Swimwear E-Commerce Website up for reviews

[nervegas87]

Hello, after weeks of coding I have finally finished my mom's swimwear business website.
The URL is:
http://www.soldeipanema.com

Since the target market is females 18 - 29, I wanted to have a web 2.0 feel to it. I used rounded corners and tried my best to create a beach feel to the website. I originally planned on making a longer, more impressive flash piece on the home page, but decided to keep it short for loading purposes.

I would like to know where I can improve, as I consider this my best work up to date. Thanks.

[mjlorbet]

gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, kudos on the fine layout. i very much like the amount of content. the general layout too is nice, rounded edges, nice bright & cheery background along with easy to read font & whatnot. a fine job.

[Apostropartheid]

You're evil: it's really hard to find something to criticize.
I think that flash thing is annoying, and would rather it be a still image.

The footer doesn't really look like a footer, and I would change the navigation bar font as it looks too chunky (it should be thinner like the rest of the headers are).

Also, why is 0 a quantity? Why would I buy NONE of something? Some of those images look suspiciously photoshopped, too.

But it's a tasteful color design, especially suited for the subject, and I love orange anyway. =P Cheers for something easy on the eyes.

(Does "Swimwear on Sale" mean you're selling swimwear or a discount on specific items? You should reword that.)

[gnomeontherun]

Only a few validation errors, easily corrected.

Agreed on the photoshoping of images...can't say exactly why.

[Apostropartheid]

Because of the ones whose faces are a suspiciously different color?

[oracleguy]

I would recommend making the title image a link back to the home page.

[nervegas87]

I can't believe I would put something like quantity = 0 for the dropdowns. I guess my mind was too into coding... thanks for the reminder CyanLight.
BTW, you gave me a great idea. Since I am trying to optimize my site for the keywords "women's discount swimwear", it would be a big advantage if I would put "Discount swimwear" as the name of that link. That page is supposed to have discounted swimwear stock anyways, and I put in "swimwear on sale"... Thank you very much for your comments CyanLight.

It seems as thought photoshopping an image has a negative connotation in your posts, as if it was misleading. The background on the pictures are not photoshop gradients, those photos were taken in a studio with a center light perspective. I did retouch the curves on 2 of the "Golden Doll" photos, since the original picture came out too bright. Also, during the photo shoot, that bikini happened to have a slight water spot on the left cup, so I had to fix that a bit. Apart from that, the rest of the photos are AS IS. If you are interested, here is the link to the original "Golden Doll" picture:
http://www.soldeipanema.com/extras/IMG_0123.JPG

I'd like to hear more criticisms, thought. Keep it coming!!!

[Andrew Johnson]

First off work on getting your code validated.

Then I'd suggest rechecking your semantics, there's a lot of extra crap in there that you could just use CSS for.

[nervegas87]

there's a lot of extra crap in there that you could just use CSS for.

I'm not sure what you are talking about Andrew. I used CSS for the round corners. I'm not sure what you mean by the css... By semantics do you mean me using classes in my CSS code most of the time? I don't get your idea.

[gnomeontherun]

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...ipanema.com%2F

I think he means that it doesn't validate.

[nervegas87]

Finished validating the index page. The biggest fault in the validation is that the images for the bottom borders and the complimentary lines do not have an alternate text. But by definition, alternate text is meant to help the visitor understand the message that the image is trying to convey. For the sake of aesthetics, in such a case (like users w/ dial-up) I would prefer for them to see blank space in these areas instead of ugly, disfigured blocky text lines where the image's purpose is solely aesthetics.

[Andrew Johnson]

For example you have list items that aren't actually items in the list for your navigation just to create a 1 pixel vertical line...

[Apostropartheid]

Touching up using Photoshop isn't misleading most of the time, but some of them look rather unnatural from the outside, like the heads have been pasted on, especially the one I pointed out earlier. If you don't appear authentic, you won't be trusted (not that I'm saying you're lying, just the images look a little off.)

Anyway, when an image's purpose is purely presentational, you're supposed to use CSS backgrounds.

[oracleguy]

Originally Posted by nervegas87

Finished validating the index page. The biggest fault in the validation is that the images for the bottom borders and the complimentary lines do not have an alternate text. But by definition, alternate text is meant to help the visitor understand the message that the image is trying to convey. For the sake of aesthetics, in such a case (like users w/ dial-up) I would prefer for them to see blank space in these areas instead of ugly, disfigured blocky text lines where the image's purpose is solely aesthetics.

Even if you there isn't any alternate text for the image you still have to provide the attribute. Even if it is blank: alt=""

[twodayslate]

Nice job sharing the full resolution model shots! Downloaded. ; )

Now all you have to do is share the folder to make the downloading even easier.