I wanted to point you in the direction of the new Almerimar Life site, and say a big thanks to Tom who as usual has come up with a great design and has worked really hard on setting everythinbg up with me.
The Forum still needs a bit of work doing on the theme and content, but everything is pretty much as it should be – unless you find something that isn’t working of course!!!
No offense Chris, but I kinda like the old site better… I guess this one looks a little formal, and honestly, more than a bit confusing. I’m not really sure by looking at it what it is supposed to convey. I liked seeing all the pictures and views of Almerimar, and the “life” of it, and I guess I don’t see that by just looking at the index page. (I know you can see them in a “pictures” gallery, but that’s not really reaching out at you, I guess.
I like the pop-downs of the menus, however, when you pop-down to see, I don’t know, say Cafés, you are left looking at a white page with a couple café notes. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Congrats on doing it, though! It’s not like I can say a whole lot when you look at the Chester site! 🙂
It’s all good, though. Been a bit quiet lately!
Slightly worrying that it looks more confusing as that was exactly what I was trying to avoid. The old site had a lot of information on the front page that wasn’t getting used but had nowhere else really to go.
The pictures will return as and when we post new articles with pictures in. At the moment the posts that are shwoing don’t have any pictures – hopefully that will make it look more attractive.
It sort of needs to be a little more formal as we are spending a lot more time on it, and it needs to come over as professional regards the ways we want to attract revenue out of it.
The Cafe page is just a listing, so the more we add the more detail you will see. Look at the restaurant page to see a fuller page.
Afraid this site has been quite, have been really busy and all of a sudden I have got behind with some reviews and articles. Will remedy that this week though 🙂
I’ll be horribly honest here. The new site is horrible!! Confusing, the color scheme has everything looking the same, the twitter posts are the same as the menu… biggest thing, it does not fit in 1024 pixels, on my little powerbook. Unless it’s just me. I like the fact that the Banner is thinner, which is good…. but the rest…. Sorry Chris, in my mind it’s messed up.
Poor sight 🙁
Wanted to keep the color scheme the same as the logo. Did think of alternating the color of the boxes around the text as Yellow then Red so will take another lok at that. Twitter text can be any color but most others made it stand out too much, maybe make it red as well?
I see what you mean about the 1024 – is a real pain designing for something that small given the screens that are around these days!!! It looks great on the Mac Book though 🙂
Anything else that you find confusing?
Uhmmm, hate to add to this one but not a fan I’m afraid – sorry Chris & Tom. It looks too sparse and ‘basic’/’old fashioned with the boxes everywhere. Plus not so keen on the use of the colours. Hope you don’t mind the honest feedback.
No problem.
What seems to be happening is that the people that use the site are emailing that they like simplicity and that the information is easy to find and read. They tend not to be very technical or ‘into’ blogs etc.
Comments on this site seem to focus more on the design aspect, and from an advanced user perspective.
You see I wanted it sparse with clearly defined areas, so people could understand it better.
I wasn’t designing it as a personal blog, or for the blogging community. It is an information portal more than anything else.
Colours are subjective. I am not the biggest fan, but we have the logo already so the colours that work with that are somewhat limited.
Appreciate the comments, keep them coming. The more I look at the site the more I see that it works for what it was intended for, but I can see the reasons for all the comments here!
[quote comment=”24185″]What seems to be happening is that the people that use the site are emailing that they like simplicity and that the information is easy to find and read. They tend not to be very technical or ‘into’ blogs etc.
[/quote]
Good to hear. At the end of the day the design should be about the end user. If it is working for your target audience and feedback is good then you’ve done the job well.
Interesting how the 2 users sets differ in their view.
the only technical issue is the width settings – scrolling across leaves the banner finishing in mid page. How is the width controlled – ems or %?
Column widths are fixed, banners are pixels, so not much that can be done about that 🙁
Why everyone can’t just go out and buy ‘proper’ sized screens I don’t know!!! It looks awesome on the 23″ ACD’s 🙂
Just took a look at the source code of the homepage – looks like the layout is table based which could be causing the issues, it would be possible to recreate the design exactly but using css layout which would allow the site to be more ‘fluid’ with the smaller monitors.
That is worth taking a look at 🙂 Thanks for that!