Review: wholesale-gifts.co.uk

[WorldwideTrading]

Hi Everyone,

I have just created the first in a series of keyphrase target websites for the wholesale company I work for. The information is pulled from the online catalogue of our main website and I have utilised our existing CMS to manage the content. I also utilised existing images to create the header, etc.

The total design time for this site was 2hrs as I managed to reuse quite a bit of work I had previously done. I would be very interested to hear people opinions as to what I can do to make this site better.

To link to the wholesale gifts website click here: Wholesale Gifts

[daytimetv]

There's nothing particularly wrong with the site but it doesn't exactly grab your attention. It's a standard template with a standard colour scheme and standard fonts. You need to add a logo and some more imagery to your design.
Also, you describe some of your products in great detail, I don't feel it's necessary to has this much on the homepage. A quick description with a link to more detail should suffice.

[chicgeek]

My first impressions:

The page is entirely too long - too much content! People would rather click a couple of times than scroll. Very long webpages (more than two screens down) tend to look very unprofessional, and that is what I get from this.

Overall, with much less content, it could be spaced out quite a bit more. Increase your padding as well as your line spacing, to make it easier to read.

You will also want to investigate what is happenning to your site in FF. I'm not going to see what method you used to place your right column, but whatever it is is blocking out the top right of your header image.

Finally, your contact information there should be text, not graphic. Lets people copy or click, if needed. You're just reducing accessibility by having it embedded in an image.


Much work needed on this, I think. SIMPLIFY to make it look more professional. Don't squeeze everything in. Spread it out, let it breathe.

[mariuskl]

Sort all the content in categories. It's too long..

[Nicole]

The site is confusing. I am looking at the main page with no idea what the purpose of the site is and no idea where to click or what to do. There is no place to focus.

Also, as the others have said, the first page is entirely too long. No one is going to scroll through that.

[WorldwideTrading]

Hi thanks for the comments guys. The website is actually a single page site, it is sort of a gateway domain that I intend to seo for "wholesale gifts" (along with 20 or so others. Eventually I will add more content to each site but at the moment we are representing what is available to someone looking for wholesale gifts. All of our contact details are contained within the footer and are copy and pasteable, the header image was "half inched" from one of our brochures and extended with a few product category images from our main shop added to it.

100% of the content for this site comes from our online catalogue and our CMS and has been 100% reused for each of the 20 websites we are operating. I know its not ideal but different info is displayed on each site relevent to the industry or product line realting to the site.

[chicgeek]

So the page is actually used for sales purposes? Both the sites have major design flaws that I know would turn off any visitor immediately. I do urge you to look at the sites in FireFox, as there is a large section of the header missing.

With your contact information at the bottom, I urge you to eliminate the information in the header graphic entirely.

Originally Posted by cgreen

The website is actually a single page site... Eventually I will add more content to each site...

With more content, will there be more pages, or will the single-page plan remain the same? The crowdedness and page length are the two greatest problems with the design.

I wish you luck. I know I've been very critical, but I feel that if you are to do well with these sites, much work is needed. If you are wary about experimenting with these changes yourself, it might be to your advantage to find (maybe purchase?) an existing template online.

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by chicgeek

So the page is actually used for sales purposes? .

The wholesale gifts website will hopefully be a gateway for people googling "wholesale gifts" to find us as a company. I have listed the products gift shops generally buy with the right hand menu being a subset of our main one targeting people looking for wholesale gifts (so it only has our crafts & handicrafts section - the stone and pottery seem to be sold mainly to garden centres with the furniture going to furniture shops and garden centres also.

Originally Posted by chicgeek

So the page is actually used for sales purposes? Both the sites have major design flaws that I know would turn off any visitor immediately. I do urge you to look at the sites in FireFox, as there is a large section of the header missing.
.

I havent gotten to the bottom of what is causing the problem in firefox, but acording to our stats 97% of our visitors are using IE so less than 3% experience a problem. I can confess I prefer Firefox as a browser as it is just better than IE but when working as a web designer I believe we should all use what the vast majority of visitors are using. I would be open to suggestions as to what causes the problem.

Originally Posted by chicgeek

With more content, will there be more pages, or will the single-page plan remain the same? The crowdedness and page length are the two greatest problems with the design.

More content will come with time. We have a student comming to work for us for three months shortly who is studying marketing and is good at writing. They will be working full time on internet marketing with a specific brief to increase the content of each of these websites by writing contant aimed at specifically targeted audiences. In the mean time I will be adding the catalogues relevent to the targeted audience to the top of these industry & product line specific pages.

Originally Posted by chicgeek

I wish you luck. I know I've been very critical, but I feel that if you are to do well with these sites, much work is needed. If you are wary about experimenting with these changes yourself, it might be to your advantage to find (maybe purchase?) an existing template online.

These websites did start off with a template for the basic design (fixed width - css based). I am inserting the entire code for the main page below so you can see what it has evolved in to.

