Im having a problem..i want my pics on my site to show in this format

[gmanz73]

ok im having a problem..i want my pics on my site to show in this format:

http://watchesusa.vstore.ca/product_...movado-watches


But they look like this?

http://watchesusa.vstore.ca/product_...me/ice-watches

also i was thinking what can i do to make my site more professional?

Thanks!

[mairving]

Plenty you could do to make the site more professional. For one, I would host the site yourself and move the images over to your own server. Also you should create thumbnails of the images rather than have the browser resize them. This will help reduce load times. Other things that could be done:

• One of the very basic things is to give people an idea of who you are. This isn't done on your site. Who you are and why should I buy from you aren't answered.
• Develop a better logo. Flashy, blinky things don't help sales at all and annoy people.
• Oddities like blue text and black hyperlinks can be confusing.
• How about putting a menu on your site for navigation?
• Having ads on the site reinforces the idea that all you want is people's money. It is certainly okay to want people's money but it is all about perception.
• You should add some color rather than the thrown together white background.
• No idea why a truck symbolizes a site map.

[gmanz73]

by hosting the site myself, do you mean that it shouldnt be: www.watchesusa.vstore.ca
it should be: www.watchesusa.com?

the ecommerce site was free, the software is theirs, im honestly a beginner in HTML, thats why i thought i should go the easy way.

Hey many succesful sites have a white backround (amazon, ebay, tiffany&co, etc.), i didnt want it to look to busy...

a menu?...im only selling watches, thats my speciialty, and jewelry of course.

I agree with an introduction, i havent thought of that...lol, i will incorporate that..

Ads? are you reffering to the google ads on the side of the page?...i dont pay for the site therefore the ads show up.

Oddities like blue text and black hyperlinks can be confusing....not sure what your reffering to.

Thanks for the review, you made me realize that i have a lot to work on!

Thanks again!

[blue60007]

You should really get a pay-for hosting service and buy your own domain (watchesusa.com). It'll look more profesional...it just doesn't look good to be on a free service and a sub-domain.

I'm sure there are plenty of E-Commerce software packages you can set-up on your own server (and are free). I'd be much more willing to buy from watchesusa.com than watchesusa.vstore.ca - it looks like you can't afford the hosting and domain, so how good is the service going to be, etc?

A more common example would be something like mystore.tripod.com ...usually sites on their own domain are more professional, and sites on free services (like Tripod) are much more unprofessional...your potentional customers will think the same.

[gmanz73]

watchesusa.com is taken so what can i do?
If there are better e-commerce packages out there can i get some links please?....i know that blue you are more knoledgeable than me..

[rspassey]

Think of something else I'm going through the same darn domain hunt myself right now...

[gmanz73]

hahaha...yeah its tough

can someone go into detail with image hosting, and transfering my site to a hosting site?

i was thinking of a URL redirectory, ...

[mairving]

watches-usa.net
usawatches.net
are available. Spammers have the rest of them.

[gmanz73]

thanks, marvin, i was thinking of just having it either BJwatches or AJwatches,or even AGwatches, anything that will get ppl to remember the store!

Once i buy a domain from godaddy, then how do i get the watchesusa.vstore.ca to the new domain?

Thanks!

[blue60007]

Most likely you will have to purchase a web hosting plan. Once your hosting gets set up then you should be given Name Server info (probably a url or IP address). You would go into your account at GoDaddy and enter this info in for your domain. Give some time for the changes to propigate around the world, and you should be able to access your host account. Generally hosts and domain registrar's will give you instructions on the process, as far as I've seen.

[gmanz73]

ok, i purchased ajwatches.com
how do i bring over the info from my www.watchesusa.vstore.ca?
to ajwatches.com?

[blue60007]

Does Vstore.ca provide name server info? If it's free, I highly doubt it. You'll need to also buy yourself some web hosting service as I said above. There's a sticky thread at the top of this forum that is a discussion about web hosts. Take note of the ones people said were good and avoid the bad ones. Go to the sites for the hosts and compare pricing and features.

Also, search around for a free Ecommerce software. I don't know of any specifics, but I'm sure there are lots out there. Check the requirements, usually most need PHP and MySQL to function and then check to see if the host you choose offers these. Most I've seen do, but double check.

[gmanz73]

I've spent a lot of time on the vstore site....um, is there a way that i can put the vstore acc. on ajwatches?

[gmanz73]

UPDATE***

I forwarded the ajwatches.com site to www.watchesusa.vstore.ca.

Now i need help with image hosting, i prefer something free, but it needs to look high in quality, and large images like in here:
http://watchesusa.vstore.ca/product_...movado-watches

Thanks!

[gmanz73]

bump!

[gmanz73]

bump, whats the matter no one wants to answer...

[blue60007]

Photbucket or flickr? I'm not sure if you can use that for the purposes you want though.

[gmanz73]

i want the pics to be displayed on my site in a large format.
photobucket...creates a thubnail.

[Stryker]

Originally Posted by gmanz73 i want the pics to be displayed on my site in a large format. photobucket...creates a thubnail.

Hey gmanz,

Actually, Photobucket can host pretty high quality images. They don't care about dimentions or quality, only file size. Here's an example of an image in my account. You just have to format the picture before uploading it or it will resize/compress it as it wants (usually losing quality). If you set the compression on the image before uploading, you can control/limit the compression done by photobucket.

Also... if you have a webhosting service, couldn't you just host the images with them and have everything in one place? Would allow more control and flexibility for your site.

Hope this helps a bit,
Stryker

[gmanz73]

hey, yeah i could upload pics with the web host, but that takes time to upload when viewing the site....56k modem "people" dont want to wait for the pics to upload, and also the quality is really poor.

Yes photobucket worked!!!
it doesnt size the pics.

I do have to use a HTML code like <~~imag scr"....something something....jpg"~~~

[blue60007]

What size are you wanting to resize to? Thumbnail?

Using the height/width properities in the code like you described would work, but it doesn't look good and still retains the full size (ie, a thumbnail should be like 6kb and the full image would be 300kb)