Tag Archives: Website Design

Getting feedback on your new website design

Posted on January 12, 2011 by in Website Design

website design - dan Hi everyone! We have a new guest post from our newest guest author Jayson Jones. Jayson is providing some valuable resources to help with keeping new designs creative and current.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, especially when you hold a creative position such as web designer. However, receiving constructive criticism is an integral way to keep your designs interesting and relevant over time.

Once you’ve decided to gather feedback on your website designs, the question becomes how to find qualified sources for feedback. The following is a list of sites that any web designer will find helpful when searching for the constructive criticism.

1. Please Critique Me

This tool allows designers to paste links to their designs onto this site, soliciting constructive criticism from industry experts. Once a submission gets selected, the designer receives a complimentary and comprehensive review of her work.

2. Concept Feedback

This is a community for web designers, developers and marketing associates. Users can upload a design concept, state her objective, and receive constructive criticism from other users. Also, this site uses a point system to rate feedback, so users can prioritize the advice they receive. Additionally, colleagues and clients can review delicate concepts privately.

3. Creattica

Here, designers are able to share a wide array of projects. On this website, participation is free. However, feedback may be limited, since members can only mark designs as “favorites.”

4. FiveSecondTest

The name seems to say it all. This site is easy to utilize, not to mention fun! Here, visitors have the opportunity to take a short “test” and glance at the design in question for five seconds. Once the clock runs out, the visitor lists everything she remembers from the design concept. This formula allows designers to identify the most eye-catching and outstanding elements of her concept — all in five minutes. Think of this as online survey software at your disposal!

5. ProofHQ

This site offers free accounts, but with limited design projects, as well as storage. The free accounts afford users five projects per month and 500 MB of storage. However, there are also other available plans; the most inexpensive one starting at $17 per month. This site boasts an interface that’s easy to use, as it allows users to upload a design concept and share it with colleagues and clients.

6. ConceptShare

ConceptShare is similar to ProofHQ in the way it works. However, this site is best used for sharing flash files and videos. Free accounts are available with a limited project scope and storage capacity, while the most inexpensive plan costs $24 per month.

7. GetSignOff

GetSignOff offers users a way to get client approval on designs easily. This site is invaluable because designers can use it to avoid e-mailing a bunch of proofs back and forth to clients. While free accounts with unlimited projects are offered, these accounts limit users to one client and an upload limit of 10 MB. It’s important to note that GetSignOff does provide the maximum storage space per cost and can customize CSS, as well as integrate BaseCamp.

These tools allow web designers the chance to break out of a rut and gain valuable insight about concepts. With the help of these sites, you’ll be able to wow your clients with unique designs!

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Web Circle Client recognised on JoomlaHosting.com

Posted on August 2, 2010 by in Examples

Web Circle Client www.babystitch.com.au was recently mentioned on Joomlahosting.com in their post “10 Brilliant websites using Joomla and Virtuemart“). The post praises the website design and the use of the cart and larger product icons.

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Latest Website Designs

Posted on February 5, 2010 by in Website Design

Check out our latest web designs. We’ll update this regularly with new designs.

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User Friendly Website Navigation

Posted on October 22, 2008 by in Website Design

While the design of a website will attract the attention of visitors on arrive, they will be quickly turned away from a site with a poor navigation.

Designing a website navigation (or menu) is a challenging task a challenge which increases significantly the larger the site gets.

Why Am I Here?

The goal of the site menu is to enable visitors to find the information they are seeking as quickly as possible. So to design a good navigation you first need to ask yourself the question ‘what are visitors most interested in?’. This is the bit that is most overlooked in my view by a lot of businesses. Think of a physical store for example (as opposed to an online store). If you go to a website for a store there is a good chance that:

(a) you plan on visiting the store in person
(b) you are looking for either the contact details or the opening hours.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone going to the site but I regularly find myself in this position only to get to the site and find unclear contact details and no opening hours. This an error in website design and navigation and is annoying to customers.

This actually applies to a lot of businesses especially the contact details. All of the sites we build have a clear contact form that is easy to get to (in the header or footer and usually clearly available in the main navigation). The form provides clear information on the business and allows visitors to send a query through via a secure form. If you are a store why not consider adding a Google Map to your site, its free and very easy.

Forms is another common one. Why large organisations persist with downloadable forms that need to be signed and faxed back is beyond me but almost always they are hidden away somewhere in the navigation making it even more annoying for the customer. It would be simple to include a drop down list seamlessly integrated into the design of the homepage which provided a direct link to common forms. Or perhaps most users are coming to log into the site to access secure information – in that case make the login box easy to find.

Homepage

There are actually a lot of little pieces of information like contact details and forms that people come to websites for. Its important to have these in the navigation but you can also consider using the homepage for quicker links to these things. This can do 2 things:

(1) provide a very obvious, 1-click access to the particular information
(2) encourage the user to visit parts of the sites that they may not have otherwise visited.

Have a look at our website homepage at www.webcircle.com.au. If you have come to our site for any of the following reasons you are only 1 obviously click away from the information:

  • For our contact details (contact in the header and footer)
  • To read one of our articles (article list on left)
  • To subscribe or view our web design newsletter (industry newsletter section)
  • To view our latest news or our blog
  • If you are considering choosing a web provider (why choose us)
  • To demo our Content Management System.
  • To learn more about any of our main web design products and services.

Of course there may be other reasons why people are visiting our site but this would cover a large bulk of them. For the rest there is the menu system.

