Tell me what you guys think! We will be adding a blog and Friends Of Skinny Water Culture section in the next week or so, but we wanted to get our shirts up for sale.
www.skinnywaterculture.com
www.skinnywaterculture.com
Skinny Water Culture is LIVE!
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I agree that the homepage took waaaaay too long to load. And when it loaded, there was nothing that I saw that would necessitate it taking that long.
I think you should definitely ditch the flash used on your website. It doesn't seem to add anything (functionality or design wise) to the layout, and it only slows down the loading of the pages and makes the site harder to use.
Your site could have been done with HTML and a regular shopping cart (instead of the popup PayPal shopping cart) and it would have flowed much better.
The t-shirt designs look cool, but the site itself has unnecessary bells and whistles that will make it harder for customers to give you their money
I think you should definitely ditch the flash used on your website. It doesn't seem to add anything (functionality or design wise) to the layout, and it only slows down the loading of the pages and makes the site harder to use.
Your site could have been done with HTML and a regular shopping cart (instead of the popup PayPal shopping cart) and it would have flowed much better.
The t-shirt designs look cool, but the site itself has unnecessary bells and whistles that will make it harder for customers to give you their money
Thanks for the reply. I am a web dummy, is there anything I can have my web designer do to speed it up? He is just a college kid, doing it for free, and this is his 1st business site.
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I would suggest that he dump the flash altogether and install a shopping cart like cubecart or zencart and they use his design skills to customize the templates to make the site look you want.
Remember that your website is the first impression that many of your customers will have for your company. Your website will be the "make or break" decision on whether people trust you and want to buy from you.
Putting all that importance on a college kid building his first business website for free may not be the best idea.
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Dude.. Almost every page takes quite awhile to load, not just the homepage. If college-kid must code it by hand, there's plenty of ways to make things simpler & load faster (even good old-fashioned basic HTML and some CSS would get the job done right and pretty). You might also want to add an 'About Us' page.. it's always the first page i read when i visit a new website!
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I could not get it to open, says page cannot be displayed
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+1 on removing the flash. if you are using a computer that doesnt have a current flash player then you cant view the page correctly. I am viewing from work and flash player is outdated and i cant update it, so I only see the limted version of the site. Maybe thats wh I cant really make out the design details either. Bottom line for me is to dump the flash player.
What browser were you using?
I will talk to him tonight to see if we can get rid of the flash. It only takes a couple seconds from every computer I use. I am surprised it is taking so long for you guys. I appreciate the feedback immensely.
Rodney, I am not sure what you meant about the shopping cart? It seems pretty basic to me? What do you mean it doesn't flow?
Rodney, I am not sure what you meant about the shopping cart? It seems pretty basic to me? What do you mean it doesn't flow?
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I think that's because you've visited the site before with those computers. That stores much of the site's elements in the browser's "cache". New people visiting the site (like new customers or people here) will have to download those large site elements for the first time.
Unfortunately, it's the same problem all PayPal shopping carts have.
When you click on "add to cart", it transfers you to the PayPal website. This can be confusing to new online shoppers and people who don't know what a "PayPal" is.
Ideally, you want to keep the customers on YOUR site as long as possible so you can build their trust to complete the transaction. Customers get nervous when you whisk them off to some third party site without warning and ask them for money.
PayPal also doesn't have the flexible shipping options or customer/order management options that a shopping cart powered by a database (like cubecart, zencart, oscommerce) would have. Those kinds of things will help you get your orders out faster to customers.
Thanks for the insight Rodney! With the 1st money we start to make, we will make a better website a priority. I think what you are saying has some definite merit. I wasn't really thinking broad enough to even grasp that someone may not know what Paypal is! It makes sense that if it is a virtual store, that it should be a one stop shop.
Nice layout. It does load a little slow. Don't worry my site was having the same problem. Awesome shirts though. Keep up the good work and I wish you much success!!!
. Don't worry my site was having the same problem. Awesome shirts though. Keep up the good work and I wish you much success!!!1 - 13 of 13 Posts
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