no pictures, just about color

[juergen]

Greetings,

I am currently fighting hard to redesign my website. For the last one I needed weeks and I do not like the results at all.
This morning I created a basic site within 2 minutes while fighting the Xara tutorials for the x time [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] .
Before I pursue the current approach I would be glad for some input especially regarding the colors.

Old site is at Old Site
New site is at New Spring Look

Thank you for any feedback,
juergen

[juergen]

Greetings,

I am currently fighting hard to redesign my website. For the last one I needed weeks and I do not like the results at all.
This morning I created a basic site within 2 minutes while fighting the Xara tutorials for the x time [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] .
Before I pursue the current approach I would be glad for some input especially regarding the colors.

Old site is at Old Site
New site is at New Spring Look

Thank you for any feedback,
juergen

[gwpriester]

Nice bright and cheery colors Juergan.

The green is a bit too intense however for my taste.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[Egg Bramhill]

Re the 2 colours. I find it a bit to bland as it is. Why not give the left column a bevel and shadow to add to the contrast?

[Egg Bramhill]

try again

[Big Frank]

Hi Juergen

It's always difficult to assess the effectiveness of a design when it's not all there. You wouldn't ask for an opinion on a painting that's only half finished. It would be easier to form an opinion on a page that had a full navigation menu and content. It wouldn't be any more difficult to change the base colours afterwards, but would give you (and us!) a much clearer idea of how all the various elements of the page fit together. Some website colour schemes work well with busy, content-rich pages, where others work best with minimal content. It's difficult to tell which way you're going with your site...

Show us more!

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Big Frank was
http://www.wognum.org/files/madewithxarax.gif

[Wolfgang]

Jürgen,

you seem to be a fan of Mark Monciardini, however I like the color scheme.

But like Big Frank said, it will look entirely different, once it's filed with content.

btw, I like you 'old site' too ..

Wolfgang

[smorg]

It's a nice combo, but the fluorescent nature of the green makes the orange look dark; you might want to think about brightening up the orange or toning down the green.

Personally, I've always liked orange-green, in any combination. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[juergen]

Thanks to everybody who has answered.

Is must admit I dont know Marc Monciardini at all (will do some research though as I am pretty curious [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img])
The reason I started the new site was the color wheel from Jens I downloaded from the shareware zone. After turning the wheel a few times I saw some colors that looked appealing to me. As I was doing the Xara tutorials and had Xara open I started to play around using those colors.

After reading the suggestion from Big Frank I started to fill it with content. One of the questions was easy to answer. With these colors a text heavy site wouldnt de.

I am sitting here creating lots of icons to visualize the message of the page people are looking at. As I am a hardcore tekkie (not trekkie) I guess it will take some time to come up with something usable.

Something noteworthy for me, probably not for you: I analyzed what people at my current sites are looking at: my text descriptions at not looked at at all, the forums arent used at all, but the screenshots are examined closely.

On the web it seems to be the visual message that rules. On my old site, I tried to focus on text, not visual attractions. The logs show that I was wrong. People dont read, people look .... Text obviously has the purpose to give brief additional information, to clarify.

I apologize if I get away from pure Xara handling in this thread. The only excuse I have is that the only program I use is Xara for a few releases now [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Thanks again for the input,
juergen

[Big Frank]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> On the web it seems to be the visual message that rules. On my old site, I tried to focus on text, not visual attractions. The logs show that I was wrong. People dont read, people look .... Text obviously has the purpose to give brief additional information, to clarify. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If you are talking about the web in general, you have sorely over-simplified the issue, but specific sites obviously have specific appeal. However, as a general rule, content, not graphics, is king. People may not have read your content because of the way it was presented. On the web, users' attention span is very short. You therefore have to grab them with an appealing interface and clear, consistent navigation, but thereafter, it is your content that keeps them there. If you have what is termed 'sticky' content, i.e. content that is of value to your intended audience and content that is frequently updated, you will have almost guaranteed repeat traffic to your site. No site, however pretty, however flash, can generate such traffic without good content, unless that content is by its very nature graphical, e.g. artwork, photography etc.

Don't place too much emphasis on your log files in this instance unless they also tell you how many people left upon seeing your original index.html! Was your home page clear enough, did it say quickly an easily what they could expect to see and did it then lead them easily to that information?

"Websites should be a marriage between content, design and usability"* - get any part of that equation wrong and you could have a very lonely site. "It's not necesarrily about having a groovy site, but about leading people to the information they want quickly and effortlessly"*.

* I'd love to take credit for these phrases, but I have to admit they cam from this month's Internet World magazine.

Take another hard look at why your site didn't perform as well as you wanted it to and if you can, do some usability testing - you may discover things your log files alone cannot tell you.

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Big Frank was
http://www.wognum.org/files/madewithxarax.gif