Renovating Website - Opinions

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jen4950

[H]F Junkie
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Hello all-

I'm in the process of starting a major overhaul on a clients website, the majority of it will be on the backend- but they want to see a fresh look first to go with their new logo- (fill in the blanks later..)

So here is the old site:

http://www.vehicleacceptance.com/index.htm

New Site:

http://www.vehicleacceptance.com/index_beta.htm

I haven't even begun to dig into the other sheets, I'm just working on my graphic template right now- They really like the old layout and content, so this is mainly for catching up with the new logo. After I get the graphics and static HTML site fixed up we will dive into the active and protected content / portal.

So is that a decent improvement? What would you recommend?
 
I like the color scheme on the old one better. Also, the text links at the top are too small for me in Firefox and Safari.
 
CEpeep said:
I like the color scheme on the old one better. Also, the text links at the top are too small for me in Firefox and Safari.
Click to expand...

They are tired of the old colors (uh- all of them)- and are going for a simple look- Black and white is it except for highlights etc. Keep in mind- this is not Ebay; it's a Sub-Prime finance company. People are coming here for information, not exploration- and most likely it is a customer with a late payment, so they aren't neccessarily interested in making it a cute happy place- they want "So easy a caveman can use it" and multiple stupid-obvious ways for customers to make payments online.

I'll work on the font size- I might take out a link up there to make it work; I was trying to keep it from getting too wide; most of their clients are still on 640x480 CRT's.
 
I also like the old colors. Making the website black and white made it look flat and dull. You could try reworking the shape and look of the website without really changing the layout of the information too much.

I would try and clean up the new logo and try to reduce the jaggies to make it look more smooth.

You could also redesign the menu. It doesn't really make sense to have information about each link pop up below the entire menu. Someone with a smaller browser window might not even see it.
 
JohnleMVP said:
I also like the old colors. Making the website black and white made it look flat and dull. You could try reworking the shape and look of the website without really changing the layout of the information too much.

I would try and clean up the new logo and try to reduce the jaggies to make it look more smooth.

You could also redesign the menu. It doesn't really make sense to have information about each link pop up below the entire menu. Someone with a smaller browser window might not even see it.
Click to expand...

QFT
 
I think you should stick with the old color scheme, a lot more pleasing to the eye...

How about instead of reworking the old design, you come up with a new one? I think a horizontal nav bar would work alot better in this site -- I do like the upper horizontal nav bar, perhaps place another one below "A leader in .... "?

I don't know, its probably my web design junkie talking... but if your getting paid to redesign the website u should probably, ya know, redesign it... or at the least, smooth out all those edges
 
Unlike everyone else I prefer the newer scheme. I've been told that I have very dull taste. :rolleyes:

Avoid grey and white text on a grey background. You also have white text on a white background. You should fix that.
 
Jonz said:
I think you should stick with the old color scheme, a lot more pleasing to the eye...

How about instead of reworking the old design, you come up with a new one? I think a horizontal nav bar would work alot better in this site -- I do like the upper horizontal nav bar, perhaps place another one below "A leader in .... "?

I don't know, its probably my web design junkie talking... but if your getting paid to redesign the website u should probably, ya know, redesign it... or at the least, smooth out all those edges
Click to expand...

Uh, who said I was getting paid? ;) It's more of a favor..

Thanks all for the advice- I'll be working on it more tonight.
 
r-486 said:
You also have white text on a white background. You should fix that.
Click to expand...
That's a big no-no with the search engines. Hidden text like that is seen as spamming and they will penalize you for it.
 
First off, let me apologize for sounding harsh.

It doesn't do anything for me. Aside from moving to greyscale, there is very little difference between the two sites. There are frustrating usability problems with the old version that simply got transferred to the new version.

There are simply too many things wrong with the current design, both from a usability and aesthetic perspective. It looks dated, its dull, and its just not very appealing. I think you need to completely scrap the current design and start over from scratch.

First off, why not use the front page to describe the company and summarize the services they offer, instead of repeating the links on the left navigation side? I have absolutely no idea what the company does or why I should be there.

Why do I have to hover over a link to see any content? Also the fact that some content appears when I hover over a link is misleading, as I thought that's all there was, it took a while before I noticed that I could also click on the links to go to another page.

The choice of fonts is also all wrong; some are too small, others too big - e.g. why is the content font bigger that the heading font? I almost didn't even notice the tiny text at the very top of the page.

The logo is severely aliased and looks really amateur.

There is nothing in the design that draws my attention to any particular areas of the page, so as a user I cannot scan for anything that I may be particularly interested in.
 
Simply hit "Ctrl+A" to highlight all text. That's how you read wretched myspace pages.
 
I like the new design. It just needs a little work.

Here are the changes I would make to your new design:

1. First of all, add some more color or some kind of element to the page to give it more texture.

2. On the main content with the rollovers. The content that appears, maybe have some content that shows up when nothing is rolled over and have some kind of box behind it so its easier to read.

3. Text on the top is too small.

4. Try adding some icons on the page. Like, instead of the text HOME (right by NAVIGATION) try a nice looking icon of a house.

5. Also if you know flash you could try making the logo on the top left in flash with a short animation just to add some kind of excitement to the page.

Here are some changes related to SEO.

