Website for Review
http://www.myfastbasket.com

Additional Comments
Hello,

I would welcome all input about how to make my site better. Also, telling me what you like most and what you like the least about my website layout would be very helpful to me.

Thank you.

Welcome to the forum.

Well, it is purple, Not bad, but the brightness did make me sit back a little.

In general, good job

I do have a few comments

The text on the home page is so small and light in color I couldn't read it. When I see this in a website I will close it and go on to the next one in my search results. For me I see it two ways.
1. You really don't want me to read it.
2. Just lost my trust as the person/business is possibly hiding something.

You need to instill trust and confidence in the visitor. Suggest you start with making the text legible and move the most important paragraph above the images.

I agree with Colo.

You have a good website! Keep it up.  The only things I would change personally is the font size and colour as they are impossible to read.

Otherwise, good job!

Just for curiosity.. are you using any ready made solution for your website or you build it all yourself?

ColoEagle wrote:

Welcome to the forum.

Well, it is purple, Not bad, but the brightness did make me sit back a little.

In general, good job

I do have a few comments

The text on the home page is so small and light in color I couldn't read it. When I see this in a website I will close it and go on to the next one in my search results. For me I see it two ways.
1. You really don't want me to read it.
2. Just lost my trust as the person/business is possibly hiding something.

You need to instill trust and confidence in the visitor. Suggest you start with making the text legible and move the most important paragraph above the images.

_________________________________________________________________________

I had no idea the text was unreadable. I can read it just fine (I use Firefox) which is a mystery to me. I'm not sure what to do about that either because it was set up as part of my shopping cart template and I don't have font control in that part of my cart. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. I'm going to try to remove the text altogether.

designsconcept wrote:

I agree with Colo.

You have a good website! Keep it up.  The only things I would change personally is the font size and colour as they are impossible to read.

Otherwise, good job!

Just for curiosity.. are you using any ready made solution for your website or you build it all yourself?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the kind words. I know the font size is a mystery (see my previous post) and that text position was part of our shopping cart. I will look into it.

The ecommerce shopping cart was built for us using an os-commerce application. It started with a basic template that was edited quite a bit. I still have to use programmers from time to time to tweak the operational code. I do the graphics work and most of the other maintenance we can manage in-house day to day.

ColoEagle wrote:

Welcome to the forum.

Well, it is purple, Not bad, but the brightness did make me sit back a little.

In general, good job

I do have a few comments

The text on the home page is so small and light in color I couldn't read it. When I see this in a website I will close it and go on to the next one in my search results. For me I see it two ways.
1. You really don't want me to read it.
2. Just lost my trust as the person/business is possibly hiding something.

You need to instill trust and confidence in the visitor. Suggest you start with making the text legible and move the most important paragraph above the images.

Hi Colo - I tried again to change the text color. This section is somehow coded into my main page and I'm limited to what I can do with text. I have full control over graphics. I'm working on it. Thanks so much for pointing it out. BTW - I tried to move it but I couldn't do that either.

I also use FF and have my browser set at 1024 x 768 This happens to be the most popular browser setting used so you need to insure that your content is viewable in this setting.

I had to resize the text three levels before it was large enough for me to read. The text is written for the search engine robots and not the human visitor. Doing this is on the gray side of seo - good/white-hat seo practice versus bad/black-hat seo practice.

What you should be doing is writing for the human visitor and not the robot visitor. Now yours as it is now really isn't as bad as some I have seen so not a lot to change if you decide to do some modifications to it.

Just a suggestion,
Take the first paragraph as it is now, removing the last line.
Above the product images,
Use an h1 header tag and give the page/paragraph a title.
Example: Welcome to Fast Baskets
Place the paragraph I mentioned after the h1 tag and still above the product images.
By doing this it tells me (the visitor) what the site has to offer me right up front. This is the first step to gaining my trust as a potential customer.
It will also help with the search engines by having relevant text closer to the top of the page.

