I am helping create a site for a friend's neighbour starting a marketing consultany company. She's very nice and one of those people who go "Wow!" at any reasonably average website you throw at them. I suspect this is because of the excitement of having her "very own wesbite" so I don't really trust her opinion.

The site is located at http://nrmarketing.co.uk/newsite/. The logo in the top left is her logo - essentially non-negotiable so we have to design a site around the color scheme. This is the basic functional layout - but I've been trying different iterations all day and can't seem to make it more...exciting. It's just flat and lifeless. Wondering if you guys have any ideas to help me improve it?

I'd appreciate some design recommendations as well as any creative suggestions on changing the site design to fit in with her color scheme/logo. She also wants the site to convey professionalism while implying she is friendly and approachable (can we spell "oxymoron"?).

Anyway, thanks.
-Craig1709

I think it looks pretty good, just too square, like it would look better if you had rounded edges on boxes. I like how the nav does that moving thing when you scroll over it.

its looks great but yeah true its got too much of squares..
try making the left and right edges semi circles and place the square buttons along the edge of semi circle that'll look excellent i suppose!!
color combination is very good so it'll look great!!

Thanks for the responses - I agree that rounded corners would help. Hoever, they're being such an incredible pain in the neck it makes my head hurt. Thanks for the comments.

-Craig1709

Why not just make the tables a <div> That way you can just round them up in Photoshop or whatever. Just a suggestion.

Is she paying you for the site? If so take some time and make some graphics and CSS changes.

The way the sqaures pop out....I really really really don't like. Maybe give them an orange border 1 or 2px when you hover. I am sorry but the popping out thing is just wrong, it's awkward, maybe if the squares were all the same size, but it really isn't working. Or you could rotate them yellow orange yellow orange and outline them in grey when you hover

All of the text is too big and bold.

It needs a nice picture heading. Maybe of some work she has done, or just happy people, or even HER....something. Maybe you could make a bunch of yellow and orange squares, with variations of the two colors and transparancy that fade into grey or white.
Right now the eye has to strain to read the info way up at the top instead of seeing it in the middle of the page where they eye naturaly focuses.

You need gradients! The yellow bg of 'why NR marketing' make a gradient. Medium yellow to dard yellow. How much exp do you have, if you want I could show you some quick easy ways to do this in CSS with minimal effort in photoshop by making a 1px wide pic.

Your site really has potential. Notice this site: http://www.dfwmarketing.org/ see nice picture at the top, creative, SMALL TEXT! That site had good potential but lost it on the content. Your site will look 1000 times better than this one if you take some of my simple suggestions. Let me know if you need anything. You made a good start with the color scheme you were given

This post has been edited by supersssweety: 5 Sep, 2007 - 11:53 AM

I went to look at the site and it gives me page can not be displayed. Is it the main site?
http://nrmarketing.co.uk ?

This post has been edited by Warebear: 6 Sep, 2007 - 05:01 AM

I appreciate the suggestion. There are no tables. It's all valid HTML and CSS with no tables. The problem comes from the fact they're not all the same wretched size...getting the bottom corners is a pain.

As for your reply supersssweety, thankyou for the critique. I have been looking for a suitable image to please both myself and the site owner. She wants a sunrise/sunset. Again, the variable width of the central column makes implementing it difficult, unless it fades to white, which I think looks cheap. I like the squares idea though - I'll have a play in CS2.

I agree with the gradients and the menu. Getting a border on the menu was also difficult - probably because of the way I implemented the CSS. As for my exp. - I've only developed http://barrsengineering.co.uk and no I'm not being paid. She can't really afford to (well, that's a lie - what I mean is she needs be tight on her finances since she is starting a new company) and I'm glad to do it for the experience.

Warebear - the main site is nrmarketing.co.uk yes, the dev site is nrmarketing.co.uk/newsite/ but I have no idea why you couldn't view it. It should be working now, at any rate.

Thanks again to those who replied.
-Craig1709

I actually really like this.

Personally I'm into very minimalistic design and I don't know if this was accomplished by accident in your application but it definitely has a solid feel to it.

The website definitely needs more content and everything needs to be cleaned up but the layout overall is good, the colors look good too.

I'm going to go ahead and move this to the Site Check forum since you are looking for feedback concerning the website itself.

Tbh, i m not a very good web designer at the moment (probably cos im 13) and normally I do dirty, grunge looking sites - but I don't really like the colour scheme and the fonts - it seems too "frontpagy" you know as if it was created on that , try something like - not too squashed, i can help if you want as i really want to try and get into site making on a new level
I do quite like the design though ,x
Please pm me back if you want anything ????
bye

This post has been edited by josh06: 22 Oct, 2007 - 02:39 AM

Whack out your Photoshop or Fireworks application and get some linear backgrounds on the boxes on that site and she will go crazy for it.

Never be content with solid backgrounds, they can look professional done well, but if you're and average designer like myself, it can make all of the difference.