1. In the title, you want to add a small description of the site with some basic keywords you want to be listed under. Try something like this:
" Vehicle Acceptance Corporation. Cash Advance and Servicing of Buy-Here-Pay-Here Contracts"

2. Also, there are some CSS and Javascript elements that could be linked from an external file. I would do that so that when google crawls your page it doesn't get confused with extra content and codes.
 
maw said:
First off, let me apologize for sounding harsh.

....
Click to expand...

A little harsh, yes :D That's okay- I think we are making progress in the grand scheme of things- let's step back and look at a couple previous versions:

Circa 1999

Circa 2001

Circa 2003

The site has been notably more amateurish in the past ;) :D Also- that's the logo, don't tell my Mom it looks amateurish.. Everyone really likes it on the letterhead, I'll work on making it look better on the site. The old logo really went crappy after you photocopy or fax it once or twice- this one works really well with that stuff.
 
Lethal said:
That's a big no-no with the search engines. Hidden text like that is seen as spamming and they will penalize you for it.
Click to expand...

Do engines really compare the bgcolor values to the text color values .... do they go so far as to parse out whether or not that section of the page has a same nested bgcolor as the text? Why wouldnt they just check the meta tags for spam?

I run a lot of pages that have multiple tables or query strings to load a page in a content area, but often times I will leave the left hand side background color the same color as the font on the left side for the owners to see website hits or something alike that isnt informative to the end user. You could also easily change a font color from something like #112233 (say thats the bgcolor) to #112234 and youd never see a difference and surely a search engine isnt that tedious. I didn't even know they parsed the bgcolor attribute to begin with ..... isn't this a bit tedious for search engines?

I still get shabby pages when searching and I know they don't go that far to hide spam. A lot of pages have every driver known to man for a chipset listed on a single page with a contrasting color and they don't get flagged.
 
A lot of suggestions here will never leave you fulfilled most likely. Its more common for someone to point out what they dont like as opposed to what they do like. I agree with most people here on certain aspects (dated, colors are dull, there's an unnecessary use of flash, etc)

So you have to think ..... if you have what the company WANTS and you can not change that, please specify what CAN be changed, no matter the recommendations, if they don't want a change in that area your stuck with getting a crappy post opinion. When a company limits what you can do it can be very frustrating ... I have turned down jobs because I didn't want my name on a horrid looking site before. The only option you have if they are dead set on stuff is rearranging/resizing some of the stuff.

Things I'd objectively change:
spacing between links/sections of links on the left
the number of colors makes it look old .... red current links on the left, black on yellow hovered links on the left, black to blue coloring on the middle content links, and only a bgcolor change on the top links .... very inconsistent.


It looks like they want the same page or else the abilities are limited to editing code only and not redoing the page completely. If they arent willing to actually change the look, perhaps they don't need to change yet. I hate when places do this. They want an 'upgrade' only to find out they want some colors different. I steer away from that stuff.
 
MadJuggla9 said:
Do engines really compare the bgcolor values to the text color values .... do they go so far as to parse out whether or not that section of the page has a same nested bgcolor as the text? Why wouldnt they just check the meta tags for spam?
Click to expand...
From Google's Webmaster Help Center:

Hidden text and links

Hiding text or links in your content can cause your site to be perceived as untrustworthy since it presents information to search engines differently than to visitors. Text (such as excessive keywords) can be hidden in several ways, including:

- Using white text on a white background
- Including text behind an image
- Using CSS to hide text
- Setting the font size to 0

Hidden links are links that are intended to be crawled by Googlebot, but are unreadable to humans because:

- The link consists of hidden text (for example, the text color and background color are identical).
- CSS has been used to make tiny hyperlinks, as little as one pixel high.
- The link is hidden in a small character - for example, a hyphen in the middle of a paragraph.

If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages. When evaluating your site to see if it includes hidden text or links, look for anything that's not easily viewable by visitors of your site. Are any text or links there solely for search engines rather than visitors?
Click to expand...
 
Lethal said:
From Google's Webmaster Help Center:
Click to expand...

I agree, and a blatantly obvious attempt like white on white on static pages will flag a trigger. I don't think the AI would go so far as to parse the webpage down to the nitty gritty for applications such as different colored 'content areas' whether they be tables or divs. Using hex and offsetting it should fool a SE also.

I 100% agree. I'm just saying those seem fairly simplistic ways to fool it. Works for me, but I don't intend on using webpages for spamming :D

/edit - good information for anyone though
 
jen4950 said:
A little harsh, yes :D That's okay- I think we are making progress in the grand scheme of things- let's step back and look at a couple previous versions:

Circa 1999

Circa 2001

Circa 2003

The site has been notably more amateurish in the past ;) :D Also- that's the logo, don't tell my Mom it looks amateurish.. Everyone really likes it on the letterhead, I'll work on making it look better on the site. The old logo really went crappy after you photocopy or fax it once or twice- this one works really well with that stuff.
Click to expand...

I think they had the right idea back in 1999 before they got swept up in their rollover orgy.

At least the front page from 1999 told me about the company and what is they do. The nav links took me to pages with actual information in them instead of even more links. and the color scheme wasn't too bad. Sure, some of the info on the front page needs to go into their own pages, the java applet links and awful logo needs to go, but the basic idea is more sound than what they currently have.
 
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