Critique away, AbleNet site ready for your careful reviews

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 3:51 am

Hello all,

I ask for your detailed reviews and critical eye to ensure the best store I can publish is ready to go in a few more days. I have a little more work to do such as checkout and registration code generation testing, e-mail envelope and content designs, and a few other to-do's yet to go. However, the main site design is ready as well as the content, I invite any and ALL available feedback.

The temporary domain for your review is:

http://secure.nc-software.com/acb/stores/1/index.aspx

After release it will sit at the root domain of the above URL.

Thank you in advance for your time in reviewing my new site.

gjaros · Post by **gjaros** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:23 am

Neal,

The site looks really awesome. I did notice a few issues on my first run-through though.

1. I added 15 Logbook Pro PDA Companions to my basket. The basket page shows a quantity of 10, but the Total Price is for 15. And the Shopping Basket: label at the to of the page shows 15 products with the price for 15 products. When I proceeded to the checkout pages my order total was updated to reflect 10 items.

2. When on the basket page I noticed the button at the top of the page for Checkout. I like the dropdown that shows your basket and I realize that when you're in the store the Checkout button provides a quick link to the basket page. However I first noticed the checkout link while I was already on the basket page and was confused why clicking on it didn't appear to do anything. Maybe have the link go directly to the billinfo page, or change the button to inform the customer that the link takes you to your basket, but does not begin the checkout process.

3. I found it confusing that I had to click the arrows to update the quantity in the basket page, and then click on the Update Quantity button also. I think most people will assume that clicking a button will make the update permanent, even if it's an arrow button like you have. The Quantity boxes on the product pages are fine because you have to actually add the item(s) to your basket, but it seems unintuitive to have to click the Update Quantity button on the basket page. Maybe changing the botton to say Recalculate Total would be better.

4. After clicking on the Update Quantity button on the basket, the Shopping Basket: 10 Products - $123.00 did not update appropriately. I had to actually leave the basket page for it to update correctly.

Hopefully these are easy for you to fix. The site looks really great otherwise.

How much of what you did was custom coding and how much was part of AbleNet? Specifically the dynamic directory page, the basket dropdown, and having options as radio buttons. Those are really nice features that I think would take a lot of coding to incorporate into the CFMX version. If they're part of the AbleNet version maybe we'll get something similar for CFMX from the AC guys.

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:37 am

George,

Thank you for the feedback. The issue on the qty 15 vs. 10 is a "bug" in AbleNet, or AC for that matter when you set the max allowed qty for products. I reported this in my thesis, but as you saw, if you have 15 added to the cart but 10 is the max, when you start marching down the checkout path, it will correct itself. I'll note this and get it fixed in my custom coding, need to go that extra mile, thanks for the reminder.

Re: 2, yes, I agree with you, in fact I was thinking of setting the theme of the basket.aspx page to be more like the checkout work-flow instead of store work-flow, or as you say, set it to move to billing info, which is also easy as I can change the URL's dynamically on those buttons, noted for review.

Re: 3, up/dn arrows, yeah, I wish I knew the javascript to change the price as you clicked up/dn, but I think that's the best I can do as it is now. The good thing is, if you change the QTY using the up/dn arrows, as you proceed with checkout it will update the price accordingly, I did verify this when implementing the up/dn buttons.

Re: 4, yeah, as replied in #1 above, a small flaw in AbleNet (if not AC) that I need to tweak up.

The directory (browse button/site map) is completely coded using ComponentArt Treeview. The drop down from the Checkout button is also ComponentArt (menu) and it's ability to host server controls, so that's actually minibasket.ascx that you're viewing slide down. The drop down at the bottom of the screen uses the same code as the directory, but it's ComponentArt SiteMap (drop down style). The coding challenge was iterating the categories efficiently, once I cracked that nutt, it was home free, but it was a bit painful figuring out that piece. I may offer it as an add-on for .NET users in the near future, as well as other sitemap functionality such as you see.

Great feedback, keep it coming as you see it. Tweak tweak tweak, lot's of work yet to do. Just placed an order and see yet even more to do!

But I'm way ahead of schedule.

