New Ideas for Pelican WebSite - Your opinion is requested...

[Wayne 962]

I've been playing around with a template design that's similar to the new DriveWerks site. I would like your opinion on this layout, and if you have any suggestions to improve it. Keep in mind that this is a rough template, and none of the links work, and some are there simply as placeholders:

OLD: http://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/shopcart/911M/por_911M_enginA_main.htm

NEW: http://www.pelicanparts.net/drivewerks3.htm

Use your imagination, and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Wayne

[Adam]

MUCH nicer, Wayne.

I like the way it keeps your focus in the middle of the page. Breaking up the sidebar with the two-coloured background makes life easier too and I don't know why.

[yellow911turbo]

i like it.

similar to amazon.com and other huge sites out there. they use the similar design for a reason, i'm sure.

[layzee]

Sorry to harp on, but doesn't look right on Mozilla. Got to fight the power Wayne!

[North Coast Cab]

I like it. To me the best part are the detailed pictures. The more exacting the pictures the higher my confidence level in procuring the correct item and moving forward on my project. If the pictures are more general I'm always a little suspect. I think this is especially important since the overal marketing plan is to educate through the "how to" books and the BBS and then sell parts through the on-line catalog. Keep up the good work.

John

[dotorg]

I like it. You really need a wish-list functionality, though. I got no Porsche parts for christmas, and I blame the lack of a wish-list functionality on here for it!

[VincentVega]

Nice work. The main complaint I have with the current site is navigation. You have to know what category your desired part is in, and it's not always clear. Search works, but usually shows up tons of hits. Personally I like the drivewerks drop down menu idea for search.

Nice work, thanks for asking the masses for input.

[tobluforu]

I know this does have anything to do w\the website, but I have seen bulletin boards that when you roll over the subject of the thread it shows the first few sentences for a 5 seconds. Kind of cool. Not sure if you can do that on this board.

[masraum]

Hmm, used to have a wish list. I hadn't noticed that it was gone.

Wayne, mucho better, awesome even. I am using Netscape 7.1 (pretty much the same as mozilla) and the page loaded fine. Drivewerks does sometimes give me problems, weird thing is if I leave the page and then go back it displays correctly the second time. Either way, I didn't see that problem on the page above.

[reesestewww]

looks good ...color is great too...its like upgrading from 98 to XP

[azasadny]

Wayne,
Very nice....

[jyl]

Cosmetically quite a lot nicer. Somehow the old site now looks old-fashioned and frumpy.

Not sure exactly how you plan to use the quick links but seems they might allow more going direct from one page to another with less up-up-up-down-down-down navigation.

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by layzee
Sorry to harp on, but doesn't look right on Mozilla. Got to fight the power Wayne!

Looks fine in Netscape 7 to me (font sizes are a bit off, but that's it...)

What is wrong with Netscape on your machine?

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by dotorg
I like it. You really need a wish-list functionality, though. I got no Porsche parts for christmas, and I blame the lack of a wish-list functionality on here for it!

Uhh, this feature has been in the website for the past 2-3 years! (it's called the Project List)...

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by jyl
Cosmetically quite a lot nicer. Somehow the old site now looks old-fashioned and frumpy.

Not sure exactly how you plan to use the quick links but seems they might allow more going direct from one page to another with less up-up-up-down-down-down navigation.

Again, just a look page - none of the links work right now - just looking for feedback on the design.

Thanks, and please keep the comments coming...

-Wayne

[nostatic]

allow me to pick nits...

logo in top left visually interferes with the tabs. Either run the text along the top or move something

too many blues. There appear to be about 5 or 6 shades of blue on the page. What is especially annoying is the light blue solid box at the bottom left...it is out of place with the boxes above being outlines. Cut down to maybe three shades of blue, and a gray, dark green, or dark red if you need contrast.

The breadcrumb trail should be in a smaller font...it occupies too much screen real estate.

Where do the "back" and "next" text/icons take you? It isn't clear to me. If the back icon is mimicing the back button on the browser, then lose it. It just will confuse people. Most people use the back button for navigation anyway.

The quick link concept is confusing...you're on page three of the section, yet the quick links are showing pages 1, 2, and 3. Why? Seems to me the quick links should be major links for the section (since that is how you're breaking out your catalog). ie "bearing sets" "rods" "pistons" etc. And lose the page designations there...the user doesn't car what page it's on...they just want to get there.

"search our site" needs to be a single line, like the rest of the elements on the right side. Also the "go" button needs to be properly aligned with the text field.

