Newbie here, and been floating around this forum for a couple days now. Decided to get in on the action. I posted these questions in another forum, but nobody had an answer. I figure with all the traffic that this place appears to get, I should be able to get SOMETHING. hahahah..... I've been working on a new site design for some time now (constantly interrupted, otherwise it would be done), and ran into a couple of potential issues concerning the design vs. conversions. 1) I've chosen a sort of dark blue gradient into a slightly lighter blue, background color (actually, it's the background of the whole page, with the exception of a common 'white-box' area for content). While this color choice fits directly with the base theme for the site, I'm concerned with what it can do to conversions (retail site). It appears that the popular color choice recently for retail is white on top of white on white blah blah blah. In my opinion, it's sort of cookie cutter. Should I choose something brighter to help conversions? I'd hate to get rid of the gradient, as it looks damn nice, but I do need to make sales. 2) I've been fighting a horizontal drop down menu (mouse-over effect). I actually have a working version, however in IE7, a bar across the top will appear complaining about active content, or something. The user can easily 'allow blocked content', or simply ignore it, and everything will work fine. However, I'm worried that shoppers may think that something is physically unsafe, and choose not to buy. Anyone have experience with this? OR - Does anyone have any idea how to make a drop down menu that IE won't complain about?
On your first point, I'm not a psychologist, but blue isn't an action color. It's a soothing color. If I remember right the color to use to promote action is either orange or red. On the second point. I'd be concerned as well. You might think about using css based drop down menus. That way no scripting is involved. Here's a pretty good walk through on that http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdowns/
Well, orange and red are out as they don't match anything at all. Not in the company logo, the theme, products, nada. Compared to the old background, the new one is a HUGE improvement. (the old site looks like 1995 web design) That link you posted happens to use Java Script. This won't cause the same problem as before? Seems weird, as Java is more responsible for virus's and hacks than common css. (fricking microsoft.... )
Java and JavaScript have absolutely nothing in common, save for the use of the word "Java" in their names. As for the Suckerfish setup, the only thing the script does is assigns a hover state to the list items by applying a class to the LI element if it's a child of an element with the assigned ID (which must be assigned in the HTML code), so it's perfectly safe to use. If you're worried about accessibility (as you should be) you can modify your navigation structure to include landing pages that the menu can refer to instead of using hash marks for those times when someone using IE 6 doesn't have scripting enabled. Just make sure that you add min-height: 1% to your nested unordered lists (not the top list, but the lists contained in the LI tags) so that the dropdown effect works in IE 7.
I don't know anything about Java or Java Script..... sorry for the confusion (still confused, but honestly.... i don't wanna know the difference) Anyways, however I write the code, Java/Javascript, then you guys agree that IE7 will NOT give me that funky warning box?
If the file is stored on a server, you won't get the warning. IE only does that locally (for files stored on your computer). If you want a good server to use for testing locally, check out XAMPP.