Thanks to AC and the outstanding product it is, this store took me exactly 2.5 weeks to build from start to finish. Granted, I had the graphics from my core web sites which will release simultaneously with the new store, hopefully next Monday, but the content, design, custom coding took approx two weeks! Now a few more days of testing ahead, and a few code tweaks, and we'll be good to go. Migration from development to production server was a bit of a challenge too, but I learned a lot in that process, so hopefully client migrations in the future will be much less painful.

gjaros · Post by **gjaros** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:46 am

NC Software wrote:Re: 3, up/dn arrows, yeah, I wish I knew the javascript to change the price as you clicked up/dn, but I think that's the best I can do as it is now. The good thing is, if you change the QTY using the up/dn arrows, as you proceed with checkout it will update the price accordingly, I did verify this when implementing the up/dn buttons.

True the quantity update is reflected if the customer continues to the checkout from the basket page, but if they go to a different page (say by clicking the Keep Shopping button) the quantity changes are lost. It's a minor feature, but it could be frustrating. Changing the Update Quantity button to a Recalculate Totals button may be a little more intuitive, since clicking the arrows feels like you are already updating the quantity.

Keep up the nice work.

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:48 am

Great idea, good way to handle that, thanks!

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:51 am

One other thing worth mentioning, which may not be readily noticeable. SEO: Quite a bit of effort went into SEO, using custom fields, you can view the page source and see keywords and the description added to the meta tags. Also you'll see extensive use of ALT and TITLE tags. For example, hover your mouse over the arrows on the category and product nav and you'll see it tell you the next/previous product it will take you to, etc. SEO was hit pretty hard and a lot of effort placed in working with AbleNet. Not hard to do at all, but something worth doing for sure.

jmestep · Post by **jmestep** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:16 am

I had some items in my basket, went to basket page, and clicked the view my basket link (to see what it did), and it cleared the basket. Then when I added stuff again I got a different basket link in the same place showing # of products and cost. I tried duplicating the action and couldn't get it to happen again. I tried the ncp=1&nbp=1 at the end of the url to clear the basket, but that didn't work. Maybe it's not available in ablenet, but we use that every time we take a phone order.
I like the dropdown option of checkout button and the quick shipping calc on the basket so people don't have to register, but can still see the shipping cost of everything.
It's a little disconcerting to not have a left nav.

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:33 am

AbleNet does use the NBP, NCP, etc. querystring params.

I've been uploading new builds a little often this morning doing some tweaks, as well as turned on the trace listener to "listen" to a few things I'm troubleshooting. You may have gotten caught in the middle of that, not sure.

Yeah, I struggled with a UI without left nav, it is different so you can focus on the product information and not just clicking thru a web site without direction!

The navigation is in two places: 1) Browse button, and 2) The drop down directory on the bottom of the screen.

Tough trying to get a good layout in fixed width designs such as this.

Thanks for the feedback.

Post by **Logan Rhodehamel** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 4:36 pm

I've only had a brief look so far - the site really is impressive. I will give it a more in-depth look later on and report back. Just wanted to let you know it's really nice work. (The browse tree and checkout drop down are cool.)

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 4:14 am

NC Software's new web sites and store are now released. The site can be viewed at: http://secure.nc-software.com

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:34 am

Just added an AJAX implementation for multiple images courtesy of ComponentArt's outstanding WEB.UI v3:

Just beginning to populate images across the store, but here's an example:

http://secure.nc-software.com/Full-Size ... 70C16.aspx

and another:

http://secure.nc-software.com/Route-Bro ... 37C14.aspx

NC Software · Post by **NC Software** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:26 pm

Looking for your opinions....

As shown in a prior post, I implemented an AJAX multiple image system. However, what I had before was simply images in the description at the bottom in a "Screen Shots" section, as I do here:

http://secure.nc-software.com/Logbook-P ... P67C1.aspx

I have mixed feelings on what's better as far as exposure to the customer. Anytime we have to make a customer do something, i.e. click, we can't count that they'll do it. Therefore in a multi-image system, we have to rely on the fact they must click each image to view. In the URL above, all they have to do is scroll AND the image atl/title tags will be indexed better as well.

What is your opinion on displaying multiple images to a shopper? Which system do you prefer as a shopper?

jmestep · Post by **jmestep** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:42 pm

I think some of it might depend on your customer demographics and page load speed. The images below might cause the page to load slower (unless they are pre-loaded in your other code).
If I were buying your type of product, I would probably like the images below, but with a link under the main pic to let me know they were there. Your product is a serious product for people who "work" and might not have a lot of time to want to fool around. With our products, especially the paintball guns, we're dealing mostly with kids who spend a lot of time on the site browsing and wishing and they like the high tech stuff.
When I'm shopping for something, I just want to buy it and get on to other stuff, especially when it is something specialized like your products.