<?php require("./dbconn.php"); ?>

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>UK Wholesale Giftware, Furniture & Stone Supplier :: Worldwide Trading Enterprises Ltd</TITLE>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1251">
<META Name="Description" CONTENT="Worldwide Trading is a UK Wholesale Supplier who work very closely with our customers, from small independent outlets – Gift Shops, Furniture Shops and Market Traders – to some of the largest Garden Centres in the country, We pride ourselves on understanding the market and building a Wholesale Product Range that fully meets the consumers’ needs and expectations.">
<META Name="Keywords" CONTENT="Uk wholesale supplier distributor garden centre gift shop market trader stock wholesaler carvings furniture handicraft stoneware terracotta pottery trade england devon">

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/shop/stylesheet.css">
<?php require("./wwt.css.php"); ?>
<?php require("./header.php"); ?>

	<TR>
		<TD COLSPAN=11 valign="top" height=100% bgcolor=#EDEFEE >
		<TABLE WIDTH=539 bgcolor=ffffff BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0 align="centre">
        <tr><td width=539  height=173>

<?php
$content_name = 'index_page_1';
require ("./cms.php");
?>

        </td></tr>
        <tr><td colspan=2  width=539 height=94  >
                <div class="text2"><BR> 

<?php
$content_name = 'index_page_2';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_3';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_4';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_5';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_6';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_7';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_8';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_9';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_10';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_11';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_12';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_13';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_14';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'index_page_15';
require ("./cms.php");

$content_name = 'fairtrade';
require ("./cms.php");
?>
 </div></td></tr></table></TD>
<?php require("./right.php"); ?>
<?php require("./footer3.php"); ?>

The shop part of our website uses some of the same include files but its an oscommerce site which uses the STS template system. Its all very integrated and making design changes isnt as easy as one might think.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by cgreen

I havent gotten to the bottom of what is causing the problem in firefox, but acording to our stats 97% of our visitors are using IE so less than 3% experience a problem. I can confess I prefer Firefox as a browser as it is just better than IE but when working as a web designer I believe we should all use what the vast majority of visitors are using. I would be open to suggestions as to what causes the problem.

I completely disagree. Your site should work in all major browsers.

On line 66 - you have this:
<td bgcolor=#000000 rowspan=100><img src="http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif" width=1></td>

When I remove that, the header is fixed in firefox.

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by Jaseva

I completely disagree. Your site should work in all major browsers.

On line 66 - you have this:
<td bgcolor=#000000 rowspan=100><img src="http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif" width=1></td>

When I remove that, the header is fixed in firefox.

Excellent I have removed the offending line of code, thanks that has been bothering me for ages.

[Nicole]

You didn't upload the change yet, did you? Because I still see the black box.

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by Jaseva

You didn't upload the change yet, did you? Because I still see the black box.

Hi, Yes I have. I just checked the html source from IE after viewing the page and that line is definatly removed.

[Nicole]

Here? http://wholesale-gifts.co.uk/

I still see it in the source code after refresh... ?

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by Jaseva

Here? http://wholesale-gifts.co.uk/

I still see it in the source code after refresh... ?

DOH! Can you try again please. I changed the code for our main domain, I have now done all 20 of them including this one.

[Nicole]

It's still there.

</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR=#a0a0a0 LEFTMARGIN=0 TOPMARGIN=0 MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0>
<TABLE WIDTH=777 BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0 align="center" 
height=100%>

	<TR>
		<TD COLSPAN=19  background='/wholesale-gift-collection.jpg'  
width=770 height=200  ROWSPAN=1 >
<img src='http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif' border=0 width=567 height=100 USEMAP="#">
	</TD>
	    <td bgcolor=#000000 rowspan=100><img src="http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif" width=1></td>
	</TR>
<TR><TD 
COLSPAN=20 valign="top" align=left height=100% bgcolor=#EDEFEE >

	<TR>
		<TD COLSPAN=11 valign="top" height=100% bgcolor=#EDEFEE >

Do you still see the black box when you view it online?

[WorldwideTrading]

Originally Posted by Jaseva

It's still there.

</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR=#a0a0a0 LEFTMARGIN=0 TOPMARGIN=0 MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0>
<TABLE WIDTH=777 BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0 align="center" 
height=100%>

	<TR>
	    <td bgcolor=#000000 rowspan=100><img src="http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif" width=1></td>
		<TD COLSPAN=19  background='/wholesale-gift-collection.jpg'  
width=770 height=200  ROWSPAN=1 >
<img src='http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif' border=0 width=567 height=100 USEMAP="#">
	</TD>
	    <td bgcolor=#000000 rowspan=100><img src="http://worldwidetrading.co.uk/images/spacer.gif" width=1></td>
	</TR>
<TR><TD 
COLSPAN=20 valign="top" align=left height=100% bgcolor=#EDEFEE >

	<TR>
		<TD COLSPAN=11 valign="top" height=100% bgcolor=#EDEFEE >

Do you still see the black box when you view it online?

Actually thats another one. I removed the first one previously and have now removed the second. (See requoted code block above)

Does it work now?

[Nicole]

Perfect

[chicgeek]

Even with that first initial fix, my impression of the site is already greatly improved.