Pls review my baby site

**jellybabys** · 05:27 PM

Hello Guys,

Could you please offer me some advice on how you would improve my baby store http://www.jellybabys.co.uk, its been up and running for a little but im sure it could be doing better.

We are selling about 170 baby items at the moment and hoping to add more products when we get more capital.

It not validated at the moment and ive just not got the time or the experience to fix the errors.

Most of all im interested if the layout works well for you and if you like the overall feel.

Thank you for you time.

**levi** · 01-07-2007, 03:27 PM

hey your site not working man

**ADAM Web Design** · 01-07-2007, 03:35 PM

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk/ <--- that's the correct link (the one above has an L where the . should be).

Anyway, here are my thoughts: first off, "babies" is misspelled and that annoys the crap out of me. I don't know if it's by accident or design, and to be honest with you I don't care...I just find it annoying.

Besides that, I think it's a poorly coded site. I don't ever evaluate design aesthetics: we're all different. But the coding on this is atrocious.

For starters, I see osCommerce session hashes in all the URLs. That's bad mojo (although you'll have to ask someone else how to fix that...I don't know.)

Second, why are you running Google Adsense on an e-commerce site? Unless you're maxed out for volume (and with this site, there's no way that you are), then this makes no sense.

Third, your font is a fixed size, and very tiny. That's bad usability mojo.

Finally, you're pulling the same reciprocal link garbage that so many other sites do (and fail miserably at). Lose this. It's a stupid pet trick designed for SEO (which won't help you anyway, because of the session hashes in the URLs mentioned above.)

In other words, design the thing properly and THEN worry about the SEO.

**travelagent** · 01-07-2007, 03:45 PM

There wasn't a period after the "www" -- sometimes, it requires a little bit of thought and common sense of why a site doesn't load ... so, here's the actual URL -- http://www.jellybabys.co.uk/

First of all, your "Google Analytics" code is in the wrong spot - this needs to be the very last script before "</head>".

Suggest you get rid of the scrolling ticker on the right-side, as it slows your site down.

Lastly, you have the following code warnings that should be addressed:

Code:

line 13 column 80 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;
line 34 column 1 - Warning: missing <tr>
line 34 column 1 - Warning: discarding unexpected <table>
line 35 column 3 - Warning: missing <td>
line 37 column 809 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 37 column 967 - Warning: discarding unexpected <table>
line 39 column 20 - Warning: discarding unexpected </tr>
line 59 column 95 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 59 column 42 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 70 column 147 - Warning: missing </font> before </a>
line 70 column 1251 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;
line 70 column 1516 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;
line 94 column 86 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 94 column 30 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 132 column 188 - Warning: discarding unexpected </a>
line 153 column 184 - Warning: discarding unexpected </a>
line 166 column 97 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 166 column 43 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 257 column 13 - Warning: missing <td>
line 262 column 236 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;
line 262 column 1525 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 321 column 90 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 321 column 42 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 356 column 92 - Warning: <img> unexpected or duplicate quote mark
line 356 column 43 - Warning: missing </a> before </td>
line 367 column 989 - Warning: unescaped & which should be written as &amp;
line 394 column 25 - Warning: <marquee> is not approved by W3C
line 394 column 329 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 862 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 1396 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 1851 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 2368 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 2905 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 3433 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 3939 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 4424 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 4881 - Warning: missing </a> before <a>
line 394 column 5295 - Warning: discarding unexpected </marquee>
line 476 column 5 - Warning: missing <td>
line 482 column 1848 - Warning: unescaped & or unknown entity "&osCsid"
line 483 column 5 - Warning: discarding unexpected </td>
line 484 column 3 - Warning: discarding unexpected </tr>
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "marginwidth"
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "marginheight"
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "topmargin"
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "bottommargin"
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "leftmargin"
line 26 column 1 - Warning: <body> proprietary attribute "rightmargin"
line 28 column 5 - Warning: <table> attribute "bgcolor" has invalid value "FFFFFF"
line 28 column 5 - Warning: <table> attribute "bordercolor" has invalid value "9370db"
line 28 column 5 - Warning: <table> proprietary attribute "bordercolor"
line 29 column 11 - Warning: <td> attribute "bgcolor" has invalid value "FFFFFF"
line 37 column 532 - Warning: <img> proprietary attribute "oncontextmenu"
line 37 column 532 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 59 column 95 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 94 column 86 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 166 column 97 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 308 column 101 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 321 column 90 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 356 column 92 - Warning: <img> lacks "alt" attribute
line 394 column 25 - Warning: trimming empty <marquee>

**travelagent** · 01-07-2007, 03:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk/ <--- that's the correct link (the one above has an L where the . should be).

LOL -- ya beat me to it again!

**jellybabys** · 05:48 PM

Thank you for your comments and the www. bit.

Where to start, well the babies bit im sorry if that annoys you but its very unlikely that you would be searching for babys but you would be amazed how many do, hits via search engine to my site for babys 119 visitors 0.2%.

Not sure what you on about "reciprocal link garbage" do you mean links don't help?, i have tried to sort out the session id in the URLs but with no joy nor have i found anyone that can fix this, but thank you for your comments on the font i will enlarge it, last bit design before SEO hmmm, whats better 20000 visitors to not so great looking site or 100 visitors to a great looking site?

