So, I made a mockup and sent it off to the client. She says she's missing the "wow-factor", which I agree on. The site like this is not "in your face" enough.. can you guys help me find the right details to wow it up?

Hey Mark,

I am looking at your website now and I think I have a few suggestions. I am going to just go down the list of things that you might want to try:

1. Logo smaller. Yes, we want brand recognizion, but at the same time we don't need 350px tall of stolen from the rest of the site.
2. You often want to use white space, but in this case it is too much. If you had much tighter columns of text, then the white space around would help your eyes, but with such a wide column, it just looks like a small bit of information is nested inside of the white.
3. Use a narrower website. Right now your website is 950px wide. Unless it is a news website like CNN where you need a lot of space for 4 or 5 columns of navigation and news, a narrower site is better. Try 750. It is still a wide enough site for most cases, and grids line up to 750 quite easily.
4. Add more colour to the page. The bright green and blue are used too sparingly. Also, they don't really go with the colours your started to use on your logo. All three are very very strong colours and combined, the user does not know where to look. Try some sky blue, a lime green and then add in some tan to the site. You might want to try to have tan as the background of the site with the content nested on a white background.
5. Make menu smaller and font inside it smaller with more letter spacing.
6. For the text on the page, use #111111. It is close enough to black but is easier to read. If you do that along with bumbing up the letter spacing to about 75 in photoshop, it will look much cleaner.

Good luck on the design and keep us posted when you have more drafts, I would like to see them.
-Andy

Right now the design is dull.

To give you some helpful suggestions can you tell me what the company does?

It's a good start, but I'm not sure if the color scheme really works. Looks like yellow-green, orange, and a blue-violet is what you're going with, which works if you have alot of colors going on in the page with their respective tints, tones, and shades. But with so much white I would consider something simpler, like two contrasting colors.

The company works on finance solutions for other businesses.
Main thing she works on now is doing finances for local businesses and later this year she'll be adding the investing-advisory to it. So she will help people invest their money.


Andy and Jason: thanks for the tips.. I'll see what I can do with it..

The first thing I would do is brighten up the navigation. It looks really blocky. The first thing you should do is insert page names instead of menu 1/2/3. After you have done that experiment and see what can come up with.

I also feel that the site would greatly benefit from a picture beneath the navigation. A big one, it might be an ad, or perhaps a picture of the woman.

Something needs to be done about the white space at the top of the page. I really don't know what though.

Hey Mark!
Start by selecting a color scheme that goes with the logo. Since that's her branding, make the site part of the branding by using the color. Black/Yellow/Orange or gray/yellow/orange.

Be consistant. Select two or three colors and stick with them. Currently you have 3 different greens in combination with navy blue and the logo colors.

Above navigation I would select a large photo that represents the business and span across the entire top. I'd blend away the photo where the light bulb is. A panoramic photo would be stunning up there. Preferably in the colors you are using throughout the rest of the site.

I'd also suggest a subtle background image outside of the design. I always do that in mockups because clients need to know that the whole page isn't going to be white. The only white is where the text will be.

Another suggestion would be to place the contact info (green box) in the top right hand corner. Then maybe a smaller photo would work between the light bulb above the nav.

Reduce the width of the text by a lot. Make it easy on the readers eyes to scan the text.

Why not add a footer? It would add visual interest.

Hope that helps!!

Am I drifting away here, or is this going the right direction?

Well I see you understood my vague description about adding the header photo. I like that...
I do think the business name should be higher up and a focal point.

But I think you are drifting in the right direction!!

I look at the design and do not know what company the website belongs to. Perhaps the company name can be incorporated into the header.

Yup, I'm working on that right now.. I'm going to put the name in the header..

how's this?

Excellent header... love the transparent overlay.

Can you check and see if the green below the bulb is the same green as your hover over nav? To me the nav looks darker. I'd prefer the lighter.

Yup, same color.. It just looks different because of the darker letters and a darker nav bar..

I'll play around with that a little..

Man that looks much better.
I think I only have 3 issues left on this:

1. Menu font is to big for my taste
2. I don't like the inactive state colour of the menu font
3. I think something is missing in the main content area. Maybe some very light transparent green fade on the right side or something, to make it seem less boring.

But i really love where this is going, especially compairing to the start. Love the header. Oh, maybe i'd use a bigger letter-spacing on the LG Solutions. Don't know, what do you think?

Keep us posted, quickly.. I'm curious about the end result.


PS. I love the way the "Filling the need" goes with the puzzle! Keep that in!

This post has been edited by velo: May 26 2008, 03:55 PM

thanks hon..



2: euh.. what color would you make it ?
3: I was thinking another column on the right, but I don't think there's enough content for that..


I tried, but that didn't look to great.. Also tried a bold font..

cool.. I did that on purpose.. *ahum*

You're welcome sweetie


Good question.. Bright "Puzzlepiece brown"? "Logoyellow"? White? Brighter green? Now, it seems a bit, what's the english term... vale? (dutch: "vaal" or "flets")

The navigation somehow doesn't seem important enough now to me, except for the active one.


I wouldn't suggest a different column. Just a very slight background color that might be a bit behind the content. Really a background color, not a column.


Maybe a slightly different font? I guess for a logo/slogan kinda thing, it doesn't neccesairily have to match the entire sites' content, should it?


Haha, so you didn't. Well, it does doesn't it? Like, the need of an incomplete puzzle, is that extra puzzle piece that is going towards the puzzle. The piece is filling the need of the rest of the puzzle. When you think of it, it is kinda brilliant.

how about this one:

I don't really know about the content background..
what do you guys think?