Redid Website Homepage. Is it an improvement?

**LawsLoop** · 05:48 PM

Site Overview
I own a website where people are able to create their own political manifestos about any issue they care about. Alongside this, other members are able to comment and rate pages on the political scale and somewhere therein is a social network.
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I recently totally redid the Homepage feeling that the old one had too much text on it that nobody would read, we needed something provocative and simple to draw attention. I also like the simple but effective design of Fmylife.com.

This is the current Homepage: http://www.lawsloop.com
This is the old Homepage: http://www.lawsloop.com/index4.php

I think the current Homepage looks better but I need your opinions.
Since I put up the new homepage, we've had no new registrations but on the day I put it up, we were removed as a featured website on one of those 'Top Sites' sites which was giving us a heck of a lot of traffic so I don't know whether we've had no new registrations because of that or if the Homepage is turning people off.

(By the way, we're a new site so 2-3 new registrations a day is considered good)

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Anyway, critique please! Which Homepage is better and why? Or how can I improve the current one?

**JSTYLISH** · 07-03-2009, 07:58 PM

Hi

The pages effect you have on the homepage is a nice idea but I think the stroke is too strong. You use pastel colours and having a strong black stroke just doesn't neutralise the feel.

Try toning down the stroke by 50% and/or changing it to a light shade of grey?

At the top, you have the green shape which contains the navigation and surrounds the logo. The width of this isn't in sync with the width of everything else. I believe you should budge it to the right so it is in line with the end of the width and then stretch out the tiny green stroke above the logo to the left so it is in align with the beginning.

Either that or loose the green stroke above the logo and budge it all to the right side and let the logo dominate the left.

The purple MANIFESTO box above the registration form is a bit tacky. You should have a rectangular box sit directly above the registration form with a standard font calling users to register. The colour will bring attention.. no need for the funky shape, huge strokes and arial blackhole font.

**acwebguru** · 07-04-2009, 02:50 AM

It might sound crazy but I personally think that the previous one is better than the current one. I would suggest you to design a quote like option in your website for making it more attractive.

**d1zl3** · 07-04-2009, 04:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by acwebguru

It might sound crazy but I personally think that the previous one is better than the current one. I would suggest you to design a quote like option in your website for making it more attractive.

yeah i think the before is better too

**websam** · 07-04-2009, 03:37 PM

Pages effect is very distracting. Lose it. Add some gradient color to the header block and elsewhere. Your layout will be very appealing and more friendly.

**LawsLoop** · 07-04-2009, 11:01 PM

Hey everyone, thank you all SO much for your feedback. I've taken on all of your comments.

This was the homepage when I first posted this thread: http://www.lawsloop.com/index_old.php
After reading the first post, I wrote this page: http://www.lawsloop.com/index_redo.php

THEN after reading more posts, I came up with this design, which is now the Homepage: http://www.lawsloop.com

Its a mix of the the old layout and the new layout and has a new feature where people can create a Manifesto page as soon as they land on the page.

'The Conqueror', I agreed about the 'Manifesto' image and have now changed it to something I think looks better. As for the green main menu, if you browse the site, you'll notice that if I were to shift it to the right, some of the menu options would be unnecessarily over the right-hand sidebar instead of the main content.
And websam - there is a very mild gradient effect on the green main menu already.

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Now that I've totally redone the page, can you guys give me some suggestions for the Homepage as it is now?
http://www.lawsloop.com

**sambarney** · 07-05-2009, 10:36 AM

I think you need to drop these border fx and have a more open page with better contrast not just all black text and as someone said above use a gradient but remember to leave some white space and keep it upbeat.

Just a suggestion.

- Sam

**Digmen1** · 07-05-2009, 05:13 PM

Just an aside ?
You are asking for peoples public opinions - good idea, but why is the site called LawsLoop ?
To me that has connotations of it being about or by legal people or lawyers (which I would not like) or is your name Laws ?

