My E-Commerce Site

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Originally Posted by AstroBlue

Wow... if the BPA entered their own site they'd come last, it sucks balls.

What are they judging your website on?

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Oh god I know, I make fun of thier credibility for it all the time.

If you go to contest 51 (E-Commerce) You can see the grading rubric there.

Yeah, I'll probably update it with the thumbnails etc tomorrow I'll also implement the font idea. One thing that continually bugs me is the face that every page isn't tall enough to fill up 1 screen. Hopefully I'll also have the more information page up for all the products though I'm sure I'll have plenty of bugs.

Also about the font, if I start working with the CSS (God knows why I didn't do it from the beginning) I intend to set it up so that the user can select the color scheme and font type as well as a few other things. But that comes after functionality.

...looks like it has potential.

Does this contest judge the layout/functionality of the site only? Or does it also judge your coding? I know the big thing with ecommerce is writing code that search engines "like"- meta tags, robots.txt, etc. Supposedly its a bit tougher with dynamic web pages built in asp and php code.

I've noticed that online customers respond well to detailed information and compartmentalized content. check out the e-commerce site I designed- its linked in my sig (and is quite successful).

As this site has been revised over the last year, I have a few tips I've learned:

1) The more info you provide about your products, company, and policies- the more sales you will generate.

2) The fewer clicks it takes to get items into customer's shopping carts- the more sales you will generate.

3) The more organized your layout is (info boxes, content tabs, etc.)- the more sales you will generate.

4) The more detailed information you provide about your products- the fewer useless phone calls and emails you generate.

I hope this info helps.

One thing I notice about yours that I would critique is that i think you should be able to get to any part of the site from anywhere, whereas in yours you have to click "regular coffee" then decaf or whatever, meaning you can't get to the item listing in one click. Is there any particular reason you did it that way?

The worst part is that myself and my partner suck with graphics, I've been intending to incorporate the login etc, into the header image as opposed to having a seperate user control for it.

But yes they also do grade on how much I reuse data like in classess etc, as well as data redundency in our database. Though the judges at region didn't really know what they were doing sooo... I expect it to be different at state and nationals if I make it there.

Also one thing I haven't done yet, was center it, which is something I do intend to do.

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Originally Posted by Thief~Silver

Is there any particular reason you did it that way?

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Yeah, that aspect needs work. I'm fixing the way the products are listed this weekend- I had to work out a problem I was having with some weight attributes and the database. Connecting with UPS for shipping rates is a pain in the ass. I'm learning php, HTML, XML, and SQL as I go.

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Originally Posted by Thief~Silver

The worst part is that myself and my partner suck with graphics, I've been intending to incorporate the login etc, into the header image as opposed to having a seperate user control for it.

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Use image maps for your header links. Plus, you can swap 'em out depending on whether the user is logged or not.

What browser(s) do you use to check your site? I've found that Firefox is more prone to show mistakes than other browsers (IE seems to ignore/fix stuff).

Also, does ASP only run on windows servers?

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Yeah, that aspect needs work. I'm fixing the way the products are listed this weekend- I had to work out a problem I was having with some weight attributes and the database. Connecting with UPS for shipping rates is a pain in the ass. I'm learning php, HTML, XML, and SQL as I go.

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Heh luckilly I don't actually have to connect to them for such things *Thank god* since it's all fictional.

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Use image maps for your header links. Plus, you can swap 'em out depending on whether the user is logged or not.

What browser(s) do you use to check your site? I've found that Firefox is more prone to show mistakes than other browsers (IE seems to ignore/fix stuff).

Also, does ASP only run on windows servers?

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As for the image header, we actually have it made, I"m just hesitant about mixing that in with ASP.NET code, it's kind of a minor thing that I'm saving for after the finalization of the criteria.

Gonna start using firefox now hehe.

I don't know about ASP, but ASP.NET yeah, you need the .NET framework in order to run it.

Updated today: thumbnails are used on the search instead of full blown images. The top 5 purchased items are shown on the first page, and clicking on those images will transfer you to a more information page about each product. Unfortunatly I haven't put this behavior into the search, so clicking on the images doesn't take you over to the more information page of said product.

The design still sucks so don't worry about it, I know and intend to fix it, I made a small change inspired by Zero's page.

Well I just got back from State competition. Took first in the state of Ohio and now get to go on to nationals in a few located in Anaheim California.

Don't have the most updated version up at the moment, will throw it up on monday though.

Cool, congrats.

How many people compete in these things?

Well I was the only one at Regions so it was no big deal. But my team went up against 7 other teams where only the top 2 went on to nationals. May not seem like many but when you and one partner are going up against 6 groups of 4 people each who worked on a similiar project supposedly, it was nerve wrecking.

After wripping a yellow pages worth (ok exagerated) of little pamphlet's, it was finally myself and my partner's turn to go up for our competition. Basically they called the 8 teams (Or top 10 had there been more) to the stage and we stood up there. First, they announced third place... Not us... Then they announced... second place.. not us... of course at that time I'm thinking "I'm confident enough that I got first.. but what if I just didn't rank up there at all." I had been crying I guess out of stage fright and several reasons (I didn't sleep last night so I was kind of.. like broken down -.-) and then finally after going up there you feel so much relaxed, and I seemed to be the only person who thought my project wasn't that good, everyone else did the usual "You're going to take first" etc that i just put behind. Well the nice cheer from a small group of friends when you and your partner take first is a great thing to hear.

What do the C++ and Java competitions entail?