Tramway Modelling Web Site up for Review

"Hello,

www.terryrusselltrams.co.uk uses the Bargain web hosting package from Compila which has proved to more than adequate for our needs. In the website design we do not use any significant "bells and whistles" other than extensive use of JavaScript and Adobe Flash.

If there are any clever routines used then more than likely they have been lifted from sites that provide free scripts to incorporate into your web site. Some scripts and features have been used from the hosting package notably the counter and the Advanced Guest Book which has been heavily customized to match the look and feel of the web site.

CSS is used with the site being constructed using just Notepad. The menus were constructed using the design facilities at www.flashvortex.com. It would be nice to have a fully fledged shopping trolley facility to aid sales but I could not find any suitable software package to use.

Not having the ability to accept Credit Cards [I have no idea how that can be achieved] is a pain but experience has shown that PayPal is a satisfactory alternative which is working well.

The site requires attention to a number of pages to "finish them off" but fundamentally it is complete and awaits observation and comment from anyone who cares to stop by.

David Bradley"

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on July 6, 2010 at 11:11

Dear David

I have had a look at your site and overall i think it is excellent. The images are good quality and I like the layout very much. However I have a few suggestions for you;

1) When I look at the site in IE or FireFox it seems to be right aligning as opposed to centering. I think it would be better and easier to read if it was in the center.

2) Personal preference, but I would prefer a light page background, either white or a very light grey as opposed to the blue you currently have. I think this would make the main page areas stand out more.

3) The title tag on the page is not really utilised fully. It should contain keywords, that a potential visitor might enter into a search engine. May be something like this for the home page.

Model Trams, Tram Kits, Tram Parts – Terry Russell Trams

4) You have not included a meta keyword tag or a meta description tag. The description tag is used by Google when it displays a search listing and is therefore very useful, as a salesy area to attract people to your site.

5) With regard to selling on the web, you can use companies like PayPal, however the alternative can be cheaper in the long run. Firstly you would need to apply for an Internet Merchant account from your bank, once this is obtained you can choose any Payment Processing company you wish. Compila uses SagePay (http://www.sagepay.com) because they charge fees of around 10p per transaction as opposed to a percentage on each transaction.

6) There are many free and very good shopping cart systems, http://www.oscommerce.com and http://www.zencart.com are just a couple.

I hope that you find my suggestions useful and please let me know if you require any further advise.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by David Bradley on July 10, 2010 at 21:08

Hi Harvey,

Thank you for your time, trouble and effort in writing a few notes about www.terryrusselltrams.co.uk. Over the last few days I have tried to incorporate many of the suggestions made. You will note that:
* the pages are now centered on the page;
* a very slight change in the background colour with investigations ongoing for the most appropriate colour;
* utilising more fully the page title attribute is a tricky one because currently the "Share Page" and "email me" hyperlinks at the foot of each page extract information from the title to reflect the page that the end user is referring to. Also the page title at the foot of each page reproduces the title attribute where addition information might be confusing;
* there were indeed some pages where essential meta tags were missing and these have now been added;

I will follow up on your suggestions to be able to accept alternative payment methods to PayPal although many years ago I did investigate having an Internet Merchant account from my bank but their enthusiasm to provide me with that facility was virtually zero quoting that it was not something available for a non business banking account.

As for the pictures it may not be appreciated that the tram models are approximately 9" long, 4½" high and 2" wide and are therefore quite challenging to photograph with an appropriate depth of field in an indoor location. Flash would was out the model and strong lighting could damage the model so longish exposures are used. Quite a few of the pictures appear on the site were taken by me.

The Advanced Guest Book has been heavily customized to match the house style of the site.

A particularly challenging aspect of the web design was to selectively print parts of web pages which are not "mangled" when reduced in size to suit the printable area. Especially difficult was to control the line thicknesses of boxes in tables and to control the font and size to be used. As a consequence some visually simple web pages took almost a week to create,

Obviously there isn't going to be a huge interest in this site but my aim is to try and encourage 1000 visitors or more each month; that would mean a 25% increase on present daily viewings. I am sure this is quite possible.

David Bradley

Harvey Raybould said:

Dear David

I have had a look at your site and overall i think it is excellent. The images are good quality and I like the layout very much. However I have a few suggestions for you;

1) When I look at the site in IE or FireFox it seems to be right aligning as opposed to centering. I think it would be better and easier to read if it was in the center.

2) Personal preference, but I would prefer a light page background, either white or a very light grey as opposed to the blue you currently have. I think this would make the main page areas stand out more.

3) The title tag on the page is not really utilised fully. It should contain keywords, that a potential visitor might enter into a search engine. May be something like this for the home page.

Model Trams, Tram Kits, Tram Parts – Terry Russell Trams

4) You have not included a meta keyword tag or a meta description tag. The description tag is used by Google when it displays a search listing and is therefore very useful, as a salesy area to attract people to your site.

5) With regard to selling on the web, you can use companies like PayPal, however the alternative can be cheaper in the long run. Firstly you would need to apply for an Internet Merchant account from your bank, once this is obtained you can choose any Payment Processing company you wish. Compila uses SagePay (http://www.sagepay.com) because they charge fees of around 10p per transaction as opposed to a percentage on each transaction.

6) There are many free and very good shopping cart systems, http://www.oscommerce.com and http://www.zencart.com are just a couple.

I hope that you find my suggestions useful and please let me know if you require any further advise.

Regards

Harvey