A look back at our site over the past 13 years, and excellent suggestions on how to improve it further!
Recently I was posting on a movie poster forum, and I saw a post that was very critical of one of the very oldest movie poster sites, and also one of the most informative. I posted a response, and invited that person to tell me what was wrong with the eMoviePoster.com site. Here was his reply"
"You have invited criticism of your site, and I have to say that it is very dated. Your site is using pre 1996 obsolete code, eg:<font size="2" face="Verdana">>Also unstyled 'Search' buttons are so early 1990's. Look at the top few inches of your home page - the many different fonts are what web designers describe as a ransom note page.
That is what websites looked like in the 1990's, like ransom notes. Your site is better coded than some other sites, but not that much better. Whoever has been coding the CSS styles needs to redo it much more efficiently. CSS has been around for 15 years with countless webpages on how to use it properly. Take the CSS in the <head> of all your pages for example. That code should go into a seperate CSS file, as it currently contributes to a slower page load having it embedded on all your pages, but that is just the start of the CSS problems. I am sorry to be so critical, but you HAVE requested site feedback Bruce!"
RESPONSE FROM BRUCE: I have no doubt that what this fellow posted is true (he is obviously very knowledgeable!). These problems stem from the fact that our site was created in 1998, and that I did not have the money available at that time to hire experienced site designers, so it was first designed by Eli Post, and then a succession of amateur site designers added to it over and over. Of course, had I known then how huge it would grow, I would have taken a very different approach, but I only have to consider where I am now.
I have passed these comments along to those who program the site, and they will begin implementing the changes suggested, and many others as well, for they have been fully aware of these problems for some time! Then why have they not already fixed it?
Part of the problem is that there is so much to accomplish not only on the website, but also internally. For instance, in the last couple of years, our programmers have mostly been focused on our internal systems such as our consignment database (where we enter all consignments we receive as they get prepared for auction) and our invoicing system (both the "in development" checkout AND the backend that customers do not see). This is largely how we've been able to greatly increase the quantity that we sell each week and still maintain & improve the quality of our auctions.
But please know that we have many plans coming up and we're going to use these suggestions to help direct the order in which we implement some of these plans.
First we're finishing up the new Auction History
http://www.emovieposter.com/agallery/archive.html which we've just recently taken out of "beta mode". We're also working on improved tracking number e-mails rather than depending on UPS and the Post Office's systems.
Next, we will begin work on some redesigning of the website including proper CSS usage. We've got some ideas for visual improvements that should over time bring the site into the 21st century!
In the meantime, to get a sense of just how FAR our site has progressed since 1998, we invite all of you to take a look at what our site looked like back in the 1990s and earlier 2000s at these links (NOTE: These links come from "The Internet Wayback Machine" and many images are broken and the links don't work, but you can still get a sense of how our site has evolved):
December 12, 1998
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19981212023407/http://www.brucehershenson.com/April 20, 1999
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19990420044225/http://www.brucehershenson.com/October 19, 2000
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20001019053855/http://www.brucehershenson.com/June 10, 2004
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20040610001835/http://www.emovieposter.com/February 23, 2006
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20060223105116/http://www.brucehershenson.com/May 14, 2008
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080514062559/http://emovieposter.com/Today!
http://www.emovieposter.com
