertising in action, in favor of the sole phone guy with the memorable bloody orange.