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Ask HN: Please review my app

6 pointseli_s5 comments

I've been developing an app in my spare time. It initially started as an idea planted in my head by my dad (who is a small business owner).

After 5 years or so away from programming I thought I'd use a personal project as a means to get back into things.

I've learned lots along the way and improved my skills in JS, PHP, SQL too.

The project is a simple CMS for bricks-and-mortar small businesses who want to publish a product catalogue online.

One of the cool (I think so at least) features is that you can design your own print resolution brochures as PDFs.

So my marketing line is: upload once and manage online and print material at the same time.

I'm getting ready to start promoting this soon, and before I did that I thought I'd run the product past you clever lot.

Links:

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Demo site: http://acme-shoes.localsa.com.au

Demo brochure: http://acme-shoes.localsa.com.au/ulimages/14/pdf/5/brochure.pdf

If you feel like going through the sign-up then go here: http://www.localsa.com.au/sign-up?account-type=Plus

otherwise here is a test account you can use: http://acme-shoes.localsa.com.au/admin

username: demo

password: demo

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Really appreciate any feedback you can give.

Looks pretty good, seems fast and responsive (not bad considering I'm in the USA). The PDF idea is very good, I'd make the 'download catalog' a bit more prominent for customers.

Dashboard tools and floating menus worked great. One thing I couldn't easily see how to do was change the skin of the page, ie the colors and fonts etc. The catalog edit looked good but the graphics widget didn't seem to do very much.

Still, these felt like things that haven't been fully implemented yet, but if they're done to the same standard as everything else I'd say you'll find success with it. I found it extremely fast, intuitive and responsive, which is more than I can say for the site I manage at my job!

Thanks for the positive feedback. Good point about the download catalogue button.

I've been thinking about how to make the catalogue tools a bit more intuitive. At the moment you have to drag some products on to the page for the changes to styles to have an effect - i might add an alert that says this if the catalogue is empty.

Thanks for your encouragement.

I was using osCommerce and ZenCart and did not like them. Then using a hacked Wordpress for webshop, and it is a delight to work with.

Your store seems to be very nice, though I don't really understand the admin interface -- I thought it is a stunning WYSIWG editor but could not handle it.

Still I'm thinking there would be interest in offering your engine as a webshop service.

Thanks for your feedback and positive comments. Which part of the admin interface did you find difficult to use? Are there any suggestions you could give about how to improve it or make it more intuitive?

The left side menu ... I did not understand what's good for. The first impression was that selecting a site component will show that component live on the right side with WYSIWYG-like editing. Than realized this is not working, or was not designed to work such way.

It was just a quick overview maybe if I would have more time I could figure out better.

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