Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys

We are collecting data for the next design upgrade of our website www.bitroad.co.uk (http://www.bitroad.co.uk)

If you have experience in web design or simply want to give you opinion as a visitor please leave your comment and help us develop a better marketplace for everybody.

We will pick 10 random (constructive) feedback and reward the user with a 10% discount voucher.

Thanks in advance for your help

Claudio Levrini

BitRoad Project Manager

It seems that your website is actually down.

Hi
Server looks ok from our side

It's down.

http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/bitroad.co.uk.html

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitroad.co.uk



There is no response time at all.

Edit: It is now up.

That's odd,
I'm online right now and our team is working on database with no problems.
Thanks for your indication I'll look into it

It's online now. What ever you did worked. My first thoughts are that the site looks good. However, the pictures on the main page with the white background stand out against the pages background. I think you need to change that to make it look more professional. Also, the contact information at the bottom isn't centred for me. It looks a little messy. If it was in the centre of the screen it would look better in my opinion. Otherwise, the website looks good for it to be in the beta stages. However, the "About us" page font stands out too much. I think it needs to be the same font as the rest of the website is using. The site is responding very slow but that's most likely because you are working on the databases.

Also, adding a live fiat > Bitcoin/Litecoin where the prices are listed would be good. At the moment I don't think you have done that. Otherwise it will require constant updating. Also, I think the "BTC X" looks out of place. Try to make the background of the items listed the same as the box they are located in.

Remember, these are my opinions.

Thanks for your feedback,

The slowness of the website is due to our server, we are looking into different dedicated solutions that will match our criteria in term of privacy and speed. For now we rather focus on privacy and security instead of speed.

We used to have a fiat price shown in product page but we decided to remove it to increase our BTC / LTC sales over fiat. BTC and LTC prices are updated every 60 seconds.

Thanks for your feedback you're in for the reward.

Have a nice day.

Hi,

My first look suggestions.

1. Font size so small.
2. Use HTML 5 if possible.
3. If possible try to reimplement with better ecommerce script rather than PrestaShop.
4. For test purposes, it is ok to use your logo for missing images. However, create a fast loading simple image to replace missing images.
I will try to add more in future.
All the best.
Have a great day

I think you need a better logo. It is too generic. The site design is too dark. Use light colors. The buttons like "Shop now" with the ugly 3d effect are ugly.

Thanks for the feedback, we will start working on design soon and all your comments are greatly appreciated.

Site looks mostly fine to me, although I personally dislike dark backgrounds. Dark backgrounds tend to swallow white text, and it is harder to focus. I would recommending increasing the font thickness to alleviate that. As ndsbd mentioned, the font is a little small.

Also, I think Arial font is sort of the opposite of what I think you are probably trying to convey to your audience, which I presume is modern, hip, and fresh. Arial font is the default font for web pages, so using another font will aid in the idea of 'fresh', and 'new'. The current website I am building now uses Verdana, but that is just a preference. You do have a nice mix of fonts though, and that is visually appealing.

And not that anyone other than a developer would care, I enjoyed the fact that your source code is readable.

Don't forget https in the midst of your security and privacy. I wouldn't expect to have it enabled for demo purposes though.

I'm not sure if this is an accident, or someone got their css crossed up, but I would have a hard time making a case for this being an intentional decision, namely because most elements are reasonably clean visually speaking. The hover effect is neat, but it serves no purpose other than it is neat. The button, the hover text, and the tooltip all say the exact same thing.
http://www.minzie.com/lazy/data/images/brbuttons.jpg

As a consumer, I don't want to be distracted from the merchandise by things that seem out of place.. As a developer, I would wonder how you got that effect, would dig into the source code, and immediately be looking for different ways to optimize the code. I would have completely forgotten about shopping.

Under the info tab at the top, you have a typo. 'Infos' is not a word, it should just be "Info". If this were my website, I would expand the Info pop-over and include the information you have at the bottom of the page.
http://www.minzie.com/lazy/data/images/brbuttons2.jpg
This will allow you to further declutter the main page. I am also not sure of the need for the logo at the bottom of the page. That is another opportunity to declutter.

Thanks for the very accurate feedback.

On the category pages the bitroad logo on that big silver bar doesn't look good, and beneath the big bar there's smaller versions of the same logo, that doesn't look very good either.  I'm also not sure about having an e-commerce site with a black background, there must be a reason hardly any sites do that, but it's not horrible or anything, it just doesn't have that 'open store' feel.  It's kind of opening a high street shop with really dim lighting, it's probably going to hurt sales. 

