Endoscopy.com Review

[MarkGatESS]

I've been working on trying to make our company site visually pleasing while still maintaining some semblance of SEO functionality. I tried to duplicate the cover of our catalog (same colors and images), add in text that has hyperlinks to various products for spiders and customers to follow, while trying not to have the page look too "busy".

Everyone at the company likes the new look of the index page off the root (when you type in http://www.endoscopy.com), and I'm hoping to get some comments on the look from other eyes as well.

The shopping cart system I was given to use is EarlyImpact's ProductCart. I'm more a graphic artist and have very little knowledge of programming and scripting. The cart system is written in ASP, so I've tried to work within the parameters of the system other than making custom headers and footers (and custom border/background color). I know nothing about ASP, so how those cart system pages look is the best I'm able to do with my skill levels.

~ Mark G.

[medlington]

Hi,

First thing i'd do is choose a background for your content and stick with it. I dont like the way it changes from blue to white between the pages, I would choose something other than the blue so that it lifts it off the page background.

Another thing I noticed is that you need some padding within your information boxs. The text is too close to the edges, you will need to alter the css to do this.

I also noticed that on your links down the left you switch between block capitals and normal text, I think this looks abit messy, I would try to keep some consistency to it.

Try centering the text at the bottom of your home page too, it looks abit odd when it switchs from centered text to left aligned for the phone numbers.

hope this helps

[MarkGatESS]

Thanks medlington for your review.

First, the background color choice was so that it would look, as close as possible (going from CMYK to RGB) to the look of our catalog (that I mentioned in the original post). This way, when someone would look at our website, they would see the same look as our catalog - in a way, a kind of "brand recognition" (trying to think "marketing" here).

The static pages I could try to make all the same background color, but I was trying to give the other pages more "readability" since they have more text and less graphics. The main root index page and that under the /vet sub-directory were to simulate the cover of our catalog. I thought that having everything framed in the catalog cover color would look nice (as others in our company thought so), but perhaps I'm wrong?

The shopping cart section of the site I really can't do much with. When I tried to use the background color of the root index within the cart/product pages, it looked horrible - and trying to get text, images, hyperlinks, etc. to format correctly in that system is a nightmare! Just the section that takes care of user/customer interface (what you see when you visit the site) has over 1,000 ASP pages designed to display your products and information. The administrator interface doesn't give you much in the way of customization. To try and customize the pages, you have to go through those thousand or so ASP pages and try to change the coding. They used style sheets for formatting, but when I tried to change the formatting in the CSS, it wouldn't change on the page because the original programmers of the system embedded style sheets and inline styles within the ASP pages that override the stylesheets - not a very good design on a programming standpoint. It took me half a day to get it to look the way it is trying to track down the background colors among the pages!

~ Mark G.
http://www.endoscopy.com

[Jenni]

You know, Mark, I think that the blue background on your main page is quite nice and it's not distractive. Nevertheless it would be better to make the background for all the pages of the same color. I also agree with medlington that the text at the bottom of your homepage should be centered. It would make your website more attractive. Actually, you have quite a nice website, really. Don't be upset. )