RealCart U Course: RealCart 101

<<prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | next>>

RealCart 101 - Screen Resolution

The single most important thing to consider, as you use and customize RealCart to meet your needs, is the average screen resolution of web users. The vast majority of web surfers are still using 800 x 600 screen resolution. This being the norm, you should periodically test your cart to make sure everything looks as it should at 800 x 600.

Homework assignment

To help make testing your cart for proper screen presence that much easier, we have prepared some links for the link bar of your browser. These three links will make it easy to automatically display the current page in your browser window at 640 x 480, 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. These links are a simple JavaScript that look like this:

javascript:void(open(location.href,'800by600', 'height=600,width=800,location=yes,status=yes, scrollbars=yes,menubar=yes,toolbar=yes, directories=yes,resizable=yes'));

Download this zip file: reslinks.zip. After downloading, extract it to: “C:\”. The files should extract to C:\Windows\Favorites\Links. If it doesn’t extract to this folder, simply move these files into the folder that contains your Internet Explorer Link bar icons. Once you have successfully placed these link shortcuts called 6, 8 and 10, your links bar will contain the following icons as seen in figure 3.

Fig. 3. The Link bar in MSIE.

Nothing drives off a customer faster than a screen that has to be scrolled left to right just to read it. This is maddening to any web shopper. Forcing your visitors to change their screen resolution just to view your on-line store is the equivalent of telling them, “I don’t want your business bad enough to make my site easier to surf.” Is this really the message you want to give prospective customers?

The biggest culprits of screen resolution offenses are thumbnail images that are too wide, as well as product names that are too long. Try not to describe your product in the product name field. The description field can be unlimited in size and is a more appropriate place to describe your products or services.

<<prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | next>>