Back To Website Reviews

SITE REVIEW: bot5.com

  • Bot5
  • Banned
  • Banned
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Feb 23, 2008
  • Posts: 26
  • Loc: Deep Space
  • Status: Offline

Post February 25th, 2008, 5:54 am

Hello guys
I have set up a e-commerce site http://www.bot5.com we have worked on this for over a year and spent way too much money on it i would appreciate any comments you may have on how to make the site better and to increase the traffic
i still have sections to complete but its live and taking orders

it started with a PR of 3 within 30 minuets of turning the site on

i would like to say we have been going since 2001 but that would be just too OMG

look forward to your response

Regards

Hal
  • Anonymous
  • Bot
  • No Avatar
  • Joined: 25 Feb 2008
  • Posts: ?
  • Loc: Ozzuland
  • Status: Online

Post February 25th, 2008, 5:54 am

  • spork
  • Brewmaster
  • Silver Member
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Sep 22, 2003
  • Posts: 6130
  • Loc: Seattle, WA
  • Status: Offline

Post February 26th, 2008, 2:09 pm

I guess I'll take this one from the top.

You have 220 errors in your markup, most of which are due to the lack of an alt attribute on your img tags. Assuming that your content is generated dynamically, this should be a quick fix.

At first glance the site looks decent enough. I immediately know that the site is an online retailer, and my attention is appropriately drawn to relevant places (the left menu, the products on the homepage, etc.). Despite the immense amount of information on the screen at once, it doesn't seem very cluttered.

The big orange menu on the left has rollover effects for its text -- but I can barely tell. You might want to consider giving the entire block element a rollover to make the effect more pronounced.

When browsing items, the rollover zoom effect you're using was a pleasant surprise; I've never seen anything like that used like that before. Also, the fact that you left in the option to click the thumbnail to bring up a new window with the enlarged version is a nice alternative and fantastic from a usability perspective.

Color scheme is ok. You've got a lot of colors going at once but it doesn't seem to cause any problems for me.

I've got nothing else at the moment. You've obviously put a lot of time and effort into this site and it shows. Nice job.
The Beer Monocle. Classy.
  • Bot5
  • Banned
  • Banned
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Feb 23, 2008
  • Posts: 26
  • Loc: Deep Space
  • Status: Offline

Post February 27th, 2008, 11:33 am

Thank you for your comments most appreciated ,could you tell me what rollover affects are please and how would you sugest fixing the 220 errors?
  • joebert
  • Sledgehammer
  • Genius
  • No Avatar
  • Joined: Feb 10, 2004
  • Posts: 13455
  • Loc: Florida
  • Status: Offline

Post February 27th, 2008, 1:17 pm

The first dozen or so errors have to do with XHTML syntax being used for <meta> and <link> elements in an HTML document. Basicly there's a bunch of "/" where they shouldn't be.
There's some errors later on similar to this, but apply to <img> elements instead of <meta> and <link>.

The next half-dozen or so are byproducts of the first errors. When those unneeded "/" characters are removed these errors will cease to exist.

The "onresize" attribute error means you're not supposed to use the onresize event attached to the <body> element as an attribute.
I'd have to take a better look at that one, but the fix breaks basicly amounts to removing the attribute from the <body> element and attaching the event in one of the *.js files being loaded instead.

The "autocomplete" error is similar to the "onresize" error.

The "document doesn't allow <form> element here" error has to do with a <form> element being placed inside a <span> element. First thing I would try is swapping the order of the <form> and <span> elements like the following, and if that made somthing look different I'd look at it more closely.
Code: [ Select ]
from
<span ...><form>...</form></span>
 
to
<form><span>...</span></form>
  1. from
  2. <span ...><form>...</form></span>
  3.  
  4. to
  5. <form><span>...</span></form>


All of the "required attribute 'ALT' not specified." errors have to do with a missing alt attribute on images. When for some reason a browser can't load an image, it uses the alt attribute to tell the visitor what they would have been looking at.
Fixing this can be easy or hard depending on how things are setup on the server. In some cases where there's already a title attribute, a simple find & replace using patterns can be used to copy the title attributes as alt attributes.

