A Visual and Techinical Look at CardroomSupply
I consider myself quite a poker fan. I have my own chip set, two packs of KEM playing cards, and also a old banquet table that has been felted and bumpered. CardroomSupply asked me to review their site and I focused on the products, appearance, and the code of their site.
In full disclosure, this is a sponsored review. However, this is an honest review.
CardroomSupply is e-commerce web site originated in 2003 by Lee Weber to provide people with a wide selection of gaming accessories. The store has everything a poker player needs to start a home game or create a quality card room.
Quality of Products
I’m very impressed with the quality of the products at CardroomSupply. They stock KEM and Copag cards, which are viewed to be the finest in the industry. Also, the carry heavy 13g chips. These are weighty and feel like real casino chips. They stock some of the best looking table sets I have seen in one place, everything from table tops to the same types of card tables they use in casinos.
Visual Appearance
Visually, the site appears to be well-styled and the layout is what is to be expected from an e commerce site. Clear, colorful pictures show off the table sets on the home page. However, once you scroll the bottom of the screen, there is a section of the template out of place. There is also the text of the product category that sits at the bottom of the page as if there is a broken </div> tag somewhere.
One other critique is the copyright at the bottom says 2005. This may deter buyers that may assume the web site has not been updated since 2005. The “contact us” page needs some minor improvement as well. I would add some more copy, possibly something like, “our customers are important to us”, “we will response quickly”… etc. Something to give a bit of a personal touch to increase buyer trust.
Regarding the detail pages, i would prefer to see a small paragraph accompanying the photos as well as a the bullet points outlining key features. The paragraph can help with the rankings in the search engines and also double as the page’s meta description.
Technical Aspects
First off, I understand that this is a Yahoo! Store platform and there are limitations on what can be changed. I noticed the following areas of opportunity:
- Javascript files were before the </head>
- Majority of the styles are inline
- Single tag elements are not closed </meta />
- An & in the </title> tag
- Images not properly named
- There are no </head>, </body>, or </html> tags on any of the pages
Recommendations
I was really nitpicking the source code of the site, but I believe that it is as important as the aesthetics of the web site. Based on what I have seen I would recommend the following to improve the quality of the code and help with SEO:
- Call the Javascript form an external (.js) file and call that file within the <head>
- pull in the styles from an external style sheet (.css). It decrease the pages load time as well as file size.
- single tag elements are not closed <meta />
- Escape the ampersand in the title or use “and”. Sometimes Google will display an oddly translated character in place.
- Give your images descriptive file names. It increases your visibility in Google Images Search which can bring traffic your way when people are looking for photos of card tables. I would use the following format: “professional-casino-poker-table.jpg”.
- Close the </head>, </body>, or </html> tags
Overall
Aside from the few minor details, I think this is a great site to find what you need when it comes to creating a classy card room. The site has been around for awhile and their tables are installed in numerous casinos. I will be going there first when I decide to purchase a nice poker table for my den.
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