Design ain't my bag

fisicx

Active Member
I can built fast themes and add all the functionality so you don't need no plugins and stuff but I'm pants at making it look pretty.


Suggestion please. Had one person tell me it looked like a 'my first website' layout.

Even happy to pay one of you for help.
 
Right first off I am assuming this is a theme for a single person or business who wants to advertise their services in the 'building' trade or similar. If it's not aimed at that then it needs to be changed.

Ok... lets go page by page (desktop 1920x1080p resolution).

Home page:
It doesn't really tell me what the site is for
Lacks something punchy (image or something similar) to really pull me in
Doesn't need 'the gallery' section imo - I'd argue this might be more suited to the features page

Features page:
It's just a lot of text and then a contact form
See above that you might be better putting 'the gallery' from home page here because it's basically the same information by the looks of it
Not sure you need the contact form on the bottom of every page when you have the 'get a quote/contact us' box in the footer.

Download and Installation page:
Not sure this is something that needs to be in the menu up top - maybe look at the way some other sites, such as graphic river etc portray themes etc.
This type of image needs to be on the homepage imo, it's that sort of image that 'pulls you in' although in this case it doesn't fill the screen that well.

Testimonials page:
Honestly they mean absolutely nothing to me if they're on the site, so maybe look at linking in with one of the many review sites, either specifically aimed at tradespeople or companies in general.

Contact Form page:
As said it's a bit broken.
I'd also expand on the contact form itself, maybe break up what you'd expect in an enquiry into more individual boxes
Does it (or wordpress, I'm not overly familiar with it) come with all the scripting required for the form to function properly.... for me personally that is the most troublesome part of a contact form so if it's not included might want to include it.

General:
No location for a brand logo
I assume you can adjust the colours easily if they don't fit the company branding
I'm not sure the menu placement is right, could probably go top right considering how little there is.
As said, feels a little narrow, doesn't really make good use of the screen.
 
I'm back!

I've reworked the layout a bit following some advice from someone actually using the theme. I think it looks better - but I may be wrong.

@Levi,
Thanks for you comments. The site is marketed to tradesmen looking for a way to showcase their work. Lots of testing has shown a site that displays examples of a tradesman's (or anyone else creative) work is far more successful than one that witters on about the owner. My homepage is an example of how this works. All the other pages are to show the features in action (like the made up testimonials) or provide support site for those setting up the theme.

You can add a logo, change the colours and all sorts of other things in the customiser.

The page width has been tested a lot. Most people now use phones and tablet for general browsing. This means a sidebar is redundant and wide pages wasted. Keeping the max width at around 1000px means you can show full sized images that aren't too tall for the browser window.

Everything has been coded so you don't need to use plugins. Which is why it's fast. Google likes fast sites.

That's the reasoning behind the site structure. Happy to consider alternatives.
 
My god... what have you done... it looks worse. None of the colours actually go together.

Just because testing shows it's more successful doesn't mean you can just ignore telling people what the site is actually about.... you keep saying this yourself in reviews yet you've actually not done several of the things you keep telling others to do.

Just because more people use phones/tablets for general browsing doesn't mean you just ignore the pc users.... who can have up to 5K res screens meaning 2000px blank space on each, that's 4/5's of the screen width being empty, side unless it scales upwards to fit....
 
It looks really dated, you would be better off with a front end designer creating you a psd or something then you coding to that design.
 
Just tried it in landscape and portrait on my iPad - the menu at the top and top banner bunches up too much in portrait. Need to look at the spacing.
 
Do you mean it's difficult to come up with how to make it pretty or just doing it? Because I think the best way to improve that is to see how other people solve design problems and analyse it.
 
Do you mean it's difficult to come up with how to make it pretty or just doing it? Because I think the best way to improve that is to see how other people solve design problems and analyse it.
Ummm... That was the whole point of the thread. I'm not a designer. I have no wish to be a designer. If I need design work doing I pay someone to do it for me.
 
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