Hey guys,

 

We've invested a lot of time and work in these last weeks into the new design of our luxury website and... we'd love to hear what the pros think abot it. Any tips to make it even better would help.

 

Check it out: Luxatic

First impressions last. The ad panels are getting in the way of the content, monetizing is essential but not at the cost of user experience.

 

Some ads where taking almost 200,000 ms to load! The whole time they are doing that the page scroll keeps jumping while your trying to read. I gave up, and I'm sure many others will do too.

 

First move the ads away from the header, placing 3 of them between the header and the main content on article pages will have a detrimental effect on both visit duration and return visits. It looks like all you want people to do is leave your site and go somewhere else, as long as you get paid for the click.

 

Second the header itself is basically an ad banner with a logo, this hides links and distracts visitors from navigating your site.

 

Third, the site looks familiar, is this not a Wp theme I have seen elsewhere with a few tweaks?

Please do not take any of the following personally, if you are easily offended by honesty please don't read any further and I will not be offended

 

I am sorry to say that I don't get the impression of luxury, I get the impression of disarray And clutter

 

The design has nowhere to breathe, which is important when creating luxury products or designs both in real life and on the web people who want luxury want air

 

In design this means white space, it means not cluttering up with bits of everything all over the place, if I was looking at luxury I would be looking for ease of use, great user experience and very clear guidance on your objectives.

 

Putting in image that are expensive in real life does not make your site luxury, as that's the brand you have clearly said you want to convey, the adverts alone are a complete contradiction to your brand, there are better ways to make money from adds other than slapping banners all over the website.

 

What would happen if you removed the sidebar, the adds, introduced a large image, maybe some text, decent typography, included a footer with some of the sidebar information in it, just the basics.. Social networking, most recent, newsletter - just on the homepage then de cluttered the rest of the site?

 

I am sorry if I offended you with this review but I personally don't see anything different from you to any other blog site, what makes you different? What makes you stand out? Why would I return to have loads of adds shoved in my face?

 

To be honest, with that site, I would go back to the brief and start again.

 

Sorry again

Edited February 7, 201412 yr by Fuzzy Logic

Correct me if I am wrong but this is essentially an online magazine right? Which means lots and lots of content added on a regular basis? If this is true, and the initial impression of your site is not a good one, perhaps look at the competition - ie: online magazines (specifically those targeting the high-end luxury client) and see what they are doing. I personally do not find this site to be too bad concerning design. If anything, perhaps add a bit more space between each post, and between the posts column and the side bar. What you might want to focus on next is user experience. Can the visitor quickly find what they are looking for? On a side note, make sure your advertisers are relevant and add value to your site - not take it away. Keep pressing forward.

It just struck me when looking at the sites name that maybe you could use that a bit more to your advantage. Lux'actic' - an attic is a loft space, many luxury loft apartments are huge open spaces with a victorian industrial feel. Have a think about that, it might just be the start of something.

 

Of course you would want to get the url changed so that attic was spelt right for this to work which would mean buying a new domain name, but it may be worth the extra investment.

I think your website has some good features and the overall layout is good, but there are a couple of things I think you could improve on for usability and overall look.

1. I would suggest not to use any advertising it makes your site look to busy with all the images on the site. Also, the first thing you see when reading an article is an advert, which slightly, puts me off reading the rest of it.

2. You need to be consistent with your image titles because users that are not tech minded will not know what some of the images are so I would create a title for each image that is displayed on its own and a little description for them. I can see some titles have been done on images, but if you are consistent it makes usability better. Here is an example page (http://luxatic.com/the-thousand-waves-holiday-villa-in-hawaii/thousand-waves-holiday-villa-in-hawaii-13/).

3. Page load times vary a bit while the advertisements are loaded this can make users click away instead of reading content on your site.

Everything has been said already.

 

But just a note on the adverts... Can you tell us your website view stats?

 

Let's be honest, unless your getting some real decent traffic adsense and the like are not worth their space.

 

If this site is new, I would suggest giving 6 months or so before placing ads. Let's you user base build, start building your email list too.

 

Focus on emailing advertising and probably sell ad space but not loads!

 

I think adsense is what, less than £1 per 2500 views?

 

If your looking to make a full daily wage of this site, minimum would be £50 a day.

 

And then that is over 200k page views...