Wanted: Website Review Please review my first online shop

[alex]

I've just made my first sale and it was the most expensive item I have

Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback, I've made some changes based on what has been said and there are more to come. Feel free to give me more suggestions etc.

 

[infoman66]

It seems to me that everything is working correctly ...

The look is slightly retro ...
Perhaps he could doing the style, since they are very fancy skaters guys ...

 

[alex]

Thanks for the comment, but please could you clarify what you meant below?

Perhaps he could doing the style, since they are very fancy skaters guys ...

If you are suggesting changing the style what specifically needs to be changed and to what?

 

[infoman66]

I meant to add this bit of color in the design ... Can some pictures as the background ...
Skaters are engaged in extreme sports - I think taht the vivid colors were more suitable for graphic design ...
For example:
http://www.warehouseskateboards.com/
http://www.skateboard.com/skate
http://www.skateboardermag.com/
http://www.goskateorgohome.com/
Red and black, or red and orange or something simmilar combinations...

 

[Aaron Clifford]

The drop down box for shipping is showing a bit of code in between each choice, may want to fix that

 

[boozt]

I've just made my first sale and it was the most expensive item I have

Thanks to everyone who has given me feedback, I've made some changes based on what has been said and there are more to come. Feel free to give me more suggestions etc.

Congratulations on you first sale.

 

[alex]

The drop down box for shipping is showing a bit of code in between each choice, may want to fix that

Thanks for the info - please could you confirm that the issue is on basket.php and tell me what browser you're using etc? I just checked in IE8, FF, Safari, Opera, Chrome and on my BlackBerry with no issue

Congratulations on you first sale.

Cheers

 

[arenee]

i liked it. the colors are eye fetching. also the links worked. tried to buy something and had no problem with the cart. i'm not a skateboard person so don't know if your items for sale come in different categories. if they do, then since you have only a few products on the front page, let folks know these are items from each category.

 

[osxkris]

Over all, it's a good looking site and appears to work well. A couple of minor issues though:

1. Some of the graphics are a little unnecessary, or look a bit out of place. For example the one in the basket of that shopping trolly just looks like a bit of clip-art thrown in there, and the free delivery one on the home page looks out of place and doesn't need to be an image considering it only contains text, and the alt text of it is irrelevant too.

2. If you put a non-numeric value in the quantity filed before adding it to your basket, nothing gets added. Maybe it's worth assuming the quantity is 1 if something else is entered in there? I hit 'w' by accident when I was going for '2', without looking at my keyboard.

3. The error messages for your feedback form are displayed quite far away from the form itself.

4. When clicking the PayPal graphic in the left column it opens a new window with some information in, but in the background the page jumps to the top. You can prevent that with a 'return: false;' in your onclick attribute.

As I said, minor things

 

[alex]

Thanks, arenee. I appreciate the review and plan to make the categories more clear in the near future when I intorduce more products.

Over all, it's a good looking site and appears to work well. A couple of minor issues though:

1. Some of the graphics are a little unnecessary, or look a bit out of place. For example the one in the basket of that shopping trolly just looks like a bit of clip-art thrown in there, and the free delivery one on the home page looks out of place and doesn't need to be an image considering it only contains text, and the alt text of it is irrelevant too.

2. If you put a non-numeric value in the quantity filed before adding it to your basket, nothing gets added. Maybe it's worth assuming the quantity is 1 if something else is entered in there? I hit 'w' by accident when I was going for '2', without looking at my keyboard.

3. The error messages for your feedback form are displayed quite far away from the form itself.

4. When clicking the PayPal graphic in the left column it opens a new window with some information in, but in the background the page jumps to the top. You can prevent that with a 'return: false;' in your onclick attribute.

As I said, minor things

Thank you osxkris, a great list of things to consider. I agree with the issues of graphics and will work on them.

I appreciate your point regarding the non-numeric values, but also have to say that a buyer mistyping a letter for a number may not necessarily mean the number should be 1, equally if there are already items in the basket then its probably not wise to make assumptions regarding mistakes on the buyer's part. I'll have a look into this and if anyone else has a suggestion on the subject feel free to offer your opinion. Maybe offer an error message instead?

Thanks for mentioning the feedback form. I placed the error message there for the way it looks, but agree it could be closer and will look into it.

Thanks for noting the issue with the PayPal graphics.

Many thanks,

Alex

 

[Tankie]

Hi,

like the look of the site, maybe abit more colour.

couldnt you put a drop down for quantity? or have an error message like "invalid quantity"? next to the buy button in the white space.

 

[alex]

Hi,

like the look of the site, maybe abit more colour.

couldnt you put a drop down for quantity? or have an error message like "invalid quantity"? next to the buy button in the white space.

Thank you for the comments. I agree it needs more colour and it has been suggested online and offline that more photos would be suitable so I'm working on getting some and implementing them to see how it goes.

I played with the idea of a drop down menu for the quantity. Currently the maximum quantity is 99 per item. In reality no one will buy that many so I agree that a menu would be a good idea - do you think 1-10 would be suitable? The menu certainly removes the need for an error message and insures that a correct value is entered. I can also link it with my stock control so customers can't buy what I don't have.

 

[monaghan]

The menu certainly removes the need for an error message and insures that a correct value is entered.

The menu is a good idea, however, never assume the value posted from the web form is valid, you should always validate server side as this is a frequent way that people can crash the site or even defraud you

 

[alex]

The menu is a good idea, however, never assume the value posted from the web form is valid, you should always validate server side as this is a frequent way that people can crash the site or even defraud you

So do you mean that if the menu fields are say 1-10, on the server I should ensure that the value received is 1-10 or would you go about it a different way to reduce the security threat?

 

[monaghan]

Basically, the server side must validate it has correct data before starting to process, someone could post data to your order page URL without going via your site, so you have to be able to cope with incorrect data (either reject or discard as you see fit), but you must never assume that the data has come from your page and is therefore clean (hopefully it will always do so and you'll not get a kiddie trying to break your site)

 

[alex]

Basically, the server side must validate it has correct data before starting to process, someone could post data to your order page URL without going via your site, so you have to be able to cope with incorrect data (either reject or discard as you see fit), but you must never assume that the data has come from your page and is therefore clean (hopefully it will always do so and you'll not get a kiddie trying to break your site)

I generally try to do this, for example through the checkout process each page checks and deletes a session to ensure that the previous page is the page it should be. I'll probably have an if statement simply checking the value is valid, else exit the script or something like that.

 

[monaghan]

That's good, the way you'd worded the previous reply suggested you would be reliant on the client side validation

 

[alex]

I've now implemented the menu on griptape.co.uk so that purchasable quantities are 1-10. I'll also note somewhere to contact us for bulk orders.

As for the server side checking, I've used the php functions abs() and ceil() to ensure that the submitted quantity is first positive and a whole number.

I've then ensured that if the number is 0 the script ends, or if the quantity is above 10 it is lowered to 10.

Finally using !is_numeric() I check to see if the result is a number and hence either exit the script or use the resulting number as the quantity.

Would you say this is suitable to ensure what is submitted is a whole number between 1 and 10 or is there something else I've missed? It works on the site, but potential hackers are cunning

 

[monaghan]

I found one one occasion that is_numeric() would accept a "." and "," so you may need to test further.

The main thing is that you ensure you do your best to process out everything possible before you hit the database.

 

[osxkris]

I'd say that's safe enough! I'd have just gone with:

echo (in_array($qty, range(1,10))) ? "ALLOWED" : "NOT ALLOWED";