Menu System

Ok so we have designed our homepage so that 90% of visitors will be able to get the information they need within 1 easy and obvious click. Then all we have left are the people who want something other than those common things and the people who don’t know what they are looking for!

For this we have the website menu system.

There are a whole range of options for setting up a menu system on your site. We’ve seen some corkers! You can get very fancy with Flash! At the end of the day though making it harder for people to get the information they seek is just going to turn customers away.

The main site navigation should be based around something logical. For example you might have your main services listed across the top or down the side. Be sure to put home on the far left as that is what people are expecting. Also if you have your logo in the top left, make that linkable to your homepage also. Usually details about the business would go towards the end of the menu rather than the start.

For most small business sites a single menu is sufficient however for larger sites you might need sub-sections within sections. For situations like this, I like to use drop down menus. The reason for this is that they don’t require any additional clicking. So if someone wants to go to a sub-section within Web Design for example they can just mouse over web design and click on the section straight away. It effectively means that everything in the site is 1 click away.

A final word

There are a few other things worth considering in relation to navigation. The first one is a sitemap. They shouldn’t be used to replace an otherwise poorly structured navigation buts it’s a good way to list everything on the site and also good for search engines. If you use a CMS-driven site look at setting a dynamic sitemap up that automatically updates itself when the site changes.

Breadcrumbs are another option which we employ from time to time on bigger sites. Breadcrumbs usually run across the top of the site below the menu and track the visitors progress on the site. For example Home >> Web Design >> eCommerce Websites. They are no substitute for a logical navigation but they can be a good visual indicator to visitors of where they are at within the site and provide a quick way to get back as an alternative to the browser’s back button.

Looking for some inspiration? Try looking at some of the bigger sites on the net:

Google.com – Very clear, uncluttered and it is very obvious how to do what you came to do (search).

Adobe.com – One of the biggest sites on the net but its pretty clear where you have to go to get information. Note the use of the drop down menus.

Realestate.com.au – A very clear map on the homepage no doubt covering the 90& of users who have come to search for property – clear links for everything else.

Written by Dan Norris, Director of Gold Coast Web Design agency Web Circle on 22 October 2008.

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Characteristics of a bad website

Posted on May 6, 2008 by in Getting started, Website Design

If you are interested in having a visitor return to your site and ultimately make contact with you regarding your services, you need a well planned, logically structured and professionally designed website.

While we aren’t all web design experts, most people can look at a site and make a decision on whether the site meets this criteria and therefore reflects a professional company.

The indicators below are indicators of a poor website. If your website has these features, contact us today, you might be losing valuable business!

Excessive use of Frames

Some indicators of a site that uses frames are multiple scrollbars on the screen and parts of the site not refreshing when you navigate to a
new page (although this could be other things). In early web design frames were very popular however these days websites using frames are the minority and are generally avoided in modern web design. In general they should be avoided – they look unprofessional and they are not friendly for the search engines.

Colour Scheme

Colour plays an important factor in the design of any marketing material including websites. Colouring on your website needs to be pleasing to the eye of the visitor, not plastered with your favourite colour combination which just happens to be your favourite footy teams colours!

Bad websites have some pages that stand out because they use random bright colours – like a rainbow throughout the site. They use fluorescent colours, which do nothing to keep a visitor navigating through their site. Or they have many different colours. Dark backgrounds are also popular in badly designed websites. Colours should reflect the business branding and should be limited to only a few. If the business branding colours are not chosen well this will reflect poorly on the website. In some instances we will recommend to client that they speak with a branding consultant about a new company image before engaging us to build them a website.

Fonts

Bad websites often have poor choice of font typeface as well as sizing. They might have a number of fonts being used and varying sizes. Or they might have serif fonts such as Times New Roman which are suitable for print material but unsuitable for the web. Bad sites might overuse capitals (which are often seen as shouting). Or they might Use Sentence Case Inappropriately.Some will have oversized fonts or fonts that are too small. Making the font size too small will make it harder for some people to read the text, so the font size you use must be a balance between large and
small.

Consistency is they key in a good website layout. There are a number of fonts that are classed as standard for use in websites, Verdana is one of them.

Disorganised

Some websites you visit do nothing to promote what it is they are trying to sell or what advice they want to give. Visitors should be able to tell by reading the content on your home page what the site’s purpose is.

Out of Date Updates

This one is really easy to spot. The news item on the home page is advertising a Christmas special and its Easter time! If website owners can’t take the time to use their website as a current advertising tool, what is the point of making contact with them. Good websites have accurate information and calendars. They take the time to update their content on a regular basis to ensure visitors return.

Slow to Load

Some websites think you need to have the latest and greatest in technology displayed on their website to attract visitors. They might have their favourite AC/DC song blaring in the background as you wait for the remainder of their site to load. They might have images which haven’t been optimised taking 10x longer to download than necessary. Whilst multimedia content has its place within website design, bad websites often go overboard with their use of it.

Excessive Popup Windows

Most browsers now come with tools to block popup windows. Bad websites often put important messages within a popup – for those who use these add on tools they are missing out on the information. Put your important messages in a central place on your website.

Obviously these are general comments however they are all pretty good indicators of a poor website and things that will turn astute visitors and potential customers off your site immediately. If your site suffers from these things, contact us today and we will show you how you can improve it or re-develop it into something that impresses potential clients and encourages them to make contact.


Written by Dan Norris, Director of Gold Coast Web Design agency Web Circle on 6 May 2008.

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