What makes a website vivid?

Hello!
So, I made a website's design for one of my clients. I thought he would like it, but he says it needs to be more vivid. It needs to make users want to come back.
He also said there is no 'WOW', that users will not be impressed.

Can you tell me how I can improve this?
http://imgur.com/eXLeYL4

 

Well, from my point of view this website is pretty good but I think your client wants a more expansive website. I think your design is pretty congested because everything is very close together. Try spreading things out a bit and see if he likes the changes. If you want to "WOW" your visitors add some flash content and see if he approves.

 

Please, for the love of god, don't add any flash content. Seriously. There is absolutely no reason to have anything flash on a site nowadays, perhaps apart from online games, but those too are losing to other methods of running the games (js, for the most part).

The design isn't too bad, but having roll-over effects via CSS or javascript, a bit more air (between the sidebar and the buttons/images on the right), and perhaps a bit better alignment of elements - adding "WOW"-factors is no guarantee for visitors to come back, btw. It's mostly visual candy, which just gets annoying after a little while (fun the first time, maybe the five first times, after that, you just want the page to load within 2 seconds and continue working without flashy stuff).

The colors seems okay, and "vivid"... well, that is another one of those "looks fancy but have no function whatsoever".

You can try having hover-effects with video, perhaps? Small webm-hover-effects, so when you hover over the rally-button, the image turns into a small video showing a short rally-clip, and so on for the other buttons. That might impress the client.

 

Add a few colors to make things stand out. What if the "Drifts", Raillijs", and other text were orange or orange-yellow or another such color to make it stand out, or be more "vivid". Also, I'm not wild about the circular wave type background. Perhaps a colored background or a noise type patter would help.

It might not hurt to ask your client for examples of websites he/she likes the design of so you can get an idea of what your client is looking for. You cannot read your client's mind so an example could save quite a bit of time. An entertainment type of website (as racing is entertainment and a sport) should be more visual than what you have. You can always look around on the web for examples of vivid, eye-catching websites on your own.

 

Thanks! I used some of your advice to create a new design and he seems to like it.

 

Good point about that video effect!