There's some errors about "height" and "width" attributes on some elements. All of those are correctable by using the "style" attribute with width & height CSS instead of attributes.
For instance
Code: [ Select ]
instead of
<table height="100" width="100">
 
it would be
<table style="width:100px;height:100px"
  1. instead of
  2. <table height="100" width="100">
  3.  
  4. it would be
  5. <table style="width:100px;height:100px"

Not the most elegant way to do it, but will get rid of the errors.

The "reference to entity" errors boil down to URLs in your links and form actions using "&" as an argument separator, instead of "&amp;".
The parser thinks the next alphabetic characters after the ampersand are supposed to define an entity. Finding and replacing "&" with "&amp;" then replacing "&amp;amp;" with "&amp;" in templates and application code will get rid of those errors.

The errors that look like the following happen because of " (double quote) characters in your product descriptions and/or titles.
Quote:
Line 1069, Column 163: "WIDECREEN" is not a member of a group specified for any attribute.
Information on LCD22WV 22" Widecreen 5ms LCD Monitor"></a>

To fix these, someone needs to run a query on the database table holding the product descriptions that replaces " with the &quot; entity.
For instance, 22" Widescreen would become 22&quot; Widescreen.

It looks like there's <style> elements inside the <body> comtainer, and these needto be moved to the inside of the <head> container instead.

The "ID FOOTER_ITEM already defined." errors have to do with what's supposed to be an attribute that uniquely identifies an element being used on more than one element.
The CSS which applies to "#footer_item" may likely need to be changed to ".footer_item" and the elements with "id='footer_item'" changed to "class='footer_item'".
class is an attribute that makes an element part of a group, which is what is needed because of the multiple elements using the attribute.


I probably missed some because I page-down'ed through the majority of it. But that's what I saw.
Strong with this one, the sudo is.
  • Bot5
  • Banned
  • Banned
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Feb 23, 2008
  • Posts: 26
  • Loc: Deep Space
  • Status: Offline

Post February 27th, 2008, 3:27 pm

Joebert you have done yourself proud, it will take a while to go through this thank you
  • eautocad
  • Graduate
  • Graduate
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Mar 01, 2008
  • Posts: 195
  • Loc: Spring Hill, Florida
  • Status: Offline

Post March 1st, 2008, 9:07 pm

I enjoyed my entire time at your website. Very unique. I did some research on your backlinks, and it says you have 53. That's a great start, congratulations! If you feel that your traffic isn't satisfactory, I would consider looking for more higher quality backlinks based on traffic ranks. This will provide a steady flow of targeted traffic that your site could surely use.
Marketers Search Engine---6,000+ Websites and 25,000 Locals to Advertise your Site FREE
http://www.therankdirectory.com
View Traffic, Quality, Reach, and Popularity!
  • lucky
  • Graduate
  • Graduate
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Oct 06, 2007
  • Posts: 117
  • Status: Offline

Post March 4th, 2008, 10:11 am

the site takes quite a while to load up for me. don't know if it's my internet connection or your host. it's a nice layout, but you waste quite a lot fo space on the bottom half right hand side. maybe you can put some google ads there or something. also the black tabs on the left hand side - they'll look better if you aligned then with the orange one. hope it helps!
  • osserpguru
  • Newbie
  • Newbie
  • No Avatar
  • Joined: Mar 04, 2008
  • Posts: 5
  • Status: Offline

