Hey Guys,

 

I wasn't sure weather or not to post this up or not, but we've been debating a few things about the design and structure in the office. So I just thought I'd try to get more opnions before pushing ahead with full development.

 

We have actually had this designed and not developed for a few months, but now is the time to push on. I've mostly spoken about the rotating banner, the header still showing as you scroll down the page and the services we're showing. Also I need to add more text for SEO purposes.

 

All feedback, positive or negative is more than welcome.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Mollart

its not bad. there seems to be a lack of strucuture though. when u oopen the page your eye gets dragged around the page without knowing where to focus. you may have too much content on the page. perhaps if you try to standardise the structure as per attachement it might bring some formity to the page. the footer is extremely copy heavy too. i know its probably all for SEO purposers but sometimes that can take away from the overall viewers experience.

its not bad. there seems to be a lack of strucuture though. when u oopen the page your eye gets dragged around the page without knowing where to focus. you may have too much content on the page. perhaps if you try to standardise the structure as per attachement it might bring some formity to the page. the footer is extremely copy heavy too. i know its probably all for SEO purposers but sometimes that can take away from the overall viewers experience.

 

Thanks, that's actually really useful.

 

I think I got caught up in the whole thing of covering the white space with content. Your right about your eye being dragged around the page, I was trying to hit the user with content, but I feel I went a bit too far. My business partner actually wants a slideshow like what you've done already so we'll be switching it around to something quite similar to that.

 

Thank you!

Lovely design!!

 

Definately go with the slideshow! alzers touched it up nicely maybe bit to much shadow though

 

Rounding of like this adds a nice touch too

 

shadow was just a template slideshow i have, i wouldnt recommend using that drop shadow

I've started switching it all around, not stuck the slider in yet.

 

The black on the right is a mouse over effect.

I like it

I like it too, I would have to agree with what alzer81 said.

 

The only thing that I think is where you have the pink text with the underscore and the gray text underneath on the right-hand side of the page it looks very similar to a google advert. More so on the first design then the latest to be fair.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by SmuJ

To be honest, I like the first design more than these modified versions. At first glance I noticed (beside blue area in top left corner) your phone number and thumbnail links to web sites of your clients (in my opinion two really important things).

 

HTH,

Faik

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for all the feedback, this is where we're up to now...

 

Point taken about the Google type ads on the right, we're not really focused on anything beneath the dark grey area it's mostly for the search engines. We hope the top half is enough to direct people around the website.

 

PS: I realise the phone number is missing at the moment.

The footer stuff looks spammy. I'd strip that out, together with the section above it. You're diverging your front page content into two directions which should really be their own pages. Design your page for people, not search engines - when you're building your links you should be linking to your specific interior pages anyway.

 

Use more whitespace - see Mark Boulton's article here, specifically about how it adds a high-end feel. Don't be trapped into a situation where your own site's design fails to justify whatever price you charge by virtue of not enough negative space - cramped = cheap.

 

I personally would use the three-column black bar AS the footer. See attached.

 

The footer stuff looks spammy. I'd strip that out, together with the section above it. You're diverging your front page content into two directions which should really be their own pages. Design your page for people, not search engines - when you're building your links you should be linking to your specific interior pages anyway.

 

Use more whitespace - see Mark Boulton's article here, specifically about how it adds a high-end feel. Don't be trapped into a situation where your own site's design fails to justify whatever price you charge by virtue of not enough negative space - cramped = cheap.

 

I personally would use the three-column black bar AS the footer. See attached.

 

 

I know exactlty what you're saying here, I appreciate the comments, my problem is that I can have the best site in the world, but if people can't find it... what's the point?

 

We're currently ranked 5th on google.co.uk for "website designers" and page 1 for "ecommerce website designers". We can't jeopardise that as we get more enquiries through this than anything else. We used to spend 3 grand a month on leads, we spend nothing now and get the same amount of business through our SEO work - that's got to be good math.

 

I'm using the 3 column bar as a splitter, so the user doesn't need to really go down much further. I understand people will browse down and it will appear spammy but it's really the only way to find yourself near the top of Google these days.

 

Thanks for the mock-up!

 

PS: I'm going to re-work the footer a little so it's less spammy looking!

