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Guidance on redesign


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Sorry this involved a bit of a 'History of me' to set the scene.

If you want to skip the blurb then its old http://www.yourloclacomputerguy.co.uk/ vs new http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/'>http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/

As some of you may know I was made redundant in July last year, and rather than seek further employment I decided to start something up myself using my redundancy money.

I aimed for a small gap in the market in my area for a low priced mobile computer engineer serving primarily domestic customers. and I created this website http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/ using some graphics 'borrowed' from my Vistaprint business card design.

The original point of the site was to hold domestic customers attention, and present all of the information required in a simple way. Many of my customers say that they chose me based on the fact that my website was very simple and to the point, other ones were overkill and didnt present the information clearly.

The website isnt very pretty, or even professional looking, other than the concept not a lot of time was put into it. However it has worked very well and I dont want to stop this. hence I havent bothered to re do it so far.

Over the last 9 Months my business has grown, I have many regular customers and often get reccomendations. I have got saturated with work to a point where I have been able to increased my prices twice now and have hired a part time employee.

Along the way I have picked up 5 Small local business's who now rely on me for all of their IT needs, the last one I have a full support contract with, the first 4 are just invoiced as per work carried out. I got these through contacts and recommendations from doing domestic work.

I want to redesign my website so that I keep my domestic work but I can start to tip the balance a bit more towards the commercial work, mostly because it makes more money for less hastle, and its the only way I can see my business growing further. I want to slowly change my business to the point where I have more than 50% commercial work including some more decent support contracts, only after then will I rebrand, go limited and VAT registered with a whole new name and brand more oriented at business customers.

This is the interim, where I hope to be able to entise business customers without scaring off the domestic ones all under the existing brand, so a website redesign is needed.

Here is the first draught http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/'>http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/ It has no content yet, this will be lifted from the existing site, extended and rewritten in once I am happy with the design. I also want the blog to be integrated into the site without over complicating things.

Does anyone have any comments about how the design fairs against my old one in terms of my requirements ?

I have the 2 sections (plus Blog) on the top tab menu, and 2 similar but different colour themes to seperate domestic and commercial targeted pages. Bear in mind I use landing pages with a clever script so people coming in from the search engines will hit the relevant page, so the colour theme shouldnt change unless a business customer strays to domestic pages or vice versa. But I want this to be obvious when they do it, hence it is highlighted by the colour change.

Thanks in advance.

/edit fixed typo's

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The menu doesn't stand out as much as the old one. Maybe you could add a background like the 'contact us' form below it or something. I think if the menu stands out a bit more people can find what their looking for faster.

Having said that, maybe the menu should be in the place of the tabs. You could have a button somewhere near the top or where the menu is currently, linking to the business page. Users aren't going to be switching that often (with the help of your script) so theres no real need for the tabs.

Basically, I think that the tabs distract from the menu, which is the more important for domestic customers.

If you haven't already, you should try and draw the layout on paper, play around with different positions for the tabs/menus .

Also, if you click on the tabs the active page isn't indicated until you click on the menu links.

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Thanks for that input Gally,

It makes alot of sense, I will change some things around and post back.

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Set your screen to 1900 x 1200 and you get a huge white chunk on the bottom of your screen due to a lack of background color.

Why is the leave a comment text box expandable? You can expand it well over your content. Just set it to auto overflow and it will scroll bar if needed.

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Set your screen to 1900 x 1200 and you get a huge white chunk on the bottom of your screen due to a lack of background color.

Why is the leave a comment text box expandable? You can expand it well over your content. Just set it to auto overflow and it will scroll bar if needed.

Thanks.

Which browser are you using out of interest? 1900x1200 (*2) is my normal resolution, I havent seen this background problem. I even zoomed the site out to 50% to try and see this but nothing.

I will get the text box on locked down, just getting to a point where Im happy with the design then will tidy it all up.

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Your text looks aliased, probably due to the use of Century Gothic but in a small size, it doesn't look right. I'd probably go for a slightly larger line height on the paragraphs too, just to make it easier on the eye and not like a wall of text.

Also, does the header background need to be that big with just the 2 lines. Users and a smaller screen might have to scroll a little to get to what you want to see.

Overall, good effort though! 7/10 ^_^

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http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/0.1/

I made the font 2px larger in the body, I'm not happy with that though, I am considering changing to veranda instead to be easier on the eye.

I swapped the navigation menu's around to test. Its not going to work though without squeazing it all up whcih will look bad. I think I may have to keep it the way I planned but box it off so that its more obvious to the user. Bear in mind the nav menu's for business and domestic wont be identical

So far I think 0.1 is a step backwards, but Im just experimenting with possible solutions to responces posted here, will play further.

