Environmentally friendly camera company - would really appreciate a review!

[FlashingMonkey]

Hi There

I have been a keen reader of this forum for a while now and have used it for numerous bits of technical advice about lenses and what camera to buy (couldn't be happier with my ZS3 I bought last September - eagerly awaiting the ZS5!!)

A few colleges and myself have just started up an on-line digital camera company and were looking for a few people to have a look at the site and give us some good healthy constructive criticism of what they think of the site layout, product range and and concept. No need to buy anything, if you could just have a look around and see what you think that would be great.

We have only been in operation a few weeks and so we know there is a lot of work still to be done but any comments you can give would be greatly appreciated as you guys really seem to know your stuff.

The site is called FlashingMonkey (http://www.flashingmonkey.com)

I don't think this breaks any forum rules but if I have miss posted or anything like that then please let me know.

Thanks in advance

Ross

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

The website looks very professional, have you really just started up?

[Prospero]

I agree with DPR, the site has a nice, professional appearance. The number of products is still a bit limited, but I guess that's obvious when you are just starting out.

However, I noticed some things that I think can be improved:

Starting with the homepage:

First of all, I think the company logo with the monkey looks a bit soft. It seems to me it was enlarged a little, or that more compression was used than necessary.
The "memorycard in a flash" thing does not work, clicking the arrow does nothing.

When looking at your featured products list it bothers me that if you hover the mouse over one of the product, the whole area becomes brown except for the area around the picture (you basically see a white square with the memorycard in it). In my opinion, it would look a lot better if the white part also got the brown colour.

You can change this by converting your product photos from jpeg to gif. GIF supports transparancy, and you can use this property to make sure that the white background becomes transparant (you can do this in photoshop). That way the background of your product shot will match the background of the frame (div) holding the product.

Another thing about the featured products list is that on my browser (IE8) the border underneath the product list is placed too high, behind the products, which looks a bit messy.

Then on some of the other pages:

One of the images on "Our Environmental Policy" cannot be found.

Regarding the new product list, I think it would be more effective if either there was more information for each new product, or if there was a tiny thumbnail with each new product.

Finally, on the categories list, I think it may be better if the things were in order of importance rather than alphabetical order. So, I would put cameras on top and not cables. Also, I think it's better to let the cameras category have two sub categories (Compact and DSLR). Now if people click the cameras link on the menu above, they will not find the DSLRs.

I hope this was helpful. If any of the things I wrote above aren't clear, feel free to ask. If things are unclear, I can make some screenshots to illustrate the points I made.

[FlashingMonkey]

I was expecting maybe a few lines of half hearted feedback and instead I get a thorough examination of the site! Fantastic :-)

I have carefully looked through the points that you have made and there are a few things that I had spotted before but also lots of things that I had not and for this and all the time you have spent going through the site I cannot thank you enough.

Several of your points I can act on myself such as the great tip on converting the photos to .GIF and changing the categories around, but things like browser optimisation and banner fixes I am going to have to put forward to the web designers so those things might take a little longer!

Once again, thank you for your time and if there are any other tips or pointers you can give they will be much appreciated!

[Paradox]

Grammar comment - On empty product pages, I'd replace 'There is no product in this category.' with 'There are no products in this category'. Just sounds a bit better.

Also, on the shipping page, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the phrase 'Your package will be dispatched at your own risk'. If I'd spend a few hundred pounds on a camera I'd want to know the company took responsibility for any fault due to packing, or that they would follow up and get compensation from the shipping company if the parcel was lost.

Otherwise the site looks pretty good. :)