You could leave the remaining text at the bottom of the page, but I suggest you make it where a human visitor can read and understand it. (Don't sacrifice the trust)

I took a look at your code for the text and it looks like it was originally written with 'word' and then copied and pasted into the page. It isn't using your stylesheet for styling so changing the color and size won't be as simple as it could be.

good effort...
pros...
1) Nice design and well catchy at first glance

cons...
1) Going down, the page layout get wierry. Their is a lot of blanks space at the bottom use it or just delete it. The way it is presented won't encourage anyone to read it anyways.
2) Reduce the length of the page and a bit of allignment issues can be resolved.

ColoEagle wrote:

I also use FF and have my browser set at 1024 x 768 This happens to be the most popular browser setting used so you need to insure that your content is viewable in this setting.

I had to resize the text three levels before it was large enough for me to read. The text is written for the search engine robots and not the human visitor. Doing this is on the gray side of seo - good/white-hat seo practice versus bad/black-hat seo practice.

What you should be doing is writing for the human visitor and not the robot visitor. Now yours as it is now really isn't as bad as some I have seen so not a lot to change if you decide to do some modifications to it.

Just a suggestion,
Take the first paragraph as it is now, removing the last line.
Above the product images,
Use an h1 header tag and give the page/paragraph a title.
Example: Welcome to Fast Baskets
Place the paragraph I mentioned after the h1 tag and still above the product images.
By doing this it tells me (the visitor) what the site has to offer me right up front. This is the first step to gaining my trust as a potential customer.
It will also help with the search engines by having relevant text closer to the top of the page.

You could leave the remaining text at the bottom of the page, but I suggest you make it where a human visitor can read and understand it. (Don't sacrifice the trust)

I took a look at your code for the text and it looks like it was originally written with 'word' and then copied and pasted into the page. It isn't using your stylesheet for styling so changing the color and size won't be as simple as it could be.

You're correct - It is not easy to change - I've tried it. I think the same issue with the color is also sizing the text. I'm going to have to spend some real time investigating how to get to the actual code. The problem I have is the basic code for the cart which is in a template. I don't know how to edit the template and that's my problem.

I really appreciate the information though and will try to move some of the text up so that the white space is deleted.

Thanks so much.

I like your site-and i love the color purple-I think your layout is wonderful-and I would'nt change a thing. I found it to look very professional-I am going to bookmark it and send it to some friends-you did a fantasic job on your website!

I put you in the stumbleupon database-hope u get traffic from it.

dude a cool site

Hello fastbasket at first glance it did not neccessarily catch i,m sure it,s the brightness or a lot of product usually have that wow  factor. loved the color thoght it was very personable . From  trhere on out i fell in love with your website outstanding layout  incredibly organized not only something for every occasion but a wide range of variety the wow factor was in full effect. excellent .wish you the best in your online endeavor .Stay positive.Keep up the good work.

Your website looks very professional, which gives customers a good sense of security and trust of the company. It was easy to navigate and all the product images I saw were good quality.


I suggest you make 2 changes to your site:

1. Fill out the "Join Our Mailing List" section of your left sidebar so customers can join your mailing list.

2. Remove the ShopMania, BlogCatalog, etc. buttons at the botton of the homepage. Your site is a company e-commerce website, not a blog, and those buttons make your site look less professional.


I hope your website and business do well!

The web site is all right. The only thing is the text in the logo "My Fast Basket Company" that need more presence, maybe a diferent color.

Nice site.

An idea, if possible is to make the gift baskets, flowers, cookie bouquest, etc. on the top of the page links so if someone is intersted in them they can click them there instead of finding the category somewhere else on the page.

Otherwise a very customer friendly website.

The web site is very good, the only thing I would change is the font size of the text "My Fast Basket Company", personally I don't like reading such small letters on web sites.

Wow,

I thought this was a terrific site. Congratulations to you. I really liked how you provided the price categories so people can only look in their budget range. Your products look fabulous. I really could not find anything I did not like about your site. Kudos to you and I wish you well in your business. I am trying to accomplish the same with my business.

John

I like the site.  What attracted me to view the site more in detail was its easy navigation style.  The products are well laid out and descriptive.   

Gilly

PS - I like the purple in the title.

Great improvement!  I remember the purple theme hehe!