[thelist] [Site Review] Gemsnjewelry.com

Marc Seyon seyon at delime.com
Sun Jun 22 23:35:18 CDT 2003


Message from Jeff Howden (6/22/2003 07:58 PM)

>hey gang,
>
>i just completed the conversion of a site from a very heavy table-based
>layout to a non-table-based layout maintaining the same overall design.  i
>was wondering if i could get some feedback on it from the members of this
>list.
>
>if dns hasn't propagated for you yet, the old site as at:
>http://gemsnjewelry.com/
>and the new site is at:
>http://beta.gemsnjewelry.com/
>
>if dns *has* propagated for you, then the old site is at:
>http://old.gemsnjewelry.com/
>and the new site is at:
>http://gemsnjewelry.com/

Hey Jeff,

Interesting use of the CSS to place the image in the header in the 
background. Seems a bit complicated though. Couldn't you have simply used 
the image in the foreground, with the text in the span as the alt text?

That way even without CSS they get the header image (though you'd need to 
set the background colour so it won't look out of place). I would also have 
placed the entire bit into an h1, that way even without CSS or images 
loaded the text is given h1 styling. (And also weight in SE rankings?)

I hope all that made sense. It does to me at 1am, others may not agree.

Some other minor comments.

- The "Featured Item" appears to be lavender jade earrings and large garnet 
necklace.
Couldn't (shouldn't) that wording then be "Featured Items"? (plural)

- There seems to be more verbiage on the front page than is usually seen 
these days. Whether that's good or bad is debatable. Personally, given that 
it's an online storefront, I would have wanted more items visible up front. 
"Sell before you tell" as someone recently sold me.

- On the gallery pages (eg http://beta.gemsnjewelry.com/gallery/ebay/) 
every item has "Price: Call for pricing!" Why not give a blanket "Call for 
pricing" statement at the top?

Possible answer - Perhaps later on certain items will be priced and others 
will be call-in.

- On the item pages, I know very little about selling jewellery, however 
the differentiation between "Retail" and "Price" confused the heck out of 
me. And even the retail info, eg "$ 50.00. Your price for 3 or more is only 
$14.99 each" didn't exactly clarify matters much.

I imagine it's something to do with buying singly or in bulk, but that's 
just an educated guess.

Also, very minor, in the retail info, there is a space between the first 
dollar sign ($ 50.00) and the number, however the second one the  "each" 
price does not have this space ($14.99).

- Browser-specific comment. In IE5.5 (Win2k) the bar underneath the 
navigation links slides over to the left and overlaps the border.

I'm going to withhold any copy/colour comments cause I know lots of times 
developers don't have much say in this, especially when it's an old site 
being rebuilt.

regards.
-marc


--
Carnival 2003 in all its photographic glory. Playyuhself.com
http://www.playyuhself.com/


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