(Above: New design)
Design was never our strong area but with time, you just get better. Our folks at FuneralHomes.com just released a new design to the wild. The design is not only graphical (now it is much better on the eyes) but also architectural. From an architecture standpoint, there is less clutter on the main page (less links), new header/logo area, as well as we now allow for each listed business to have their own profile page (example).
(Above: Old design)
Next week further projects are moving forward. Keep your eyes on Flowchart.com as well as Bido.
As always, feedback most welcome, highly appreciated !
Cheers
Sahar
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Looks good. The how to advertise section is especially compelling. The proof sources are strong.
Looks very nice Sahar! Nice clean layout, and is very easy to navigate. Wish you the best of luck with it!
The new design has a nice clean look.
The one thing I would mention to maybe play around with is the “How to Advertise” page.
The testimonials are great but I think some people will probably want to see some kind of pricing on the page and also a way to submit their listing and pay online (this should also make it easy for whoever is responsible for taking calls and emails about selling ad space).
Just something to maybe play around with. If I were you I would use Google Website Optimizer to test different pages for the how to advertise page and see what works the best.
Thanks,
Joel
http://www.DomainSuperstar.com
I like them both. The only thing is the building on the old page doesn’t really make you think “funeral home” until you read the logo.
The new page looks simpler and less cluttered but in reality it’s almost the same. The pastel blue works! Calms the page somewhat. You need some green there down at the fold to balance the “Tree” maybe. And the tree needs to be “smoothed out”. I see gradient lines in the image.
I’d take the text link for flowers out at the top and let the flowers link image do the balance as it moves up. The yellow helps with the balance some. Then put the flowers text link below the image as reinforcement.
Actually since the shape of the logo “tells the story” you could just recolor it to the pastel blue. I’d still move the “flowers” text link down under the image.
And you might trim off a little of the white on the top and bottom of the tree logo image just to “pull up” the rest of the page some.
Another thing is I’d do a drop down for the states/countries on the left panel to reduce the white space at the bottom. White space is your friend but that big chunk of white space at the bottom makes the page look a little incomplete.
Finally, I’d shove the right hand column over a little further to the right as that feels like it’s crowding the center column text just a little. When I look at it I noticed I pulled my left arm over and tilted my head slightly which is uncomfortable. Little cues like that are what I use to tell me if I’m balanced left and right.
Dang, I didn’t mean to tear apart your beautiful new page. Hope these comments help.
Here’s an idea. Do a Round Robin in DNS to two sites with the secondary pages on a third server or virt. Put the old main page on one server and the new on a second and watch the traffic, sales, comments and results.
Thanks guys for the feedback, I’ll have our design team read through your suggestions!
Cheers
Sahar
Hey Sahar, I like the new site a lot better than the old. I say this mostly because the old site reminded me more of a Realtor’s Web site than a site where you could find information on making funeral arrangements.
I did want to make a few comments since you are welcoming feedback.
The first comment is mainly a reminder that your new Web site is still using the same favicon.ico as your old Web site. I’m not sure if this is intentional or if that portion of the rebranding process had been overlooked (suggestion: use the tree portion of your new logo as the new favicon).
The second comment is that I do agree with Jeff that there may be excessive padding on the right side. But I wanted to add that there seems to be a skyscraperish look to your Web page. Currently your body table is set to 858px wide and, since you are already expanding past the traditional 800×600 resolution, it wouldn’t hurt to go wider to 960px or so. Unless of course you are striving for this type of look. The reason I wanted to add to Jeff’s comment is to mention that increasing the width might give you the room to create the separation he speaks of.
The last comment I want to make is about your headings and paragraph content (both on your main page and again on your inner content pages). Your headings don’t stand out against each other or guide the eye in any way when users scan your Web pages. Visitors will be looking for visual clues for how they are supposed to use your Web site. Right now I feel like I am reading a technical document instead of a Web resource. Perhaps your resources page could be titled: “10 Resources for Funeral Planning” and you could use numbers 1-10 to guide your Visitors through this content. This same technical format continues through much of your Web site’s inner content. A lot of these Web pages could also use more padding and separation between paragraphs of content. It’s almost as if the paragraph margins/padding have been reset to 0px for Web browser rendering reasons and then not set to the values you would like to use.
Great start with the new FuneralHomes.com Web site, I look forward to seeing what changes you have in store for Bido and Flowchart.com!
New site looks good.
I’m surprised the new design uses tables for layout, and not CSS. Is there a reason for that?