View Full Version : Namesakes Shop Window
Hi,
Just joined...
Found Shop Window a few days ago...here is my first attempt at a shop...
Namesakes ~ Shop Window (http://www.namesakes.me.uk/shopwindow/)
Let me know what you think.
I will be moving it to its own domain soon.
Thanks
John
I don't want to seem too harsh, but I seriously didn't like the framed scroll bar exhibiting page within a page thing that's going on there for the shop, it's really untidy and the scrolling within the page scroll is something I know I personally find tedious and really annoying and it normally means i'll instantly leave that site without bothering to go further. With the shop windows scripts, you really shouldn't have any need for using frames like that and I doubt search engine spiders will favour it much either in honesty.
With that, before saying anything else, personally i'd say it would be better to wait until it is housed on it's own domain and everything is sorted properly before being too praising or critical, because what your displaying at the moment is just a temporary thing right. Kind of like the reason artists don't show their masterpieces before they are completed.
I'd say take a look at some other members setups and layouts, to see how people have done things differently to each other and take tips about the designs and the likes.
Confuscius
27-02-08, 16:08
The fact is that running in an iframe then when people hit some merchant checkout pages then they will get security warnings and tracking may be lost and a whole host of other issues.
Instead of trying to embed SW in an outer casing the start with SW and add an outer casing!
Thanks, points taken...
Have reworked site now on ver 2.
www.namesakes.me.uk/shopwindow (http://www.namesakes.me.uk/shopwindow)
Also put a couple of widgets in www.invernessphotographic.co.uk (http://www.invernessphotographic.co.uk)
can be found in the menu "shop" ~ www.invernessphotographic.co.uk/page2911.html (http://www.invernessphotographic.co.uk/page2911.html)
Thanks
I'd definately say lose the googleads down the left hand side, it makes the rest of the page look squished.
The income you can make from a well designed shopwindows client would far far outweigh anything you could make from googleads and the reason people visit these is to buy products not be transported away to some googlelink.
Concentrate on the actual design of the shopwindows itself, rather than trying to squeeze as many extra adverts in as possible. If you want to add extras, think about adding things that would make your shopwindow more useable than the competition, such as buying guides, gift guides, safe shopping, stuff like that, things that would actually give the customer confidence in your site as well as be useful to them.
Make a nice logo for the top of the page perhaps, instead of simply having an extra ad banner, something which visitors are likely to remember and feel comfortable seeing should they return in the future.
Confuscius
28-02-08, 14:04
The income you can make from a well designed shopwindows client would far far outweigh anything you could make from googleads and the reason people visit these is to buy products not be transported away to some googlelink.
If only that was true! All the evidence that I have says that the earnings are about the same per click (10p in broad terms). Visitors at 3am in the morning are mainly NOT from the UK so how are they going to be looking to buy from what is essentially a UK based store.
Of course if you wanted to be really clever about it you could turn your adsense on and off when you wanted on whichever pages you wanted! ;)
Paul
If only that was true! All the evidence that I have says that the earnings are about the same per click (10p in broad terms). Visitors at 3am in the morning are mainly NOT from the UK so how are they going to be looking to buy from what is essentially a UK based store.
Ah yeah, the dreaded none UK based visitors... Great for impressions and the odd banner click-thru, very little use when it comes to needing UK sales.
Don't you use some geo-targetting type advertisements to deal with such things though? They are far more lucrative than GoogleAds and they deal directly with people from that relevent country, so impression rates and click-thru rates tend to be much higher than using generic text ads from Google.
I use a few adnetworks such as Valueclick for example, for such things and have a far greater income from them than I ever did using Googleads.
I do have a nice geo-targetting banner rotating script in place though, so Affiliate Window ads always get the lions share of the displays when a UK resident visits my site.
I may be a little biased anyway though, as I dislike Google immensely, due to them having booted me from the adsense program a good 4-5 years ago without ever telling me what the hell I was supposed to have done against their rules, dispite my protests of "not guilty" and yet they still won't even humour any application I attempt now, which infuriates me out of principle rather than any potential loss of earnings from them. I seriously dislike their "ban now, won't explain later" type attitude. I mean, they are perfectly happy to still take money off me for their adwords program, not that i'd give them any mind. Ohhh that turned into a bit of a rant, lol, soz...
Thanks, getting into this now.
Completely reformatted using elements for each area.
And now have a logo of sorts.
http://www.namesakes.me.uk/images/trolley.jpg
As for the adverts that could be a long debate...;)
Your featured retailers box on the right hand side has become a box within a box and doesn't look right.
Yeah the advertisers bit is down to preference I guess. My original point regarding it though which should have been left clearer, was that it feels like it squishes the rest of the page and makes it look like your trying to squash too much into too small a space. but I guess that is only a minor cosmetic thing and something to your own taste.
Yea the box, I knew about that and finally I have got it right...
Is there a way to have "Feature Merchants" on the index page as I have tried but cannot get them there.
How to change the number of products displayed in the "Product Display" page?
Thanks
John
Yea the box, I knew about that and finally I have got it right...
Is there a way to have "Feature Merchants" on the index page as I have tried but cannot get them there.
How to change the number of products displayed in the "Product Display" page?
Thanks
John
I can't personally actually explain to you how to get featured merchants on the main page as I basically tinkered around until I achieved it, but even then, I can only get it to display merchants from a selected category on there and not random merchants from all categories, which was what I was hoping to achieve. I believe most people have actually hard coded their featured merchants bits on their main pages.
To change the amount of products displayed on a page should be done from the class.api_product_list.php script which can be found in the classes folder, which gives a variety of options including product limit, if I remember right.
Hi thanks again, I have mine hard coded on the index page...
Started with a Merchant and Product News section along with a Local News Section.
Have a look and see what you think of the layout.
John
Have a look and see what you think of the layout.
It looks fine to me bar the right hand column, the word Featured Retailers is forced onto two lines which makes it not match the other two header cells and everything else underneath that right hand column is squashed to the left hand side of that cell. Personally I really think it would look a lot nicer without the left hand column of adverts compromising the size of the other columns.