Critique My Site (July 2007): 3rdPowerOutlet.com

[Ina]

John Lawson was a telecommunications consultant for Accenture and founded 3rd Power as a real estate investment partnership. A joint venture with another business entity went sour, leaving John with a large mortgage on an investment property he wanted to unload. As things got a bit desperate in 2002, John turned to eBay. His company is now a Platinum PowerSeller and John is an eBay Certified Education Specialist and ships over 100 packages a day, generating over 2,000 feedbacks a month on eBay.

John and his partner now work fulltime at online sales, having left corporate America behind. In 2005 they signed on to ChannelAdvisor to handle the volume. It was in October 2006 that John got serious about the online store that comes included with the ChannelAdvisor package. "As (ChannelAdvisor CEO) Scot Wingo likes to say, we decided to take of the training wheels," he said.

John hired a company to help design and implement a solution that worked with his existing ChannelAdvisor store platform. He said, "Since that time I personally have taken the steps to get the design to the stage it is today. Currently the store is doing 20% of our volume and we have NOT begun the Google campaigns or real optimization."

While he may only get a few orders per day on the web store, John says the average sale there is usually a multiple order, sometimes with dozens of items. "The income per sale is 2-5 times what the average eBay sale is."

"The initial results in sales have been very encouraging and now I want to crank up the heat." John said all comments are welcome, including comments about design, ease-of-use, and flow. "Anything else that a user could think of is always helpful for me. I don't want to limit their imagination and observation because I simply need help."

Please visit John's online store:
http://www.3rdpoweroutlet.com
and post your feedback below. Thanks!
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com

[Chris_Marshall]

Just took a look and nearly instantly backed out; there's lots of work needed there. Examples:

- The site is offset to the right hand side for no reason.
- Even for online sites, regard the 'golden 3' rule used in print ... never use more than three font types, three different sizes and three different font colors on the same page at the same time.
- The site does not use CSS but includes page-styles which have to be re-loaded every page and are not cached (like external CSS definitions).

- 'Heavy' JavaScript use which results in a long wait before the left menu is 'hot' and ready to use. And many people dislike JavaScript or have it deactivated.

- Site uses TABLES for layout. You're on a ticking time bomb there ... using tables as formatting template is more and more becoming a no-no, not only because it is simply too slow and sluggish. Making tables 'transparent' for later SEO is a *big* pain in the butt and will bloat the pages even further. It's also prone to 'browser bugs' ... many browsers have their own problems when rendering tables.
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W3C (and Google) approved layout would have to contain DIV areas and DIV floats that replace the TABLE functions.

Con's: many 'out of the box' proggies (or 'old' coder guys) still insist on using deprecated HTML 3.2 which is useless today. Oh, and using DIVs at first looks very complicated ...

Pro's: The site gets a cleaner code, is lots faster (in comparison to TABLE pageload) and becomes totally transparent for search engines. It also totally avoids various browser-related 'bugs' regarding the various types of rendering tables. And it's freely resizeable (*), so you don't run into problems with screen resolution.

(*)This has to be explained: A table can automatically stretch to fit the screen width (or height), the amount of content however does not change, causing large 'white space' in many resolutions.
DIV/DIV floats can 'relocate' content when using other screen resolutions (if needed). Take the shown section 'OUR HOT SELLERS' from that page: you have two rows with four segments each. If you view the site with say 1900x1024, the two rows with four segments remain but are filled with tons of white room. A section with DIV floats would (if you wish) automatically check the fit of the segments and relocate content: in 1900x1024 for example you would see ONE row with EIGHT segments ... I think you get the idea.
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Finally, the site needs a good run through HTML verification as the code is quite inconsistent which also results in a drop in loading speed and overall rendering quality, so I'd advise using something like "HTML Validator Pro" (as the W3C online tool is a pain when working on whole sites).
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Cheers,

Christopher S. Marshall

[yourdogstuff]

1. With space at premium on a home page, do you really want duplication? Having categories on the right, and in the page is not necessary. Better to use that space for something else.

2. I would also aphabetize the categories for easier scanning.

3. On your Contact us page: The requested URL /jilawson/Satisfaction.gif was not found on this server.

4. On your Contact us page - it's odd that you use a picture of someone on the phone, but don't display a phone number.

5. Nice shipping and FAQs information.

Juli

www.YourDogStuff.com

[Ina]

We checked in with John at 3rdPowerOutlet.com three-plus months after running this feature and will publish an update in the October 21st issue of AuctionBytes-Update newsletter. John revamped his site, here are before and after screenshots.

Before:



After:



Thanks to John and everyone who made helpful suggestions, keep the ideas coming!
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Ina Steiner, AuctionBytes.com

[Tradguy]

Love the new site!

But everything can be improved, right?

Suggestions:

1 - The top promo banner (with the guy and girl) is very attractive on the opening page - but is a problem with navigation pages. It makes your pages so long that even on my large hi-rez monitor, the sub-categories are completely hidden. Every time I search thru your shop, I have to scroll down to see the actual items and sub-categories. Also, while I'm actually trying to find items, I don't need a constant "best sellers" display ABOVE my search - it's confusing and distracting.

I would drop the top promo altogether from sub-pages, and move the "best sellers" segment below the sub-cats and items displays. That would move the sub-cat and items to the top 1/3 of your pages - instead of the lower 1/4 where it's now showing.

2 - Your category menu would probably work best if the subcategories expanded as you searched. Customers will get lost trying to nav thru your store - the breadcrumbs are fine, but it won't get me to quick sub-cat access like an expanding menu would. Basically this problem is exaggerated by the overly large promo header mentioned in #1.

3 - Aesthetic comment only here. I like the "hip hop" feel of the promo banner, but it's not the same feel for your logo (I thought you sold electric power accessories), or your bland solid-box-colored layout. With a little bit of design work, you could make this site have a real "raw" and exciting feel. For an example of what I'm talking about, look at these "hip" sites:

www.hottopic.com
www.spencersonline.com

I've actually spent a few $100 with hottopic for the holidays already. My 12 year old responded immediately to their layout - "cause it seemed cool". See, it's an aesthetic thing

Good luck!