There needs to be space between the community box (which should be square, like the above box, and not solid) and the footer graphic. Same issues with the footer graphic (search text one line only).

[Wayne 962]

Hi there. I think you're reading into it a bit too much - it's not finished quite yet, but some good comments nonetheless:

Originally posted by nostatic
logo in top left visually interferes with the tabs. Either run the text along the top or move something

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, can you explain what you mean further?

Originally posted by nostatic
too many blues. There appear to be about 5 or 6 shades of blue on the page. What is especially annoying is the light blue solid box at the bottom left...it is out of place with the boxes above being outlines. Cut down to maybe three shades of blue, and a gray, dark green, or dark red if you need contrast.

The Community box is cut-and-pasted from DriveWerks - I haven't worked on finalizing that quite yet - that blue is only temporary.

Originally posted by nostatic
Where do the "back" and "next" text/icons take you? It isn't clear to me. If the back icon is mimicing the back button on the browser, then lose it. It just will confuse people. Most people use the back button for navigation anyway.

My highly paid experts disagree with that one - the back button is very important to a lot of people, as it doesn't echo the browser back button (all the time). It goes to the previous page, or the big catalog page. The next button will go to the next catalog page in the section. Granted, this does not work exactly the same as other sites, but we're not selling the same product in the same format. I have not been able to find another site that sells in this format (most don't have listings like we have).

Originally posted by nostatic
The quick link concept is confusing...you're on page three of the section, yet the quick links are showing pages 1, 2, and 3. Why? Seems to me the quick links should be major links for the section (since that is how you're breaking out your catalog). ie "bearing sets" "rods" "pistons" etc. And lose the page designations there...the user doesn't car what page it's on...they just want to get there.

This is just a concept page - the designations don't work, nor are they actually organized on this page. The Quick Links work exactly the same way they work in the current catalog

Originally posted by nostatic
"search our site" needs to be a single line, like the rest of the elements on the right side. Also the "go" button needs to be properly aligned with the text field.

It should be - but I just noticed on really small monitors, there's a chance it might not be. I have fixed this...

Originally posted by nostatic
There needs to be space between the community box (which should be square, like the above box, and not solid) and the footer graphic. Same issues with the footer graphic (search text one line only).

This will be fixed. Thanks!

-Wayne

[layzee]

The page 1 parts was all the way over to the right with lots of whitespace on my laptop using Firebird 0.6.1 but looks fine on this machine running the same version :S I'll check again and post a screengrab if it reproduces the behaviour.

Great design though Wayne, much clearer.

[nostatic]

Originally posted by nostatic
logo in top left visually interferes with the tabs. Either run the text along the top or move something
---
I'm not exactly sure what you mean, can you explain what you mean further?
---

The logo and text reatment look crammed into the upper left corner, and the text treatment is clos to hitting the left most tab. I would have the text treatment be a single line along the top with the graphic far left


-----
Originally posted by nostatic
Where do the "back" and "next" text/icons take you? It isn't clear to me. If the back icon is mimicing the back button on the browser, then lose it. It just will confuse people. Most people use the back button for navigation anyway.


Wayne sez - My highly paid experts disagree with that one - the back button is very important to a lot of people, as it doesn't echo the browser back button (all the time). It goes to the previous page, or the big catalog page. The next button will go to the next catalog page in the section. Granted, this does not work exactly the same as other sites, but we're not selling the same product in the same format.

---

Well, I'm a highly paid expert too (expert, textpert, choking smoker, don't you think the joker laughs at you?). Yes, the back button for the *browser* is the most used navigation element. If your "forward" and "back" element on the page are referring to the *catalog*, then they should say "next page" "previous page" or something along those lines.

Back mean back in browser history. It doesn't mean previous page. If that's what yours does, then it needs to be labeled as such.

btw, I'll take my consulting fee in parts

[Wayne 962]

Nostatic, I have designed the site for monitors with ideally 1024x768 screen resolution - sounds like yours is 800x600, thus all of these viewing problems? I can't design for 800x600 effectively, and also include all of the features / displays that I want to. This indeed is a trade off.

On a 1024x768 monitor, it looks a bit more balanced like this:



I assume that this is not what yours looks like?

On the issue of the Back button, the browser BACK button doesn't always work (prime example, after you post a topic here, the back button goes to that page that says "thanks for posting, please wait a sec'). The BACK button here will return you to one level backwards on the breadcrumb trail (in this case the main catalog page), or the previous page, if you are not on page 1 (I haven't decided quite yet).

Keep 'em coming please...

-Wayne