Loaded Commerce Community

I have been pouring over this store for some time now and I think I am ready for opinions from fresh eyes.

I know there are probably things that need to be changed; but, after looking at the storefront so often, I can't see them anymore.

Any and all input would be appreciated. Thanks

Rick

http://www.tacticalleds.com

bump

why have you got google ads in there, promoting your competitors?

I have pulled them off now, thanks for pointing that out. I had placed them there early on just playing with the features in CRE Loaded and never bothered to turn them off.

Looking at my stats, I was getting a small leak of customers leaving the site that way.

Thanks!

Any one else?

1. Too dark
2. Cat font is too small
3. Shop by price doesn't have any padding on the left and hugs column border
4. Can't read the reviews smaller text without a magnifying glass
5. Products scroll far beneath the right or left column
6. Product Info page font is too small and too dark. Its a strain to read any of it.
7. Specials Infobox doesn't have any left padding
8. No padding on Article topics
9. Not sure what you have after title
10. What does all that say at the top? Too small and too hard to read.


Click Here for Large Image

Click Here for Large Image

Just my opinion, if you like it, leave it. I wouldn't shop there because it's too difficult to read.

Mike

1. On the product page: "List Price: $00.00" put a strike through on the dollar value.
2. Homepage: Your header company logo image is TOO BIG and overpowering. Reduce the height to the point where the top of LIVE chat image begins. Put the live chat image to the left of "About Us". Keep the header info to use a little space as possible. This will ensure that the page, when viewed by customers, is above the fold.
3. Your FREE SHIPPING banner is a waste of space. Put a slim horizontal banner on the burgandy sub header (between the logo and categories info box) that states. Free Shipping on orders of $00.00 or more.
4. Put this info (At Tactical LEDs we specialize...) on the lower part of the mid section of the homepage. This is mainly for search engines and not so much traversing deeper into the site.
5. Put the "Welcom..." that's above the free shipping banner somewhere else on the header. It's mainly for guests, returning members.
5. Your quick browse, search by manufacturer, shop by price all needs to be on the same horizontal line. You're making it too difficult to locate these important elements. It's some of the most frequently used areas for locating specific products so why hide it deep down at the bottom?.
6. Your "category" navigation needs to stand out. Right now it gets lost in the rest of the page just as your PRICING INFO on the product page (needs to be different color from the description. An example could be to put a light gray background fill on the category box. This way users are clear on where they need to click once landed on the site so that they can drill deeper.
There is more work that needs to be done on this site.

First thought; too much competition for the eye. That said, a couple of quick fixes that I would do to this site for aesthetics:

1) Change the text color from #FFFFFF to something more like #9A9A9A (lt grey), that subtle change will now reduce the text to a non-competing aspect of the site but will still let it stand out nicely for legibility.

2) Create a border, like a picture frame for your product images. A hi-tech look can be accomplished by keeping the frame clean cut and making maybe one 45deg cutback across the top as an accent. I would place nothing else in the frame, except if you wanted a very small copyright (almost un-legible). This will keep your images symmetrical on the page and give them an accent without overpowering your site. Black is an extremely difficult color to work with as a website background when you are placing catalog images all over it. This is what I have found over the years to work best under these conditions. You can make the frame have somewhat less contrast, but it really should be there. (Photoshop handles this nicely with layers - other programs that can utilize layers will also be better suited to this - make a master and put the product images behind the frame layer(s).)

3) Fix the red subdivider below your header, the corners look awful and really detract from the rest of the site.

4) You need to blend the Tactical LEDs logo to the background of the header. This is an all too common mistake for webstore owners - they don't blend their logo with the design. Though some would say this makes it stand out - nothing could be more misleading. Yes, it does make it stand out, but in a very unprofessional way. It takes no effort to slap a graphic "block" on top of another graphic, however when a graphic blends and looks like it belongs there - the visual appeal jumps exponentially. Look at the top 20 websites on the internet; none of them have their logo contrasting/competing with their site header - it flows and looks like it just belongs there. You probably don't need to change the logo, but you should work in some sort of frame and reduce it in size so that it has "boundary" from the header background imagery.

5) This would be the last thing that I address, but I would also tone down the white outlines that you have all over the site, especially in the product pages. Also, after having looked at how you are handling the product images displayed on the product info page - I wouldn't change that. It has some cool techno-appeal that you might lose if you framed that image. So back to number 2 above - keep it to the product icon images (the ones that are roughly 150px wide). Which does bring me back to another issue on those images - keep them all the same width and if you frame them, the same height. The visual symmetry obtained from that change will enhance the overall appeal of your site if done properly.

6) There are a couple of minor technical issues, but they wouldn't be picked up by the average visitor so I will not expand here - just look at your logo when it is clicked.

7) Last item; since you have the space, unless you want to keep the clean divider - I would consider re-implementing the breadcrumb just under the header. It provides a convenient back navigation element for people visiting the site, plus it provides a link point for spiders to find products on your site. (You should also consider SEO Link Optimization - but I won't go into that here, it's part of the SEO puzzle that you are missing.)

I really do like where your site is going and quite frankly would consider purchasing there based on the products and the current condition of the site. With the above changes, price/product would be the only real reason that I would have for purchasing from a competitor.

Good Luck!

Rick,

You have one of the nicer sites, It looks like your using a blend of technologies. (ASP, OsCommerence, etc). Just wondering why the blend?

I'm an asp/.net guru, So it's interesting to me see why you choose to blend the technologies on your site.

yes, whats with the URL's?

can i ask if you did these yourself or if you used a contribution?

some of your categories look like this:

http://www.tacticalleds.com/HID-Search-Lights-s/26.htm

and others are

http://www.tacticalleds.com/category-s/47.htm

and your products look like

http://www.tacticalleds.com/INSIGHT-X2-p/insight-x2.htm

its all a bit weird -

properly optimized SEO URL's should show google a site structure - so it should go

http://www.tacticalleds.com/category/product-name/

and replace 'category' with the actual category, and product name with the real product name.