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Mollart

I agree with Renaissance-Design. When I looked at the design and came to the black box (with testimonial, support and quality divs inside) I thought that was the footer. When I kept scrolling and seen all the text and links below it I thought it looked out of place and it comes across as just a mass of information to push the site up the search rankings rather than being relevant to a visitor

Not bad.

I'd added more space around the logo.

 

Not bad.

I'd added more space around the logo.

 

 

Well spotted, will change!

I know exactlty what you're saying here, I appreciate the comments, my problem is that I can have the best site in the world, but if people can't find it... what's the point?

 

Thanks for the mock-up!

 

PS: I'm going to re-work the footer a little so it's less spammy looking!

 

So, this SEO expert walks into a bar, pub, tavern, drinking establishment, Irish pub, theme pub...

 

You could always fit the more spammy stuff into jQuery accordions, reduce the visual impact a bit.

 

PS: Don't mean to sound harsh, I appreciate how hard this is for you. I've had a temporary site for the last couple of years; I'm scared to death of myself as a client.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Renaissance-Design

So, this SEO expert walks into a bar, pub, tavern, drinking establishment, Irish pub, theme pub...

 

So, this SEO expert walks into a bar, pub, tavern, drinking establishment, Irish pub, theme pub...

 

You could always fit the more spammy stuff into jQuery accordions, reduce the visual impact a bit.

 

PS: Don't mean to sound harsh, I appreciate how hard this is for you. I've had a temporary site for the last couple of years; I'm scared to death of myself as a client.

 

haha, I'm not the seo expert, I just get told what needs to be on the page and why!

 

I've been told not to hide the content in an accordian or anything like that as Google doesn't like hidden content on the site and we don't want to upset the almighty Google!

Slight re-work of footer and side content following above feedback.

The footer looks so much better here!

 

Really like the rollover links in the top right.

Accordion panels don't count as hidden text if they're done correctly - what Google looks for as hidden-text spamming is stuff that's set to display: none, or very similar text/background colours.

 

A well-coded accordion panel is applied to a visible element, so the panel is still visible in the absence of javascript. The js then sets the display property to hide the text until the accordion is activated.

 

See this search for a phrase appearing within an accordion panel in the jQuery UI demos.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Renaissance-Design

A well-coded accordion panel is applied to a visible element, so the panel is still visible in the absence of javascript. The js then sets the display property to hide the text until the accordion is activated.

 

Thanks for that, your right about the visible content. There is another issue though, extra javascript, extra file size, extra page load time. I realise that will be minimal but it all counts. We've been speaking about it in the office and we decided to stick with the content just showing rather than adding further javascript and adding any further file size to the page - I know it's a bit mad since it's only small but we're very keen not to risk losing out on any rankings as we rely on search engine traffic so heavily these days.

 

Also if you saw a big bulky bit of text near the bottom of the page would you bother reading or just skip to the page you wanted to view? To be honest, I know it's there but I hope people ignore it to a certain extent.

 

Honestly, thank you for your input, it's much appreciated.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Mollart

No probs; glad I could help.

 

Edited to add:

 

One further thought. Footers are for people, but it's kinda lost below the SEO stuff.

 

What if you left sufficient top margin on the SEO section to fit the footer in, then absolutely positioned the footer above it without changing the source order? That would seem to fit your aim of human visitors not bothering with the SEO stuff.

Edited February 15, 201115 yr by Renaissance-Design

Here is the drop down menu.

 

Main services are big and bold, additional services are listed smaller and slightly darker.

No probs; glad I could help.

 

Edited to add:

 

One further thought. Footers are for people, but it's kinda lost below the SEO stuff.

 

What if you left sufficient top margin on the SEO section to fit the footer in, then absolutely positioned the footer above it without changing the source order? That would seem to fit your aim of human visitors not bothering with the SEO stuff.

 

Your right about the footer being for people. The thing is the SEO text to this extent is only on the home page and we're going to have the phone number showing near the top of the website on the home page and that's the only thing we really need people to be looking at down there. They can click about for info on the company, the blog is purely for SEO also, but we will be feeding some bits of content in there.

 

Also, the header will be sliding down on top of the content so the option for contact and about will always be visible.

I like the way how your actual contact section is bang on the front of the site with the request a quote box. A lot of people actually make it quite difficult for people to contact them online.