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Please Review My Online Watch Shop!

chosenwolf

chosenwolf

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 4, 2006
507
0
Los Angeles
Hey Guys,

I recently launched a website for my exclusive slim watches. I have been making watches for over 18 years and usually sell to jewelry stores. These watches are among the thinnest luxury watches in the world and I've received so many compliment's that I decided to put them up for retail sale.

Some feedback I'm looking for:

1) How are the load times
2) Site navigation: Is everything easily accessible? Easy to find?
3) How are the colors?
4) Any other feedback is appreciated

URL: http://www.extremeslims.com

One more thing I'd like to add:

As a person who wears a watch himself, I hate the bulky and heaviness some watches add on your wrist. These watches also weigh under 3 ounces so they feel great on the wrist and are extremely light. I would be lying if I said that Apple did not inspire the design and slim factor of these watches.

:)
 
richardjames said:
A really obvious thing is that the selling point for these watches is that they are slim but you never show them side on.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the comment! I tried looking for a good spot to display the slim factor but nothing came to mind. I put it in the red box on the main page, but not too many people notice. I think I may end up building a gallery with different angles and then making a link on the main page.

What do you think?
 
The site doesn't look interesting at all. Most people will probably see the first page and leave.

The watch images on the home page look stretched.

This website makes your company look small (assuming it is) and on a small budget (site looks put together on the fly). A website should make any company look amazing.

Obviously your selling watches that people are looking specifically for, so the website is probably not that important to you.

Make it look much cleaner. You have the flow of the website down though.

If you need help shoot me a PM, I loving doing this stuff.
 
The page is not valid HTML/XHTML

The grey/brushed metal background is pretty ugly.

The small black text on the grey/brushed metal background is not the easiest to read.

The curved grey (but not brushed metal) header on the left ("Our Most Popular") does not align with the edges of the boxes in that column correctly.

The Shipping section on the main page should have a link to a page with typical shipping costs.

The graphic beside shipping looks very out of place: the clip art doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the look.

On the watches page the spinning gold watch (top right) serves no purpose and looks ugly due to the lack of anti-aliasing.

On the watches page the page control (1,2,3,4,5 Next>) should have an all option: some people would rather scroll vertically than page through.

On the upside it all loads reasonably quickly :)
 
At a glance: ditto what edesignuk said about the images; the text on the right is tiny and grey on grey, making it very hard to read; the text below 'Welcome to our site' is incredibly cramped - more whitespace would be good; and although I realise you may be using a third-party system for the store part of the site, the front page doesn't seem to fit with any of the others. One last thing - more astute internet users may be put off from buying simply because the site doesn't look that professional and could be a scam. Good design sells - bad design can make people wary.
 
Wow, thanks for the feedback everyone. I guess I have a lot of work ahead of me.

I didn't want to make things too complex and tried to follow the approach of putting all the vital information right on the homepage. I didn't want links everywhere and wanted to keep things simple.

Thanks guys, keep it coming!
 
As I looked through it I agree with the comment above that overall flow through the site works fine, but there are several points of the main page that seem to me to be difficulties. Since that is the first thing your visitors/potential customers will see, it is quite important that you give them a good first impression of course.

I hope I don't give the impression that I am piling on regarding suggested changes in your site- I really intend the comments to be constructive. And after all, what the heck do I know? I didn't have to pass a design test to become a member of the forum! ;)

That being said, some of the areas on the front page that look like they could use some work (and try as I will not to duplicate comments above I know I will- sorry):

-- The incorrect height/width ratio of the thumbnails in the "Most Popular" section that cause them to all look like wide ovals has got to go. I honestly thought they were all actually were oval and almost did not click on one because the oval style just did not appeal- only when I did click on one and see the picture in the correct height/width ratio did I find out that they actually are attractive- and round! :) If I were a potential customer and not looking at the site for a critique, I have to say that I would not have been tempted to click on one of the thumbs myself.

-- Now that being said, I actually think that in the interest of simplifying the front page the whole "Most Popular" panel should actually be deleted. In it's place a smaller panel with text along the lines of "Please click here to see our most popular models!" might be successfully substituted which would free up a LOT of space (appears to more than a third of the space) on the page to allow for the whitespace that was suggested by an earlier poster- particularly in light of the fact that you already have two representative watch photos on the page. With the additional space available on the page, you would be able to implement some white space, enlarge the round watch picture or even eliminate it and put something like a three panel illustration of the round watch straight in the face, at a 45 degree angle and fully on edge to really illustrate your selling point along the lines of most of the MacBook Air marketing.

