Whats missing? Suggestions / advice for new company website design

Major_Disaster · 7 Jun 2010 at 14:49

EDIT: Website is down. Appologies.

Hello all,

I would really appreciate some help with a website im designing from a purely visitors perspective. Thats rather unclear... Have a look at the site here (you may remember me asking for advice earlier here - i hope its improved since then!)

Well, as you can see there is an area of white space right of the paragraph of text and im not sure what to put there! I oringally planned on using some sort of jQuery tabs - maybe to move the clients there, maybe have a news section, maybe a product search? But im not too sure.

So, im asking as a vistitor - what would be most useful for you as a potential client? What would you like to see? What do you think would look / be best?

Thanks for any help (and sorry for the slow US webhosting!)

GravyMonster · 7 Jun 2010 at 15:04

I can't actually get to the site - I get 'Website is taking too long to respond'

Major_Disaster · 7 Jun 2010 at 15:18

Sorry im on live chat now trying to get to the bottom of it. Bottom line, dont use JustHost (although its just for dev work and the main site is hosted perfetly on Vidahost)

Major_Disaster · 7 Jun 2010 at 15:59

All appears to be working. Sorry for that!

Tripnologist · 7 Jun 2010 at 16:21

Unable to connect
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at beta.ryanballard.co.uk.

... or not.

gord · 7 Jun 2010 at 17:04

I'm on it:

Logo has gone walkies.
Search should be in the top right, above the nav.
A background gradient would make your site look awesome, rep it across the site, still white body bg, but go light gray to white below the nav.. blend the link tabs into that and go from dark grey to light grey upwards for the header!
The images in the rotator don't have a title or anything, so if they are designed to entice me to click through.. you could save the images with titles on?

That big white gap.. maybe a news or social media interface? If appropriate! Don't just throw anything at that space to fill it, make the text 100% width if you can't think of anything.

Hope that helps.

Major_Disaster · 8 Jun 2010 at 09:47

Well appologies for all that hassle yesterday. All should be up and just about running.

Thanks for the comments gord. I should have mentioned in my OP the site is still in progess and i have left space for a logo (top left) and a site search bar (top right)

Thanks for the tips. Ill give it ago, but i struggle creating gradients. Any tips on actually making the images?

Ok, so you think some large title, at the top of the images with the captions at the bottom would be better?

Thats the problem im not too sure how appropiate any social media would be. Definatelty no twitter, maybe a news update. But im worried it wont be regularly updated and i think it looks rubbish when you go on a site that has their last news entry from 2006. Hmmm...

fez · 8 Jun 2010 at 10:40

Yeah, I think it looks nice. One thing I would change is the speed of the 'scroller' at the top. Seems rather fast

gord · 8 Jun 2010 at 11:10

Major_Disaster said:
Thanks for the tips. Ill give it ago, but i struggle creating gradients. Any tips on actually making the images?

Screenshot your page. Paste it into PS. Make a new layer and select the areas you want the gradient to affect. Make the gradients and admire your work, or rework it. Save out the gradients as 1 pixel width bars. With your current markup, youd be best applying a repeating image background to the body for the white area (your image will have to include the header height or you'll need to set the background position so the header doesnt cover it), a nice light grey to white. Then apply a nice dark grey to light grey grad upwards to the header.

Major_Disaster said:
Ok, so you think some large title, at the top of the images with the captions at the bottom would be better?

I don't think with the slider you are using you can have html on each slide aside from the caption. Best is to use H tags etc over the image, but failing that, put titles on the images from a usability perspective.

Major_Disaster said:
Thats the problem im not too sure how appropiate any social media would be. Definatelty no twitter, maybe a news update. But im worried it wont be regularly updated and i think it looks rubbish when you go on a site that has their last news entry from 2006. Hmmm...

Indeed, but a regularly updated news section is always beneficial. Google likes it, visitors like to see activity... it's your call on whether you can keep it going. Simple business wins/activity/community events are good, but don't be tempted to include "John's just had a new baby" when news is slim.