Post March 4th, 2008, 3:58 pm

First, it is instantly noticeable that a lot of effort was put into that site and I think that is great!
I think the graphics on the home page is a bit over loaded - although we don't surf the web with 28K modems anymore, most users would prefer clean, light layout.
The products display is very good - showing the price, stock availability and description works very well.
I strongly recommend to make some SEO changes as soon as possible:
1.You must have a different title for each page! Currently, all your product pages have the same title as your homepage. That can cause you some serious problems with Google
2.Change your products pages names from the random name you use (l_g_33e62a1.. for example) to a meaningful name- I would use the product description as the page name.
I also tried to contact the online representative (very important addition to any such site) but nobody was online (I assume you are UK based).
Wishing you good luck!
Open source ERP Guru http://opensourceerpguru.com/
  • eautocad
  • Graduate
  • Graduate
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Mar 01, 2008
  • Posts: 195
  • Loc: Spring Hill, Florida
  • Status: Offline

Post March 7th, 2008, 3:47 am

I went back to your site again and I gotta say its great. Good job! Now crank up your traffic and watch it come alive! It will thrive and breathe $$$$
Marketers Search Engine---6,000+ Websites and 25,000 Locals to Advertise your Site FREE
http://www.therankdirectory.com
View Traffic, Quality, Reach, and Popularity!
  • soreng
  • Newbie
  • Newbie
  • No Avatar
  • Joined: Mar 07, 2008
  • Posts: 7
  • Status: Offline

Post March 7th, 2008, 2:13 pm

Very awesome
  • TsX
  • Graduate
  • Graduate
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Oct 09, 2004
  • Posts: 167
  • Status: Offline

Post March 9th, 2008, 9:30 pm

At first glance its a wow. The site is eye popping but it is actually pulled off nicely. At first look I was expecting clutter and problems, thats just how much it pops out. But in actuality, things are clear, the separation on details is smooth and navigation is a breeze. It is a very well designed website.

A lot of the technical aspects were covered already so I just thought I would let you know you have a good site going here and once you fix those few problems I see this going somewhere. Best of luck to you.
  • Bot5
  • Banned
  • Banned
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Feb 23, 2008
  • Posts: 26
  • Loc: Deep Space
  • Status: Offline

Post March 15th, 2008, 10:58 am

Thank you for the kind words we are working on the site to fix some of the points raised
  • as_ghazi
  • Newbie
  • Newbie
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Mar 26, 2008
  • Posts: 6
  • Loc: Pakistan
  • Status: Offline

Post March 28th, 2008, 5:50 am

good info.........thanks
  • murcielagossi
  • Proficient
  • Proficient
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Jul 28, 2006
  • Posts: 457
  • Status: Offline

Post March 28th, 2008, 11:03 am

Nice site. Fix those errors and your good. Without a doubt, I can comfortably say this is THE most professional e-commerce site I have seen here, and I have seen quite a few. Much more appealing site than any competitors to the market I think. But one of the more impressive things you should add to your site which I didn't see was an AJAX search like on http://www.newegg.com/ and Google Suggest. Besides that, it was a little slow loading...but not dreadfully slow. Great Job :)
Image
/* My Logic Is Undeniable */
  • Mr Steadfast
  • Novice
  • Novice
  • User avatar
  • Joined: Jan 27, 2008
  • Posts: 34
  • Status: Offline

Post March 29th, 2008, 2:11 pm

This looks like a very large site. It's good that you used very little tables but maybe you can make it to no tables at all? Other than that I think it's good.
  • Anonymous
  • Bot
  • No Avatar
  • Joined: 25 Feb 2008
  • Posts: ?
  • Loc: Ozzuland
  • Status: Online

Post March 29th, 2008, 2:11 pm

1, 2

Post Information

  • Total Posts in this topic: 21 posts
  • Moderator: Website Reviewers
  • Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 29 guests
  • You cannot post new topics in this forum
  • You cannot reply to topics in this forum
  • You cannot edit your posts in this forum
  • You cannot delete your posts in this forum
  • You cannot post attachments in this forum
 
 

© 2011 Unmelted, LLC. Ozzu® is a registered trademark of Unmelted, LLC.