What do you think? A web development company site redesign

It doesn't matter if you do all the error checking in the world, or if you have the most beautiful graphics, if your site or application design isn't usable, it's not going to do well. Get input and advice on usability and user interface issues here.

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VirtuosiMedia
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What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

Hey everyone, I just redesigned our site and would love some feedback on the design, layout, copy - anything you have an opinion on. For our design, I really tried to focus on a clean, usable look suitable to marketing to businesses who are interested in growing their business through their website. I'd like to know if I hit the mark on that account or if I need to do some adjustment.

The site is http://www.virtuosimedia.com/

Thanks in advance for the feedback.
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andyhoneycutt
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by andyhoneycutt »

It's very clean, which is appealing to me. I think you're wasting screen real-estate on the left navigation area by using a vertical menu. I'd take the vertical, make it horizontal, and put it above your main content region, centering everything. Unless you intend to have roll-down menus for possible sub-navigation from the primary menu, I'd do the above. Also, if you intend to fill up that left area with other items, that would help too. It just feels like it's missing something, and I think that's a result of having too much empty space over there.

Very clean, I give your design a thumbs up :)

-Andy
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jackpf
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by jackpf »

I think it looks pretty cool tbh.

Although I do think the box at the bottom (with featured news, articales etc...) could do with a bit of bottom padding as the text looks a bit cramped if you know what I mean.

But yeah, I agree with andyhoneycutt; it is a bit horizontally cramped. Especially when reading a tutorial - it all seems rather squashed. I think a horizontal menu would suit the site much better.

Good work though.
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jayshields
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by jayshields »

Pretty much what the others said. Content wise it is lacking a portfolio and the link in the footer to the MooTools tutorial doesn't work, replace the "." with a "-".

Edit: Enquiry is spelt wrong on the contact form. The JavaScript validation on the contact form is a little obtrusive too, I don't like form elements being shifted around on-the-fly.
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VirtuosiMedia
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the feedback. I am eventually planning on having sub-menus on the left-hand side, possibly as an accordion or something similar. I'll probably add a few additional boxes as well. The top gray bar will be a login form at some point, similar to deviantart's design. I'll definitely will add some more bottom padding too. I'm not quite satisfied with the footer, so I'm going to have to work on it a little more.

Edit: Nice catch on the broken link. I had thought I had tested them all, but one got away. :wink: I can see your point on the form. I may switch it to validate on submit.
Last edited by VirtuosiMedia on Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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jayshields
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by jayshields »

The search form just searches Google? I agree with what was said before about moving the navigation menu so that the content can have 100% width.

Off-topic: your twitter page has a background image which is too wide when using a 1024 width resolution.
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VirtuosiMedia
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

The search is something that I'll be working on as well. I'm writing my own CMS and I haven't quite got that far yet, so I'm using Google for now. The site isn't complete by any means yet, I have lots of plans for it, but it's a start for where I eventually want to go. I'll take a look at the Twitter background. Does it make your browser scroll?
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by jayshields »

The twitter background is just overlaid by the main twitter content div. The search thing doesn't even search your site with Google, it just literally searches Google! :)
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VirtuosiMedia
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

jayshields wrote:The twitter background is just overlaid by the main twitter content div. The search thing doesn't even search your site with Google, it just literally searches Google! :)
I'll try reworking Twitter tomorrow. Later this week I was planning on adding a bit of JavaScript to prepend site:www.virtuosimedia.com to any queries, I just didn't get a chance to do it before the site went up. :D I really appreciate the feedback. It'll help me tweak everything.
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by pickle »

My first reaction was that it was too empty. It appears that you are making text bigger & giving generous padding because you don't have much content.

