My E-Commerce Site

Well I am entered in Business Professionals of America for the career center I attend. I am taking software engineering and web development and have been learning ASP.NET, VB.NEt etc etc. Well anyways I competed at regions in C++ (2nd), Java(1st) and an E-commerce team (1st). State competition is in little more than a month (March 17-18) and it's time for me to start working on it again. The reason I don't put this in sound off is, I don't want the link to be accessible to anyone with the ability to use google, and I trust/value most of the veteran opinions here.

The front end is done in ASP.NET via Microsoft's VB.NET, and the backend database is in SQL. The site is here. I'd appreciate any advice and suggestions and thank you for taking the time to read this. Yes, everything is completely fictional so please don't use any real credit cards or anything (Though I don't think any of you would).

The images should really be thumbnailed in the catalog - it's a pain in the ass to a.) wait for the images to load and watch the page resize b.) find anything quickly and easily because of what I just said. Then you could house more items/page and have the imaginary customer see a lot more items per page.

That's actually waht I"m working on now, you'll be able to click the images to go to a page with more info about the product in an individualized easy to read format, as well as include product ratings. I'm thinking about removed information like product description, and manufacturer from that datagrid and simply having them on the more info page to preserve space. Also will be able to add the product to your cart from the more info page as well.

I just set it up so that when you go to the home page it shows the top 5 selling products, but I work on a computer other than the webserver so that change isn't "live" yet.

I hope you plan on tweaking the design. :)

Anyway, I couldn't register/login/view the shopping cart.

Yeah the design needs some tweaking, and did you get a specific reason why?

the "Girls Clothing" section should be made as a interactive flash game with a hot naked chick that you can drag clothes on and especially off of.

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

What are they judging your website on?

On the whole, its pretty good and functional. Change the font to an arial variant or something, times is pug fugly.

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Originally Posted by arjue

On the whole, its pretty good and functional. Change the font to an arial variant or something, times is pug fugly.

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That was my advice. Go with verdana.

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Originally Posted by Rocca

That was my advice. Go with verdana.

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Or if you need your font to be a serif font, go with Georgia.

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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?

You go in, with whatever reference materials you have and get ready to take a two-part test. First part is usually a simple (But horribly worded) multiple choice question test. The next part is a certain program you're asked to code etc etc, simple enough. My good friend who along with me desires to become a video game programmer, (Last year he didn't make it past regions) took 1st place in the state in C++ so that too was awesome.

And I have to say, this organization is full of shit sometimes, they have a lot of problems, but it's still an incredible experiance. Not to mention because of the experiance working with ASP.NET/VB.NET and Sql server that my partner and I share... we are being hired to take on a pretty tall order of creating a system that will allow hospitals to enter in a persons SSN their name, and a few other pieces of information, and retrieve all their medical insurance information. Apparently there are billions of dollars in suits when the wrong persons insurance is used to cover the other, and they seek to remedy that... I am a bit iffy, but if it were to go well that would easilly get my foot in the door to the world of being a programmer.

Haha, well I know that I'd never want to be a programmer. It's interesting, though.

I just had to simulate an operating system for my CS class and it was fuckin' hard. It actually never wound up compiling, which was disappointing because all the logic seemed correct. But whatever, I'm not sweating it.

Anyways, good luck with all that.

Thanks, the amount of headaches a person can get from programming is immense, but I guess it feels like nothing to me, compared to those moments where you get lost in smooth logic, fixes to problems of your past code, and when things seem to just logically fall into place in your mind. That's what I love about, I can almost always get into a zone to code whereas a lot of other jobs... it's completely mood for the most part (I'm sure I could train myself otherwise but nah). I'm sure I'll die of a stroke at like the age of 35 though.

Programming GUIs is reason enough to never be a programmer.

I understand what you're saying, though, and it can be really satisfying when everything works as planned, but that's rarely the case. Frustration is definitely the norm here.

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I understand what you're saying, though, and it can be really satisfying when everything works as planned, but that's rarely the case. Frustration is definitely the norm here.

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The thing is, I don't have a problem fixing thinks that don't work, hell it'd be really fucking boring if things worked. The only time where I get headaches is when it either goes outside my code like asp decides to shoot itself in the face, or in coding cases when certain things bitch for reasons that don't exist. I guess I just love it and hate it enough at certain times to want to go through with it.

Werd.

Do we have anyone on TNL that lives in Anaheim California?

Also anyone have any recommendations on a good SSL certificate to purchase? Need to buy one and set up the encryption on the webserver, that's like a good 250 of 1.4k points.

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Originally Posted by Thief~Silver

Do we have anyone on TNL that lives in Anaheim California?

Also anyone have any recommendations on a good SSL certificate to purchase? Need to buy one and set up the encryption on the webserver, that's like a good 250 of 1.4k points.

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I dunno about the SSL, but I live in Long Beach. If you head to Anaheim at like 11:12AM or 11:12PM you may be able to get there in a reasonable amount of time.

Well, then again, if you don't have to take the 91 or 22 from Long Beach, you may be somewhat better off. They don't call the 22 the "Garden Grove Accident Belt" for nothing.

I'm not sure how transportation will work if I'm able to even go anywhere so I may just be trapped in Anaheim. We're obviously taking a plane since we're in Ohio so no cars, if I can get permission to use a bus or something that'd work.

Are you going with anyone else? If someone's over 25, they can rent a car for fairly cheap then you can get a Holiday Inn in Anaheim. There's a couple over there, and one's right near Disneyland, too.

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Originally Posted by Cowdisease

Or if you need your font to be a serif font, go with Georgia.

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Is Georgia a pack in font? If not that's bad advice.

I live about an hour from Anaheim.

Well, for this week at least.

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Originally Posted by Andrew

Is Georgia a pack in font? If not that's bad advice.

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Georgia came default on my Dell and my Mac.

Century Schoolbook, in my opinion, is the best serif font.

First pic is Century, second is Georgia.

Ok, the (for the most part) final version of the site is up, thanks again for the pieces of advice. I am quite proud of it actually ^.^

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Originally Posted by Mike

Georgia came default on my Dell and my Mac.

Century Schoolbook, in my opinion, is the best serif font.

First pic is Century, second is Georgia.

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I checked on my computer and I have it too. It might be a good alternative to the typical font styles used on every website nowadays. I don't see too much variant between Century Schoolnook and Georgia, Mike.

edit: I looked at them a bit more and the weight of the lettering seems less consistent in your Century than Georgia. It might be a little harder to read.

When I view your site through Firefox, Thief, all of the text is crammed over an image. It's unreadable. Your navigation seems really well programmed (recursive?).

Yeah firefox does some wierd things, worse is that the text boxes are all at annoying lengths and I could never find out how to keep them from doing that. As for the navigation I always figured that would be key that people easilly be able to navigate the site. Very few pages don't give you access to the storefront, only pages that really should have for the most part 1 (Or very few) entry and exit points. Such as the login page, I was having a problem where if you pressed enter, it would fire the search, so I just got rid of the index so that enter fires to login button instead.

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When I view your site through Firefox, Thief, all of the text is crammed over an image

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Hrm where at, I'm not having that problem on my firefox.

i was going to view it in IE and try to help but I dont feel like doing much shit around here right now. I'm sure it's just a glitch.

Eh I won't be making many changes, so for the most part it's just for your enjoyment I guess heh, functionality seems to be flawless, at least with what I was going for, so besides the fact the graphics jump around a bit...