I need people to take a look at my redesign before it goes live.

Hi all, I need some input.

http://www.cowpc.com/testblog/

I'm planning on uploading a totally new template to my website soon but before I do I need some help from you.

If it's not too much trouble, please visit the link above (it's just a test site) and go through the site... be thorough if you can. Test every bit if you have the time.

Please post any errors or problems you find with the website.
Please post any feedback, good, bad, ugly... it all helps.

EDIT: I guess I should mention that the real website is modernflat.com -- let me know if the new design improves readability and usability... those are my big issues.


PS: The ads are not live ads. They are just pics so don't worry about clicking them... they are there to show ad position, nothing else.

Thanks a lot, rep will be given to all and I will be happy to review your websites as well, post a reply.

Cheers,
Pete.

 

All links I test work so fine so far

 

Do me a favour and check out the page links in the footer and test the comments... there are no spam filters on the test site so have a ball.

Thanks BTW.

 

I like the overall design of the site, very clean and it loads fast. The links in the footer work fine, as well as the comment links.

The new site's smaller logo is better IMO, I think the logo on the old site is too big.

I'm not sure if you wanted the borders around the ads on the new site, it may look better without borders.

 

Good layout.. But it was confused!

 

The site is a bit plain. I'm sure this is good for seo purposes and also makes it load faster but potencial customers might not see it that way. I prefer these quick moving sites but many like the flashy stuff.

 

Thanks everyone!

Could you elaborate? What was consfusing? Anything that I might be able to change in order to fix the problem?

Thanks. I was going for the cleaner look, my original site has a bit more colour but I think too much of that makes it difficult to read. It's a blog so I'm not doing any direct selling or hyping up products so I really do want to concentrate on easy readability.


My first design was very simple but without any real style... as my readership started to grow I decided to change the look of the website, the current design (modernflat.com) is the result.

I've noticed that little by little people are spending less time reading the site and there is less exploring of the deep pages and categories. Perhaps it's just not interesting anymore? Or perhaps the design doesn't really lend itself to comfortable reading for long periods of time.

I'm hoping this new design will solve that problem. So far the collective feedback (from here and privately) seems to show that there is an improvement in readability and a better "feel" about the new design.

Thanks once again to everyone.

 

I would suggest that you should reduce the size of ads displayed on the middle of page, might be you can try to show rectangular box instead of square which you currently have.
1 more thing, the space on the left side is empty when you scroll down the page. show more ads over there, utilize the space.

 

A better logo design may be needed and I rate 8.5/10.

 

If "leede" is talking about the logo in the header (modern flat), then I would say, YES, I also think that logo should improved, afterall its a identity of your site

 

It would look much better if the layout was centred imo..

 

Ok, test site is down... the design is live.

Thanks again to everyone.

 

welcome...
1 thing, there is empty space on right side, when you scroll down the page,
utilize that space