Outfitter site designed for Marketing

I have been working on this revamp see:

http://www.wabakimi.com/

To replace Wildwaters old site

http://www.wabakimi.com/indexold.htm

Too much of their traffic seems to be leaving after only one view of the site.

I think this page is still missing something in term of visual apeal. Meybe a better/stronger header

Any comments would be appreciated

<Mod edit to comply with Site Review Rule #1 - Masterpeace>

The old site pushes the outside edge of load time, but it is in that gray area of "might be too slow loading." The new site seems about the same, maybe taking a bit longer -- a problem from a marketing standpoint.

The site is not lacking in graphics. What is missing is visual flow and theme. Add a tagline explaining what the site purpose "Your Canoe and Kayak Solution" is something. In marketing terms, it's a weak tagline.

It seems, at this is just a guess because it's not apparent from the site layout at all, you tried for the "canoe lifestyle digizine" approach. The site misses the mark. Check out Sea Kayaking Adventures site layout. The photography leave something to be desired and could be a bit smaller, but gives some idea. And it seems to load ever so much faster.

What do you think??

posted temporarily at: http://www.thunderbayseniors.com/

Question, Do you feel the urge to click into the site? Better yet to call for details.

Have I connected with you the reader? Do you see yourself in any of the photo's the roles on the main page?

All comments welcome

I can see why you wanted to change the home page after checking out the link you sent to the old one... I must have looked at it after you uploaded the new one.

Their old "index" page was a splash screen, but it was pretty big in terms of photos etc so it would have been slow as a wet weekend. To have to wait that long to find you have to click something else to get any content would have been a key in losing visitors at the home page. You can get away with bigish photos etc at times as long as you also have some content to read while the images load...

I wonder if the old internal pages of the site may have looked to "professional". If something looks too boutique then people will think it is expensive and may click away from fear of not being able to afford it. What it really needs IMO is a look and feel that says "here is somewhere I can go to relax and have fun!"

On the font style, the graphic designer was right in so much as Times (or Times New Roman) is proven to be the easiest font to read... in print... On the web, verdana has been proven to be the easiest to read. In print you get 300dpi meaning you can print clearer outlines and complext shapes. In web work you final output is for a computer screen which shows 72dpi in square pixels and the "fiddly bits" (don't you love my technical language!) don't translate well into the square pixel format so Verdana wins hands down in terms of readability and tidyness for web work.

Re Navigation... Navigation is a key I think. People need to be able to find their was around easy. Don't make them think becasue they expect you to make it easy for them... A key IMO to a good website is clear navigation with easily understandable headings. Before I re-did the Pemberton site they had a page called "Our Natural Advantage"... That gave no indication about the real content of the page and so it rarely got viewed. The page was about what made Pemberton special, & different and I changed the title to the "The Pemberton Experience" and it at least hinted that it was about what you could do and enjoy at Pemberton.