FierceShop.com

FierceShop.com recently relaunched, but as I had a bit of spare time over Christmas and haven't had a chance to do much web-orientated stuff recently I thought I'd have a go at remodelling their design. I managed to reduce the HTML by over 30% alone. Anyway, the e-mail I sent to Furious?:

Hi,

I've seen the recent redesign of the Fierce and I like it. However, there are a few things I reckon you could do to make the FierceShop even better, and as I had a bit of spare time over Christmas thought I'd tell you them.

First off, no doubt sounding a bit nit-picking there's a typo in "Address" in the login box - it reads "Adress." Have a look at the image on the left.

There's also an empty meta tag in the header:

<meta name="Description" content="">

So when you Google for FierceShop.com you get the following summary:

...product. Switchfoot DVD. Livin It Banner. Copyright © 2004 Fierce Distribution *Applies to all orders £5 and over Powered by osCommerce.

Which isn't really that helpful. You guys can write great publicity, I get it through the post and see it in my e-mails, so why not your site to? Something like:

The best in Christian music at the very best prices. From Delirious? to Switchfoot, Graham Kendrick to Moya Brennen, Cathy Burton to Rock n Roll Worship Circus.

and perhaps amending the title to "FierceShop.com from Fierce! Records"?

Now the biggest problem with the redesign. 5 years ago it would have been great, that's when the HTML 4.01 Specification was last updated. Sites have moved on, XHTML and CSS have revolutionised web design. If you're not familiar with what I mean, or what the benefits are, have a look at this presentation and this article, because tables are for tabular data, not layouts.

By implementing standards and creating well structured documents (using headers, paragraphs and meta descriptions) you'll improve search engine rankings, improve accessibility, reduce bandwidth usage and speed up page loading times.

Here's an idea of how you might go about doing this with the front page of the site.

I hope the above is of some use to you, please take it constructively -- the designs you people produce are fabulous.

Any questions/comments more than welcome,

Gareth.

The strange use of domains confuses me to. The shop is referred to as "FierceShop.com" but redirects to http://fiercedirect.com/ which seems strange as it will confuse the search engines into thinking there are two sites.

And the response from FierceShop.com:

Dear Gareth

Thanks for taking the time to contact us and for all your input. We will take up the issues you have mentioned and see what improvements we can make.

We appreciate your support

Clive Sherwood
Office Manager