I am building a commercial website for garments that includes more than 100 separate garments plus accessories. I would like to have a number of pages that include small thumbnails of the garments/accessories with each thumbnail being a link to a larger series of pictures showing different views of the garment and a description. The thumbnail pages would have a maximum of 10 thumbnails each to avoid overwhelming the visitor.

My question is, should the pages that the thumbnails link to be a separate page for each thumbnail or just one page with a number of the garments that would require scrolling down to view each item.

Another idea would be to place the larger images/description on the same page as the thumbnails.

I'm not sure about what issues would be involved in this.

Thanks

JoeV

As an example, if you have a blue dress with matching bag, shoes and scarf. I would create a thumbnail of all of these together for your initial presentation to the shopper.

The thumbnail would link to a page with these same items (larger than thumbnail) together, but different views.

I would then create popups to provide close ups of details of the items. Including a close up of the weave, any decorative accents, stuff like that.

This will give shoppers the opportunity to look closer, if they want to.

It's difficult to talk most ppl into buying clothes they can not try on, take away the ability to see the details up close, and you have probably lost the sale.

Good luck, I know I have just suggested a LOT of work, but I believe it will pay off if you provide your shoppers with an experience that closely resembles how they choose items in the store.

No thumbnail link nor popup should have any items except those that "go with" the featured item. Accessories shown alone should have a thumbnail link that goes to a variety of views and close-ups.

Don't forget, women like to know what the inside of a bag is like.

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Webmaster Resources Made Easy. http://www.webdesigns-4-you.com

It really sound like a database would be useful to you, but before we think about that, are you simply displaying the items available or are you planning some kind of shopping cart system?

If you just want to start out by giving people a display of the inventory, I'd break it down to categories and have about 10 pages for those 100 items. A script that would work great for this is at http://javascript.internet.com/miscellaneous/gallery-viewer.html

It would be possible to do something like this where the thumbnails aren't right up next to the center image and you could have the thumbnails in separate table cells with other cells directly under each thumbnail with a description and possible a buy button... just thoughts -- not sure how well that might work out.

I think that's the same script used at www.elizabethcopeart.com/paintings.htm

Here's another I just found that may or may not be useful... http://javascript.internet.com/navigation/thumbnail-navigator.html ...although you'd want the "go" button to show the .htm page with the item for buying it instead of just the full sized jpg.

Another site you may want to check for ideas is a favorite posted recently: www.homedecorators.com

Sorry to just bring more ideas instead of solutions. If you know what direction you are going with this, maybe we can help a little better.

Above all... good quality images, easy to navigate site, easy to buy, and contact info must be very easy to find.

Linda

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Ruby Marketing

Thank you for the feedback.

I agree that it will be a challenge to sell the garments on the web where they cannot be tried on first.

I have just about decided to use a separate page for the large images and descriptions.

The initial thumbnail will show a model wearing the item and all of the available accessories. The linked page will show a larger version of the same image as well as different views of the items.

The biggest challenge so far has been the size of the files, but I have working hard to learn about optimizing the graphics and reducing the size.

This is my Wifes business and her "brick and mortar" store has been successful for almost 30 years, but the web presents a whole different set of challenges.

Thanks again.

Yes, we will have a shopping cart system in place. That "gallery" script looks very interesting, I had not considered anything like this.

Thank You very much for all of the ideas, I am still very new at this web thing and need all the help I can get.

I'll let you know when the website is published, maybe you wouldn't mind giving me an opinion on it.

JoeV