Website Design review needed

K

KroniK

New Member
Hello,

I am Daniel with Northern Utility Services and I am just about to put our new website up for Google to see, however I would like to ask your opinion about the layout and format of the site. The site is a Wordpress site with RichWP's theme framework, which I then heavily edited.

http://nusalaska.com/testing/

As I said before, this site is not live, so I am not currently going to show up on google so please no comments on SEO, but design, layout, and presentation are all up for being ravaged or praised.

Thanks
 
CaldwellYSR

CaldwellYSR

Member
KroniK said:
Hello,

I am Daniel with Northern Utility Services and I am just about to put our new website up for Google to see, however I would like to ask your opinion about the layout and format of the site. The site is a Wordpress site with RichWP's theme framework, which I then heavily edited.

http://nusalaska.com/testing/

As I said before, this site is not live, so I am not currently going to show up on google so please no comments on SEO, but design, layout, and presentation are all up for being ravaged or praised.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Didn't look at the code but the site looks very 1998 to me. There is very little actual style in that. Just some boxes with different colors. The gradients in the header and navigation clash pretty hard. The sidebar is grey with black text? Then suddenly there's orange in there. Very confused
 
K

KroniK

New Member
Thanks for the info, but could you maybe be a bit more specific about what i might do to improve? Its nice to know you dont like it, but without suggestions your comment becomes irrelevant.

I will agree that the navbar should probably be better designed to fit better with the header (or possibly redesign the header)
The sidebar text is not supposed to be hard to read, however it should not be the first thing you see on the page, hence the black on light grey.
The orange was meant to be a contrasting/highlight color that would pop and provide a way to add a second color so that the user is not drowned in blue.

Here is the inspiration for the website: www.muni.org

The reason I wanted to somewhat replicate that style was because functionally, it provides a way to get through a lot of information and get where you want to go. It also does not look like the mangled sites that most businesses of our type tend to look like. case and point: http://www.arlingtontx.gov/water/index.html
 
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CaldwellYSR

CaldwellYSR

Member
KroniK said:
Thanks for the info, but could you maybe be a bit more specific about what i might do to improve? Its nice to know you dont like it, but without suggestions your comment becomes irrelevant.

I will agree that the navbar should probably be better designed to fit better with the header (or possibly redesign the header)
The sidebar text is not supposed to be hard to read, however it should not be the first thing you see on the page, hence the black on light grey.
The orange was meant to be a contrasting/highlight color that would pop and provide a way to add a second color so that the user is not drowned in blue.

Here is the inspiration for the website: www.muni.org

The reason I wanted to somewhat replicate that style was because functionally, it provides a way to get through a lot of information and get where you want to go. It also does not look like the mangled sites that most businesses of our type tend to look like. case and point: http://www.arlingtontx.gov/water/index.html
Click to expand...

Both of those examples look very old and mangled to me personally. You should go to something like templatemonster and look at more modern designs. I understand what you mean about the contrast but I just don't think it works. Everything looks very gridlike and boxy. As far as design goes it's just lacking is all. The design doesn't mesh very well. Harsh lines, colors that seem all over the place (blue gradient, orange gradient, grey, different grey in outsides, white black, plus green in the image). A more modern approach would be to make the background mesh together better. For example check out this template and how their background stretches the width of the viewport while the content itself stays within the grid it needs to be in for the specific browser width. This gives a better feel of continuity and everything meshing together and being part of a whole.

I guess my main concern is your site looks like a bunch of pieces that don't really go together instead of it all fitting together as part of a whole.
 
M

marketer101

New Member
Opinions needed

Hi Everyone, i am new to these forums.

I recently made some changes to the way our website looked, unfortunately i cannot show you the originals.

But on making the changes, i noticed a steady drop in visitors and members signing up. we have gone from 5-7 per day to barely 1 per day.

I would like some of you if possible to please take a look at my website and provide me with your honest opinion as to what you think any why?

Also could you provide me with some feedback as to what i could change, on entering the website would you feel comfortable using this website for your own use.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Before you all say just put it back, it wouldnot be that simple as i do not have the original, as unfortunately our developer only keeps them for 14 days.

The website is www.fiverjobsite.com

Thanks,

M
 
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krymson

krymson

Member
As Caldwell stated the site looks very dated, after looking through the code I was excited cause I saw divs being used properly until I got to the content area where you have nested tables... The colors do clash quite a bit, you have dark text n a slightly lighter background, you need something with more contrast.

I'm not going to say its terrible cause its not but I dont think the company is being represented right by this design. You guys might know its a new design but anyone visiting that site for the first time would/could think that the website was built in the early 2000's and makes the company look dated.

In my opinion I would do some research and find a more modern design, stray away from tables.... you dont need them...

The one thing I can commend you on is the organization of your site but I think it could use a better design, nothing fancy just something that says hey, we've been in business for a while but we know how to keep up with the times and technology. Right now It looks like you're suck back in 1999-2001
 
Phreaddee

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
why it looks dated and old?
the logo just looks thrown in there. no thought to how it actually sits in the header. its all boxy and cramped.and very one dimensional.
the ill placed gradient (in the header, which is than again used in the nav) and the other gradient (the brown one) the fonts, whilst all verdana (and boring) are all out of whack. odd padding, line-heights all different.

this isnt to say you haven't covered the basics OK, but the design element of the site is lacking...

seriously consider, not just competitor sites, which the examples provided also look pretty old and dated, but other sites where there is a good flow of content, and excellent design which you can then use as inspiration.

As everyone else has said it looks about 10 years old, and people will simply assume that the content is not current.
 
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