Other than these basic things its good, and great to see a bitcoin store opening here in the UK :)

if you go onto android tablets and hover over the options "7 inch tablets" "8 9 inch Tablets" ect you have to click the name and not the section.... hope you get what  mean... anyhow would be nice if it was within the banner area you clicked and not the name

Thanks for the feedback! Color scheme is one thing we are looking into. Possibly the final version will let you choose from dark and light.

True, thanks for the feedback.

Few days to graphic upgrade!

I agree, there are some amazing designers on this forum who can whip one up nice and quick (including me!).

Thanks for your feedback,
Regarding the logo we decided to make a contest between our employees and pick the best one.
Thanks for your offer, do you have suggestion regarding usability and color scheme of website?

Regards

Hi!

Color:
Go for a light theme. These work much better by the majority of people. Also, the payment provider logos will embed better in your site. This because they also were made for light themed sites.

The purpose and naming of your site.
This may be a bit of a shocker but bear with me.  ;D When I read the name bitroad I immediately made the connection bitcoin and silkroad. And I must say that I did expect to enter a new online drugstore. What I'm saying is that piggy bagging on existing names doesn't always work. These things can backfire. Remember, many people in BTC-land are glad that the link Silkroad/BTC is severed because it gave BTC a bad name.

So my question to you is: what kind of shop do you have or do you want to have. What should it communicate to the outside world? And did you position Bitcoin in the right place? With the last one I mean the following. You basically have a shop. It's great that you accept BTC and LTC. But does that mean that these should be in the name/theme of the shop?

I would suggest that you think of your own and unique identity. A mark so unique that it will be a a hallmark in the BTC/LTC community. How do you do that? Simple. By delivering top products, at top prices and with top service. The fact that you accept BTC/LTC will help tremendously as the BTC/LTC community welcome's every new addition to BTC.

As for information to your clients. I assume that you buy products in using fiat currency? Maybe you can play with the exchange rates between dollars (or euro's for that matter) and BTC/LTC. When you inform your clients of the current rate you show them that your prices follow the exchange rates closely and thus the products won't be overpriced when BTC is worth more then it did at the moment the product was bought in by you. Also in the event a coin would become worth less you could hold on to the original exchange rate and create a BTC-discount for a while. Nice for products that aren't selling that well and your clients will love that because this illustrates your commitment to BTC/LTC.

It does this more than a name and a logo with coins...

My 50 BTCcts

TFK

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions,

We are about to change the color scheme and it will be based on light colors (we are considering a double light/dark version).

Regarding the website name and logo the name Bitroad meaning is linked to our company goal to promote Bitcoin use in real world and symbol of movement in the right direction, we are running a campaign to increase Bitcoin adoption in real and virtual shops and our website will also be used as a portal to follow our developments.
Another reason for the name Bit-road is that others project will be promoted using the same design, for instance we are about to launch a blog that will be named Bit-blog and other project to come will follow the same idea.
As for the pricing we used to show fiat prices at the beginning of our beta but we had too many customers using it. We want to offer products mainly to Bitcoin users otherwise I would have simply added a Bitcoin payment option to my past project. Following our customers feedback we left the possibility to pay using Paypal but as an option at checkout which is basically the opposite of what most shops do by giving you the fiat amount and let you choose to convert and pay using Bitcoin.

Our prices are upgraded every 60 seconds to reflect BTC and LTC value.

Regarding the logo with the Litecoin and Bitcoin logo is about to be changed and wasn't meant to be a guideline for definitive design, I would like to have the BTC into the logo but only as a font not the entire coin. We are currently designing our new logo and it will be much more simple and neat.

We always try to offer the best possible price while keeping intact our customer service and quality standard policy, so far our customers are happy with our service, we always try to give the best possible experience and we are constantly looking forward to improve it.

We decided to launch our project in beta mode to let people be an active part of the website development and what we achieve every day is mostly thanks to people like you who give us precious feedback on our work.

There's still a long road ahead, thanks again for your help.

You have a few more hours to give your feedback and then we will start the graphic upgrade!!!

Thanks to everybody who gave feedback, we will post winners of the 10% discount codes in this post as soon as new design is online.

Discount codes awarded!! Thanks to you all for the precious feedback!!