--As was mentioned above the clipart beside the shipping information looks out of place to my eye- particularly in light of the fact that I think this could be a clean site with an elegant, professional feel given the product type and color selection- and that clip art would not be good. ;)

--Lastly, and I will admit I am not sure about this pending alternate designs that might be done with the extra space if the "most popular" section were gone, does the "About Us" section need to be on the front page, or might it be better served (thus freeing up more space :D) as another page? Either way, I think it would be good to edit that down to the essentials- or perhaps the essential ideas could be merged into the "Welcome to our site" block instead.

--OK, lastly (no, really this time! ;))-- when you have some more space, I would really like to see that line "Welcome to our site" be changed to "Welcome to Extreme Slims" or something along those lines. The current line reads like the default generic text in a site generator program! ;)
 
Also, I am new to the web marketplace, but I am definitely not new to watchmaking and designing. But I do agree with you all, the website should be a representation of the product and the company. I will definitely improve on the design to match the design & quality of these watches. I get amazing feedback about them from all local customers.
 
GUYS, I adjusted the watch images so that they do not look as distorted. Can you please go on and tell me if it looks better? Thank you! :)
 
  1. The design needs more whitespace.
  2. Text size seems to vary a bit.
  3. Most text is too small.
  4. Black text on medium gray lacks contrast.
  5. Some of the links are not obvious (e.g., the Buy Now links).
  6. The sub-heading on the logo (the art of thin!) is a tad too small and hard to read.
  7. Your content area (the welcome part) is too narrow. It's crowded and should be given more room. Either expand the width of the site, or make it two-column, or shrink the other column widths.
  8. Your metallic backgrounds are too dark for the black text you're using. Either use a lighter background or use a text color that provides more contrast.
  9. I won't critique the code, there doesn't seem to be any point.
 
robbieduncan said:
The page is not valid HTML/XHTML

The grey/brushed metal background is pretty ugly.

The small black text on the grey/brushed metal background is not the easiest to read.

The curved grey (but not brushed metal) header on the left ("Our Most Popular") does not align with the edges of the boxes in that column correctly.

The Shipping section on the main page should have a link to a page with typical shipping costs.

The graphic beside shipping looks very out of place: the clip art doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the look.

On the watches page the spinning gold watch (top right) serves no purpose and looks ugly due to the lack of anti-aliasing.

On the watches page the page control (1,2,3,4,5 Next>) should have an all option: some people would rather scroll vertically than page through.

On the upside it all loads reasonably quickly :)
Click to expand...

Lol 82 error's that definitely needs some tiding up to do.
 
sickmacdoc said:
-- The incorrect height/width ratio of the thumbnails in the "Most Popular" section that cause them to all look like wide ovals has got to go. I honestly thought they were all actually were oval and almost did not click on one because the oval style just did not appeal- only when I did click on one and see the picture in the correct height/width ratio did I find out that they actually are attractive- and round! :) If I were a potential customer and not looking at the site for a critique, I have to say that I would not have been tempted to click on one of the thumbs myself.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I fixed it now and it should look more proportional. After I made the change, I realized what you were talking about! Let me know what you think...

sickmacdoc said:
--OK, lastly (no, really this time! ;))-- when you have some more space, I would really like to see that line "Welcome to our site" be changed to "Welcome to Extreme Slims" or something along those lines. The current line reads like the default generic text in a site generator program! ;)
Click to expand...

I agree! I changed it again, have a look....


Very valuable feedback! Keep them coming guys....
 
wickedG35 said:
Thanks, I fixed it now and it should look more proportional. After I made the change, I realized what you were talking about! Let me know what you think...
Click to expand...

Hi- Looked at the change on the most popular watches height/width ratio, but sorry to say they are still quite a ways from round- they are still quite noticeably oval. :( The watches that are displayed when the oval thumbnails are clicked are perfectly proportioned though (but they were before too!)
 
sickmacdoc said:
Hi- Looked at the change on the most popular watches height/width ratio, but sorry to say they are still quite a ways from round- they are still quite noticeably oval. :( The watches that are displayed when the oval thumbnails are clicked are perfectly proportioned though (but they were before too!)
Click to expand...

Man, they look perfect to me. I've tried on 3 different machines, windows/mac, safari/firefox/ie and they look great.

Could you possibly send me a screenshot?
 
wickedG35 said:
Man, they look perfect to me. I've tried on 3 different machines, windows/mac, safari/firefox/ie and they look great.

Could you possibly send me a screenshot?
Click to expand...

Absolutely- not a problem and I have already got the shots on hand of the Most Popular section in FireFox 3.03 and 3.12, both on OSX 10.5.5.

I also have one screenshot of the display image of one of them from the individual display that results after one of the thumbs is clicked on which looks great.

Just shoot me an email in private mail and I will get them off to you right away so you can see it from my view (Mac Pro, 30" ACD).
 
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