Hi cs-cart users,
I am making my first ecommerce site:
http://littleredgolfshop.com
and I was wondering if anyone can give me any advice on how to make it more usable / look better?
Since I am a beginner I have gone with a very simple layout, but I need some advice on how I can improve on this simple look.
One thing that is annoying right now is that the menu on the left hand side of the main page appears before the large banner, so that it looks very messy until the banner appears, during which time the placement of the blocks is messed up. This makes the site look rather unprofessional - does anyone know a way around this problem, at least?
Any general advice on the home page design would be appreciated – in one way I like the simplicity, but in another I think it should look more sophisticated / unique.
Cheers
Clive
Hi Clive
Your page size is 2.2mb which doesn't sound much, but is a lot for a web page. You should consider at the very least, enabling the caching and compression methods within CS-Cart.
If you open the config.local.php file, you will find some values in there which you can easily change to reduce the page size and speed up the page load times.
It appears you have an HTML block above your main menu showing 3 products - note you have used the full detailed image, which brings these images alone to around 1.1mb of your page load size. You may want to consider using the generated thumbnails instead of resizing the full size image.
Solving these basic issues will make a difference somewhat to the issue with your menu/banners.
Well as above your first thought should be to make it work the best it can for your visitors. Even the worst looking sites can still be very profitable so don't fall in to the trap of being an artist rather then a business person.
RED text on white or red text anywhere except warnings is never good. Littel Red Golf Shop - your site is not red just your text.
Thanks for both of these replies –
StellarBytes, that is useful to know – I have reduced the size of the web page considerably, down to about 62 KB. I used the advice at this page:
CS-Cart Documentation — CS-Cart 4.15.x documentation
and also reduced the size of the three images at the top of the page. Are there any other techniques you would recommend to make the site run more smoothly / faster? The problem with the banner / left image has improved, but it is not completely fixed (particularly with IE).
kickoff3pm, thanks for the advice re: the red text. I have changed the majority of it to darkish green – have noticed that red text is not exactly commonly used elsewhere! 
So I was wondering, am I breaking any other cardinal rules with the page layout / fonts / colors etc.? I agree that this stuff is not paramount and that a working site is more important, but since this is my first attempt I would rather not be making any naive mistakes.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Clive
Don't think it's too bad now, I think your banner need to be better and the logo need branding.
Here's an example for the logo