Another website updated

[kathiemt]

After chatting with a copywriter/marketing person earlier in the year, I was acutely aware of changes I needed to make to my site, which has been around since 1996. It's gone through lots of changes and I want to keep it fresh and up to date. This site has multiple users that can log in and create their own pages at a sub level so I'm not looking for feedback on sub pages.

The site is about Virtual Assistants and is meant to attract both Virtual Assistants to join our Network and also for clients to request for work to be done by Virtual Assistants. I also have training available and a couple of forums where VAs can mix and mingle with their peers. I think the new design makes that far more obvious from the home page.

The web address is http://www.vadirectory.net.

Thank you.

[Divert To Mobile]

Looks good Kathie I like it.

Steve

[Cathie]

Hi Kathie,

The site looks great. The only part that doesn't work for me is the logo on the top left. It's not particularly flash looking. When I viewed the website on my ipad, the logo left less room for the navigation bar, forcing it onto a second line.

I'd suggest moving the logo to the bottom of the page and moving the navigation bar across to the left.

The headings could possibly benefit from a slightly more personal tone. But I don't know much about your target market.

Cheers,
(another) Cathie

booksago-go.com.au

[tonyk]

I like it. Very clean and easy to read. Kudos.

[Blue Jet]

Lovely website I like it.

Maybe the logo, make the writing orange instead of white and get rid of the orange background.

Great website easy to navigate...

[kathiemt]

Thanks everyone. Cathie, I could resize the header space a bit so that the logo doesn't force the menu to shift. I've asked a graphic designer to redo it for me so it looks better.

When you say a more personal tone for the headers, what do you mean specifically? My target market are any business operator who is needing admin/virtual secretarial support of some nature. Most people know what a Virtual Assistant or VA is these days. I am targeting both clients who need VA support and VAs who need more clients. So I have a twin set client base really.

[Zava Design]

Are you wanting (and can handle) some honest, constructive feedback from a professional designer?

[Uncomplicating]

I like it for the most part, but as others have said, the logo top left is "not right".

If I was in hypercritical commercial software developer mode and critiquing work done for me, I'd say there are too many font variations. The main text in grey looks like verdana, while the menu on the right looks like arial and that the large font used for "A Virtual Assistant network...etc." looks rather "blocky", almost as though it's not a true type font.

VA support page has 2 login boxes in different fonts.

The use of capital letters on the home page is conconsistent.

Using chrome there's a drawing bug in the clock on the right hand side so blue blocks appear.

The top menu structure seems a little odd. Personal preference is for drop menus to show options rather than being clickable themselves.

Mouse over on a menu item turns it white if that's the active page. E.g. Click on "About", then mouse over the menu items under About.

That all sounds terrible, but it's really only minor stuff that pedantic software people like me notice. I rather like it actually.

[kathiemt]

Thanks Stuart. I purchased a theme and have been modifying it, but haven't changed the fonts in the css at all. Perhaps I should look at that. I don't have chrome so haven't seen it in that, perhaps I need to get it. I do have IE and Firefox and have viewed it in both. Trying to find a widget I could use for the clock was a challenge as there didn't seem to be any out there that really did what I wanted and unfortunately, I'm neither a programmer nor a graphic designer.

From what I can see the theme was created with two fonts but my banner at the top doesn't really help with that. I must hurry the graphic designer who was going to create a new one for me.

Thanks for picking up on the capitlisation. Will fix that.

I think all the drop menus in the Genesis software operate that way. My husband was showing me the other day how a newspaper one works and said he thought how mine is set up is strange but I've seen so many sites like that I hadn't really thought about it.

At any rate, I'm keen to pick up the annoying things or things that don't gell so that the majority of visitors will see it as a site that is pleasing to view and easy to navigate.

[kathiemt]

Originally Posted by Zava Design

Are you wanting (and can handle) some honest, constructive feedback from a professional designer?

That depends - if you see my response to Stewart and your constructive feedback takes into consideration what I've done, then yes, I'm happy to hear it.