What’s up, people? I’ve inherited this site from a previous designer and want to see it made awesome, and I really oughtta talk to my boss about this - hypothetically - if you were given free license to give this site a makeover, what would you do?
This is NOT my work - as the new designer, I see that this could be so much better, and need some inspiration. I need a project to beef up my web design skill anyway, and if it helps the business out, cool. I think that there is a basic color scheme that I have to stick with (which sucks), but I’m going to see how much leeway I have with the maroon-navy-brown thing. Images that enlarge are direly needed. Have at it. 
http://signsbytomorrow.com/virginiabeach/
I won’t dwell on the technical aspects but here’s my view. Yup, the colour is grim but you might find a way to incorporate them in a more muted fashion. I’d look at some quick fixes first…the photos. For a business where images are an essential selling point, the photos are awful. They’re all too small, a lot are out of focus, and those that aren’t are horribly pixellated. Considering their small physical size, they’re also large filesizes which makes downloading slower.
I’d also look at making the site more consistent, e.g. fonts. See the Careers page for an example. Rein in some of the bold usage too. Some of the links open _blank windows which is a pain and suggests sloppiness on the part of the original designer. I’d also look at stripping out most of the awful management-speak and converting it into plain english. Why say “The signs outside and inside your building help a customers interaction with your business” when it’s a lot easier, and more understandable, to say “Your signs help customers to do business with you”. And indoor signs do NOT guide your customers through your location…they can guide customers to your location but, once inside, they can guide/assist customers through your premises/office/store/workshop/building. It ceases to be a location once they’re inside.
Get rid of the acronyms. If the business is called Signs By Tomorrow use that…consistently throughout the site and don’t substitute SBT; which is a TV station in Brazil. Do away with the management bio’s…no one actually cares. But do include their contact details on the contacts page.
I’d suggest giving visitors the option of viewing some example signs in Flash too, although it’s probably heresy to do so 
Apart from tackling that lot, it’s otherwise quite a clean interface.
Glos basically nailed it. I certainly don’t think the design is terrible, and I’m not sure I would change the basic design of it.
Awesome, thanks, guys. I’ll see how much of this I’m allowed to tweak, and I’ll bump the thread after some changes are made.
I like the color sheme, has a nostalgic printer look to it, also if you must do one thing right use your photoshop skills to post better images
geez the lighting on those are just so sophomoric
also
Glos is right use bold; you are sign maker that means you can be cheesy with the bold and it increases your sales; from what I get that looks like your demographic
Hmmm… well my :2c:
I think the design is pretty ok, I wouldn’t really go outta the way to change it. But there are font issues that need to be standardized, the right column needs margin/padding away from the left column.
A couple places where I completely disagree with glos are in the “Management” page. You don’t want to get rid of it, while not every one cares, there are people that do actually care about that information. They want to know who they can contact and how they can contact them. I wouldn’t call it “Management Bios” because it isn’t a bio section, but I would definitely keep it there.
Also, in the case of using acronyms, I disagree here too. Everyone and their brother can see that you’re visiting and doing business w/ Signs By Tomorrow, but not everyone wants to say or even look at the long arse name over and over again. Think of brands like, ABC, NBC, BBC, AOL, AIM blah blah blah, the list goes on and on. And really… who cares about the company in Brazil, I sure didn’t know that company existed, and I can bet nearly ummm 99% of the people visiting that site even know about that company OR the thousand other companies that may use SBT as their abbrev. company name.
Lightbox/Greybox/Thickbox images. High resolution (possibly HDR to look really pro) images which open in a modal window. Like others have said, if visuals are the focus of the company, it needs to come through on the site in a larger than life kind of way. Perhaps my 20/10 vision deceives me, but the logo in the header where it says “Signs & Graphics Nationwide” seems blurry. In the vein of visuals, a rotating header image might be a good showcase. I truly would consider either hiring a professional photographer for the photos of the products. Yuck! One more thing, “Imagine it… we can do it.” seems like it’s asking the reader to image that they (SBT) can do it, perhaps it should say, “If you can imagine it, blah blah blah” (the blahs being the important part) or more simply, “We can do it”, but that may be construed as a come-on. WTF do I know? I suck at design!
Good Luck Dan!
The difference is that most of the companies you’ve mentioned are now known by their initials. Go to the BBC site and I doubt that you’ll see British Broadcasting Corporation mentioned anywhere. ABC and NBC are the same, as are IBM et al. It’s recommended practice when writing to stick to one or the other…abbreviations or full name, simply for consistency and to maintain the branding.
Again, there’s no need to remove the contact details of the managers, or their specific roles in the company…it just makes more sense to include them on the contact page.
[QUOTE=glosrfc;2343849]The difference is that most of the companies you’ve mentioned are now known by their initials. Go to the BBC site and I doubt that you’ll see British Broadcasting Corporation mentioned anywhere. ABC and NBC are the same, as are IBM et al. It’s recommended practice when writing to stick to one or the other…abbreviations or full name, simply for consistency and to maintain the branding.[/QUOTE]
I kneeeeew someone was gonna say this. But the simple fact of the matter is they got known by those initials because they used those initials, it didn’t just magically happen. Maintaining the brand is not limited to one thing, very similar in concept to how many companies have a full (primary) logo and a partial (secondary) logo. A brand is an all encompassing identity, it’s not just one element.
I do agree though that it should be consistent throughout whether the abbrev. or the full name is used.
