A client came to me a while back and wanted me to critique his site, and possibly redesign it. One look at it, and I could immediately understand why. Here's a shot of the old version from Google's cache, as it's now been taken down.
Note the clunky user interface. The menu system is mass of all capital letters, center justified and three lines tall. What's more, content was buried 1,000 pixels below the fold on even today's sized HD monitors. And the gargantuan logo as well as the goofy animation in the upper right corner simply had to go.
It was simply too hard for potential clients to find the information they were looking for.
*****
Contrast this site with the smart design below developed by Macris Direct.
As you can see from the second picture, the site was completely redesigned, editing out the extraneous content, and dramatically simplifying and organizing the user interface. The animated gif was swapped out for an elegant flat image portraying his tagline against the same shot that was in the upper left of the old site. Again, we kept much of the same content, but with different organization and flow.
Now, instead of nearly a dozen confusing and unattractive text links for the client's questionnaires, we have a neatly organized CSS menu that drops down.
And within each sub section, there is a sub menu in the left column to easily navigate without having to access the main menu. Your current location in the submenu is shown in bold.
Conclusion: Like a suit of clothes, if your website is unkempt, or worse, smells really bad, what's that saying about your product or service? To see the site above, visit protectingcareers.com.
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