/edit

Reworked it a little, put the vertical navigation in a border, fixed the current page being highlighted in the vertical navigation.

Reduced the header by 25px

Changed the main body text to veranda and made it slightly bigger. Increased its line spacing by 0.25.

Left all other fonts as Century Gothic, this works ok I think because they are spaced out.

Tweaked the contact box a little.

http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/0.2/

its not 100% but its getting there I think ?

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Is it possible to use ? from another font, saying in the html to ignore the style sheet just for 1 character?

because of course this font is missing the character.

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Is it possible to use ? from another font, saying in the html to ignore the style sheet just for 1 character?

because of course this font is missing the character.

It's nothing to do with your font, it's the character encoding. You should be using £ instead of the character anyway.

On the design, it looks more like a blog than a site that has services to offer to me.

I don't know what tool you're using for the markup and css, but it's an awful mess.

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It's nothing to do with your font, it's the character encoding. You should be using £ instead of the character anyway.

On the design, it looks more like a blog than a site that has services to offer to me.

I don't know what tool you're using for the markup and css, but it's an awful mess.

Thanks for the input, im not seasoned web developer as you can tell, I get by though. I have replaced the ? :-)

The reason for the layout is to expand the content whilst maintaining a very basic look and feel, and the result is yes, it is blog like.

What kind of layout or changes making it less blog like would you suggest based on the fact that my current site has been very succesfull so far, but I want to sub section it off for domestic and business clients.

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Menus looking much better.

I think it's been mentioned already but is there a reason for the header to be so big? I'm using my laptop (1280x800) atm and it's taking about a third of the vertical height. It's pushing the rest of the content down even though the text could fit on a header half the size.

Another thing is the text in the header, you should replace it with your logo or that font you use on the old site & the car in your old contact page, just to keep it consistent.

It might be worth considering using a picture too, something to make it feel more 'real' (eg company car), although theres no point putting in a picture if its not relevant, stock photography would more than likely look generic and irrelevant.

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In the Nav menu, change the font, it's not professional.

Have a company logo and use it as your favicon.

Change the background colour to something grey-ish.

For the tabs at the top, don't use a black background, use the same background as the title.

The title panel is far too big. It is massive, make it smaller.

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Menus looking much better.

I think it's been mentioned already but is there a reason for the header to be so big? I'm using my laptop (1280x800) atm and it's taking about a third of the vertical height. It's pushing the rest of the content down even though the text could fit on a header half the size.

Another thing is the text in the header, you should replace it with your logo or that font you use on the old site & the car in your old contact page, just to keep it consistent.

It might be worth considering using a picture too, something to make it feel more 'real' (eg company car), although theres no point putting in a picture if its not relevant, stock photography would more than likely look generic and irrelevant.

When you say use a picture, do you mean in the header ? or just where I have the stock picture at the moment in the content?

The reason I changed to a web font from Bank Gothic is to avoid using a graphic for the header (SEO reasons) But I was tempted to just go witht he graphic to keep it

I reduced the height of the header by 25px, but it is still big (im on 24" monitors here so it looks nice, but I can see where you are coming from when I shrink the browser down to your resoltuion) Its now at 200px, what height would you suggest ? 150px ? Less ?

/edit

Egyptian duck, you dont like the menu font ? So would you say just use Verranda ?

I need to get a company logo designed, Will do at some point

Tabs using the title pannel for the background could be beyond me and get a bit messy (they size to the titleof the tab), I will give it a try.

Agread on the title pannel beign too large as above.

thanks everyone for your input its appreciated.

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I mean the header but it might fit in better in the content.

I'd say something between 125px and 150px, try 130px? I know what you mean, I've a 24" too, but most of your customers probably wont.

As for the font, you could use sIFR to change the font but I've never used it myself so I'm not sure how well it works. I think the most important thing is that its consistent with your business cards, company cars etc., a logo would definitely help.

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http://www.yourlocalcomputerguy.co.uk/redesign/

Havent had much time to play latley I have been very busy working, but its a bit quiete this week so I am going to get it finished and live for next month.

0.3 - Used sIFR to maintain the font, reduced the header a little more. Moved the pages to the same directory using different CSS and image folders, rather than 2 sets of everything.

Took a couple of relevant photo's, I will take and add more whilst working. Shame im an ugly bugger or I would put my mug on there!

Next stage = port over the content and re write it , write content for the business pages, perhaps a few more pictures scattered about.

I messed with differnt fonts for the navigation but couldnt find any that I thought suited the design quite as well as the ones I am using. Is it only egyption duck thinks that is too unprofessional, or do others think this as well?

I am still small, I dont want to appear corporate or anything, that kind of look can come when I rebrand in the future. I'm liking what I have now for a balance of SME friendly and domestic consumer friendly.

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