Redesign of an old site...

divicohen · #1 (**permalink**) 01-23-2008, 10:55 AM

Divine Moving and Storage NYC Movers Servicing New York City NY Brooklyn Manhattan NYC Moving Company
took us a few months to come up to this version... we are kind of lost... any review would help!
Thanks

Toni Anicic · #2 (**permalink**) 01-23-2008, 11:03 AM

First of all: logo. Logo in header looks really bad... it might be better if it was a transparent gif image instead of this white box...

Menu: it also looks bad... maybe adding some rollover or completely re-designing it... i don't know

There is no reason why "wellcome" and "quick note" would be images, it could speed up the page loading if it was plain text.

divicohen · #3 (**permalink**) 01-23-2008, 11:12 AM

Thanks! you are right about the welcome and quick quote... we did it as text on the other pages... I'll change that...
about the logo, again you are right on the money!
Thanks

davebarnes · #4 (**permalink**) 01-23-2008, 01:14 PM

The first thing that I would do is make the new design the real website. The old one is so much worse in comparison to this new look.

+ I really like the photo on the homepage.

- I clicked on online estimate and was taken to **http://68.178.227.140/qblb/divine/estimate.asp** . Bad. All of a sudden I am at some mysterious IP address. Why do you take me AWAY from the DM website?

divicohen · #5 (**permalink**) 01-23-2008, 02:43 PM

davebarnes, I agree the old site is way worse...
I hired a photographer to take some photos... most of them I rejected and I ended up using stuff I took with my sony cybershot...
about the estimate... I didn't think it matters since it's just a program, I guess I can ask the company that maintains that to host it on my server... (or shouldn't I ? )
Thanks Again!!!

**incrediblehelp** · #6 (**permalink**) 01-24-2008, 02:00 AM

FYI the domain is VERY slow right now:

Divine Moving and Storage NYC Movers Servicing New York City NY Brooklyn Manhattan NYC Moving Company

divicohen · #7 (**permalink**) 01-24-2008, 10:33 AM

Thanks the url is not the final base for the site... it is just a temporary one until we iron down everything and then it will end up on divinemoving.com

SisterSledge · #8 (**permalink**) 01-24-2008, 06:56 PM

Good suggestions by others...here's my thoughts on the content:

Home page content is too much text for most users to want to read through - add bullets, headings and highlights/bold to make skimming easier (this goes for many other pages on the site as well)

References page - the images are useless for a visitor to click...the text within the image is so small it's unreadable.

Storage page - currently all text is bold and footer nav links are blue on a blue background. Both of these aspects should be changed.

James Bull · #9 (**permalink**) 01-24-2008, 10:01 PM

Quote:

Home page content is too much text for most users to want to read through - add bullets, headings and highlights/bold to make skimming easier (this goes for many other pages on the site as well)

I second that. The content on other pages needs editing too. For example, the content under Location on your About Us page is a single-sentence paragraph of 69 words. That's enough to strain anyone's attention span in print, let alone on the web. Try breaking it up into sentences of about 20 words each at the most.

There's plenty of advice available free on the web about writing for the web. If your budget allows, engage a local web writer to work with you to understand your business and your market and improve the overall effectiveness of your site.

Have a chat to the developers about how the site is coded. Currently it's not passing W3C validation at The W3C Markup Validation Service . However, this might be a temporary issue due to the site being work in progress.

aidsntcg · #10 (**permalink**) 01-25-2008, 11:24 AM

"References" is misspelled in the menu at the top. I don't like the black and white photo on the Boxes page. The color ones are much nicer. Also, on the Storage page, the photos are not appearing.

Cindy

divicohen · #11 (**permalink**) 01-25-2008, 05:58 PM

Is W3C important? I did a check and even google's page failed the test...

Thanks for pointing out the spelling mistake.. and yes the storage page is still under construction...

James Bull · #12 (**permalink**) 01-28-2008, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Is W3C important? I did a check and even google's page failed the test...

That depends on your definition of important.

Having code that passes W3C doesn't generally seem to have any direct impact on search engine results. It is however possible that a coding error could prevent a search engine spider from correctly "reading" some content, in which case the results would be adversely affected.

W3C validation helps to ensure that a site will work more consistently across all browsers, so it helps with user experience and accessibility.

That said, it's true that there are millions of commercially successful websites that don't meet W3C validation.

For examples of discussion about W3C validation see this WebProWorld thread and Search Engine Journal.

James Bull · #13 (**permalink**) 01-28-2008, 09:05 PM

Quote:

For examples of discussion about W3C validation see this WebProWorld thread and Search Engine Journal.

Just found this current discussion about clean code here on WebProWorld.

divicohen · #14 (**permalink**) 08-18-2008, 01:41 PM

The Divine Movers site is no complete (more or less...)
any fresh insight would be great!

chowell · #15 (**permalink**) 08-19-2008, 06:42 PM

The overall appearance is not too bad, in fact the site has some appeal to it.

The logo looks a little out of place, but it's not a deal breaker. The tagline and contact info are placed well.

The main photo is probably too tall. For people on smaller browsers, they are not going to get the full experience (content, quote form, etc.).

The body text is lengthy and could use some bullet points or specific highlighting on special elements (benefits, values, years in service, etc.).

You're missing a call-to-action on the secondary pages. Consider adding a button or even some text links to point to a short quote form. And when I say quote form, I mean one the size of the short one on the homepage - not your Contact Us page and not the Free Estimate, which is still on another IP (Bad) - try an iFrame instead.

Hope these tips help.