Thanks for telling me where to put the Google Analytics code i will do that soon, and i did know that the site was not validated but im no good at that stuff so would not know where to start.

Thank you for all your advice.

**jellybabys** · 01-07-2007, 05:36 PM

By the way Adam, im sure your an expert at all this kind of stuff but please make yourself more clear as saying things like "It's a stupid pet trick designed for SEO" and "Unless you're maxed out for volume" means nothing to me as its not my jargon so would only make me more confused on how to improve my site.

But thank you for time it is much appreciated.

Dave

**roy77** · 01-07-2007, 05:38 PM

the url is with the " l " i think ur site looks realy nice!
your productsa look good, and do u realy get 20000 visitors?

**jellybabys** · 01-07-2007, 05:46 PM

Thanks roy, no that was just a figure of speech, i do get 950 unique visitors per day and around 1.2 million pages viewed each month, so i get about 20-25k visitors per month, Im very lucky to be top of the serach engines for great keywords and i think i get more hits than most in my field ( if you take away the big boys that is)

Dave

**Mystic Rose** · 01-08-2007, 04:28 AM

Well purely from a Mum's point of view I like it & would look around if I was in the market for baby goods.

**ceo2design** · 01-08-2007, 12:32 PM

Your site is good and the colors what you used is also perfect for kids. one point that strikes in my mind is your topmargin is 0px while your bottom margin is 19px. if you adjust that , the design is perfect.

**twiggy** · 01-08-2007, 01:06 PM

Well done you can install osCommerce and change the banner.

How much more credit do you want for using someone else's php programme?

Same goes for people installing phpBB and the alike and expecting credit for it 95% if not 99% of the work is done for you, changing an image or two doesn't really make it your own work.

**jellybabys** · 04:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by twiggy

Well done you can install osCommerce and change the banner.

How much more credit do you want for using someone else's php programme?

Same goes for people installing phpBB and the alike and expecting credit for it 95% if not 99% of the work is done for you, changing an image or two doesn't really make it your own work.

LOL what a poor reply yes it is oscommerce and yes i did remove the banner, and oh i added hundreds of pages of content, some great tools like baby name tool, audio stories and so on, around 30 contributions was added and submitted around a 1000 links, took months to make it SEO and read thousands of useful articles on how to improve the site and get listed better from great sites like this and made it not look like a standard osC site, but as you said why would i be looking for any kind of credit, and as for the credit remark? i was looking for some advice how to improve the site and not some one just to say it was good or bad but thank you for your informative comment Twiggy..

Regards

**jellybabys** · 01-08-2007, 04:52 PM

Sorry to bump, maybe i should tell google shop how rubbish they are, have you looked at what cart they use ?

**jellybabys** · 07:44 AM

Thank you for the advice before ( I just need to get of my high horse when i get good advice i don't like : ( )

Ive taken on board most of them and fixed the main page errors, the session id problem and others, i will be removing the google ads, the extra bucks was nice but im sure im was losing customers and that makes no sense.

So is they anything else i could do to make a better baby site? (as that is every ones goal), im thinking about adding flash games but not sure if that's the right way to go, it would look good but that would not get me many more visitors and even if it did would people use it, so maybe i should spend the money and get the site seo properly?

Once again thanks

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk

David

**Albionx** · 01-24-2007, 11:14 AM

Nice!

**damdanger** · 01-24-2007, 01:00 PM

for some reason im not digging the purple border, maybe its just my screen but it seem a bit to dark, maybe more of an easterish purple

**jellybabys** · 01-24-2007, 02:31 PM

Thanks, im not over keen on that purple myself, but i have tried many and could not find one that really works, finding a colour thats fun and soft and also goes with the rest of the site is not easy.

Regards

Dave

**kbj** · 01-25-2007, 12:53 PM

Hello,

Just had a look at your site. These comments come from a mum of a 3 year old and a 7 month old and I also have my own health and beauty website online so hope they come in useful.

My first impression was aaahhh too much to look at and read. If I wanted to buy something, I wouldnt know where to start and would probably come straight out of the site.

I personally think there is much too much copy/text on the front page, you dont need an essay and I will say, the grammar and english isn't great and doesn't give a good impression.

The pages load quickly which is good.

I wouldnt buy baby clothes without a photo, why use drawings?

The bibs are fab, why not make a feature of those on the front page, I would buy one!

There are too many menu options on the front page, its baffling. These need to be reduced and be much clearer. Not sure on the use of blue on the lettering, maybe if there was a lot less words, it might look ok. Also, we know the site if for babys so why use the word babys in front of every word ie shoes, bibs etc. Maybe this is for SEO use, not sure.

Anyway, what do I know? If I was an expert I wouldnt be on this site asking for reviews of my website.

kathryn

**jellybabys** · 01-26-2007, 02:07 PM

Hi kathryn,

Thanks you for the advice, the text and bad grammer and babys so many times is all for one reason soe = HITS, its amazing how many hits we get now we have added a lot of text on the front page, bet i would not be at number one in google.co.uk if i did not that many babys on the main page.

Your right about the cramped up catagories but im not sure what to do about it but i guess i will have to do something, i have made the catagories font a little larger so it draws the eyes to them ( hope this works) and changing the blue is something else i was thinking about, but finding the right colour is a real pain : )

Again thank you for you kind advice....

David