So I've started an online business with the website, here's the link. The overall design style looks good, but it's pretty rough around the edges. I'd like some suggestions on how I can improve it, and I know a lot of you have experience in technical backgrounds. I'm not trying to advertise here, though if you want to buy stuff you can, I'm just trying to get an outlook on how I can improve it visually. Any help is appreciated.
Ewww it's a price drop bid site?! Sorry but those always strike me as scams. My advice- build a proper commerce site selling things at a known price. This just looks like a dodgy cash grab / steal your credit card details site....
Facebook should quit while it's ahead here comes the real deal folks! hide your wallets! bestest website number one!
i dont know what you're trying to say by this, if you have any advice it'd be much appreciated. I thought about that. While to many people it looks like a scam there definately is a market for it. And if it doesn't make money I'll shut it down. Thanks so much for your input
it really feels awful being asked help to create what (despite what you say) looks to be a scam. let's start with the ABCs since it's really that bad : color pallete : ONE OR TWO colors max. and when i say color i don't mean colors. no varients. no gradients. you gotta know the RGB value and it's gotta be the exact same RGB everytime you use that color get PHPstorm or some sort of PHP editor/FTP app and download wordpress. don't log in. don't create an account. just download it. upload that wordpress folder to the server where you currently have your site instead of that site and start from scratch. (technically not "scratch". "scratch" in this case will be a billon times better than what you have now)
Thanks so much for your advice. As for looking like a scam, no, every auction has a prize that goes to one of the bidders. You can read about that in the terms and conditions, or don't, I don't really care as I didn't come here looking for customers. @tunsel11 I like how you are looking out for the forum, but I have worked very hard making this a legitimate and fair site and calling it a scam is frankly insulting. There are scams out there and I founded this as a way to be as fair as possible, while still being profitable.
Yes, and that's the flaw with penny bidding. The way my site addresses it is, should it be feasible financially (i.e. a certain amount of bids reached) another winner is randomly selected from the database containing all of the bids for that auction. The server also keeps track of the bids you buy and place, so that it can know if you are losing a ludicrous amount and award you more bids. "Why would you do that, that costs you money!" becomes your first statement. The answer is simple. More winners = more customers that come back. It's in my best interest to be legit.
aite fam whatever you say. I'm not being dishonest or committing fraud, but I guess you're the supreme authority when it comes to retail websites
Looking forward to using this site when my money inherited from King Nelson Mandela 3rd is sent to my bank account by the Chief Justice of the FBI this week.
I'm bored so I'll follow up with tatsujb's wise advice with some more advice: 1. Enforce your font-family and default font-size at the html level. 2. If you don't need to use a specific tag, don't use it. I'm looking at your aside tag and wondering why it's even necessary. 3. Don't re-declare CSS rules on the same object with the same level of inheritance. Your aside tag has font-size defined twice. 4. Don't mix incompatible tags. float:left and position:absolute are redundant (as absolute objects inherit no document scope and as such will crop using the minimum space possible instead of filling the entire page width). 5. Like tatsujb said, don't use gradients. There is colour theory in the use of pleasant gradients, but uh, you're not applying that. A decent hex code that approximates your red-white gradient is #FF4444. I don't use RGBA much, you might prefer that, I don't know (it has transparency support, which makes it a better use in certain cases). 6. Don't waste time and effort randomising whatever colour effect you have going on in the background. If you want something that isn't black as a placeholder, use a medium grey. 7. Don't have elements near each other than don't sit on the same level as each other. I'm looking at your footer and the dismissable login / register prompt. 8. Speaking of the prompt, it has a serif font when the rest of your page is a sans serif font (Calibri). You do not have a good reason to mix these (i.e. you're using an established brand name or similar), so you shouldn't. 9. Be consistent. Don't have buttons on the top right that link somewhere with a hover effect, and a menu on the left that links places without. They should all have hover effects. None of them should have text-decoration:underline. You should hide or stylise the bullet point on the ul tag. 10. Seriously, be consistent.