- Move the search up into the header part - there's lots of wasted space in the current search bar.
- You've kept the page size down, which is nice.
- You should hide the 1,2,3 if Javascript is not enabled (or rather, enable the 1,2,3 with Javascript). If Javascript is turned off and I click one of those numbers, I get taken to some apparently random page that was not evident by the text I clicked on.
- I'd suggest moving your "It's your turn to shine" to the top. That's your main advertisement about why the user should stay on the page, and it's barely visible above the fold at 1024 x 768.
- Greatly reduce the size of the section you currently have at the top of your page. I'd suggest reducing the size of the image to around 128/150 pixels so it's more of an icon than a full photo.
- You've got too much text in that section. A good general rule is "write what you want. Remove half the words. Remove half the words again".
- The "Free Quote", "Learn More" links are misleading & confusing. They don't match anything else on the page that looks like a link. If I mouse over "Free Quote", then go to "Learn More", I see both the "Free Quote" button and "Learn More" button look the same. Does that mean I'm somehow clicking on both of them? Is my browser messing up? Links should all look and act the same.
- Might I suggest using Arial instead of Verdana as the font for your headings? Arial looks better at larger sizes.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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VirtuosiMedia
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

Thanks for the suggestions, pickle. More content is definitely coming. I did intentionally put a lot of whitespace into the design because I didn't want to have a lot of clutter, hence the generous padding and large images. I'll be experimenting as time goes on, though.

I was a little surprised at everyone's comments about the content area being too cramped because it's actually about 67-68% of the page width for most screen sizes. I've seen similar ratios on a lot of different sites, to the point where it seemed standard to me. I think, though, that it might be because the content is on the right and because of the whitespace in the left column. English is read left to right and so having to skip that gap initially in order to read makes it seem cramped. I wonder if filling it in would change that perception. Does that make sense?

The 1,2,3 were a concern of mine as well, for exactly that reason. Technically, it's progressively enhanced, but that doesn't do much for telling you what the link is about. I'm still trying to figure out a good way to do that without changing a whole lot visually. I added title attributes for now, but I'm open to other suggestions as well. I've often wished that you could stick normal XHTML inside the script tags, to be shown if JavaScript is enabled, much like anything inside the noscript tag appears only if JavaScript is disabled.

Page size was something that I really worked on to keep low. Thanks for noticing. :wink:

Good point on the buttons. I'm going to change them so they aren't inverse of each other.

Having the "Your Turn to Shine" section partway below the fold is something that I'll have to evaluate further after seeing how it works for us. I put the slideshow above it on purpose because realistically I think more people will be coming to our site for content than our services. If we run an ad, we'll direct them to a specific landing page from the ad rather than our home page.

Choosing a font has always been a tough one for me, especially because there aren't very many choices that will look consistent across different platforms. I'll definitely keep your suggestion in mind.
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jayshields
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by jayshields »

VirtuosiMedia wrote:I've often wished that you could stick normal XHTML inside the script tags, to be shown if JavaScript is enabled, much like anything inside the noscript tag appears only if JavaScript is disabled.
Can't you just print the XHTML using JavaScript inside the script tags?
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Eran
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by Eran »

I like the overall feel of the site. It's rounded and spacy, feels inviting. However, the color palette is a bit bland, might want to do something with that. Like others have said, I'm missing a 'portfolio' or 'work' link that shows what you guys did. 'Contact' should also be a part of the main navigation. Is news, articles and tutorials really important? do they warrant separate links in the menu, or separate sections on the site on a portfolio site? in my opinion it's not necessary and distracts from the main purpose of the site (sell your brand to clients)

Nice work!
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VirtuosiMedia
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Re: What do you think? A web development company site redesign

Post by VirtuosiMedia »

I made some changes to the site based on everyone's suggestions, though there is still more I want to do. I added an ad to the first slide in the front page slideshow for our services and cut down on the size of the box below it. I also included a contact link in the menu and added recent content to the front page. I still need to work on the footer.

To answer your question about the content, pyrtin, it's not going to be just a portfolio site, so the news, articles, and tutorials sections will be important. We want business clients for building websites, but we're also going to be releasing products and services aimed at developers and website business owners in the future, so we're trying to build a readership through our content. As I write more content, those section pages will be changed to look more like the front page, complete with a slideshow.

The color scheme was deliberately kept muted so as not to distract from content, to make the photos more vibrant, and so we can call attention to certain portions of the page when we need to, but I guess time will tell how it works out. I'll be testing various aspects of it, so almost anything could change depending on what the testing results turn out to be.
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