I think you should say somewhere about the name and philosophy of the websites owners.

Best wishes

**websam** · 07-06-2009, 01:56 AM

The now layout feels weird and strange due to use of many different shapes. I understand the use of page effect, but it's too much. Why don't you put 5 items (login, welcome message, articles, famous quote and forms) into one big page effect layout.
You need to unify these 5 items together. Less is better in your case.

Quote:

And websam - there is a very mild gradient effect on the green main menu already.

It's not noticeable enough to attractive attention.

**DamienDarwick** · 07-06-2009, 04:33 AM

Actually personally I liked the first one better. It seemed to offer more about the site.

**grass321** · 07-06-2009, 08:31 AM

first ,you should trust vistors's opinion
then you should think it carefullybefore doing any change

**LawsLoop** · 07-13-2009, 08:02 AM

sambarney - I replaced the page effects with something a little less.

Digmen, Its called LawsLoop because it allows members to create a Manifesto. A manifesto contains proposed legislation, thus laws. Basically the idea is that people can outline the rules to their ideal world.

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The new layout has way more than the old one, including the ability to create a Manifesto page then and there, read pages on popular tags and browse more Manifestos. In my opinion now looks way better. I'm not going to edit it anymore for a while but thanks very much to everyone who gave me advice in this thread, it really did help massively.

**free300megs** · 07-13-2009, 11:57 AM

current Homepage is much batter

**devidew** · 07-13-2009, 03:00 PM

I think you need to drop these border fx and have a more open page with better contrast not just all black text and as someone said above use a gradient but remember to leave some white space and keep it upbeat.

Just a suggestion.

Thanks

**websam** · 09:01 PM

It's better than the last one I saw last week. Page shadow should be subtle. Right now it's too strong and you don't want that. Headers and copy text should stand out more if you make shadow less dark. Subtle is the key here. You need gradient as I said before. Gradient make the layout more attractive. Pencil and other photos should stay beside the individual column header (I want to write a page about…). Right now it creates a distraction and takes attention away.

From usability point of view...these icons (eye, book, comments) have different meanings to some users. Just a suggestion. Remove them. You don't need them with that design element. Write a short sentence below the header for an explanation. Ex. please hover each item to read a brief. From that respective, your design is more effective this way.

Button "Next" is not a good name. Basically it is to find a page subject for the users right? You should replace next with a word "find" instead.

**TWD** · 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digmen1

Just an aside ?
You are asking for peoples public opinions - good idea, but why is the site called LawsLoop ?
To me that has connotations of it being about or by legal people or lawyers (which I would not like) or is your name Laws ?

I think you should say somewhere about the name and philosophy of the websites owners.

Best wishes

I agree.
Or www.Rate-my-manifesto.com

Its an awesome concept but the site still looks
unappealing to me.
I'd start by making a bigger header block.
The colors need to be a bit more interesting too.
Use a color wheel to find better combinations.

And the font stroke seems too heavy.

And I have to hover over Most Popular Pages, Most Commented Pages, Recently Added Official Manifestos
to get a clue what they are. Which is a total pain.
AKA "Mystery Meat Navigation"
You really need to do something about that.

**emofree** · 07-19-2009, 08:30 PM

well for me I would choose this layout of yours http://www.lawsloop.com/ instead of the 2nd and the 3rd one. I'm not usually fond of the drop like 3d boxes it feels like a game site. Also the others are right about the drop shadows on each of the boxes. It feels awkward simplicity is the key here.

**theohoutman** · 07-20-2009, 06:20 AM

I have to agree on the contrast comments and the 3d fx of the boxes. I would remove the 3d fx for starters.

Maybe use some lighter color gradients for the boxes.

As for the top menu. Get rid of the lighter boxes around the links. Maybe even make it all look like the bottom bar of the site as it would give it all a some what more unified look.

Good look!

**S_A_W** · 07-21-2009, 03:23 PM

I am confused as to which-is-which but I like this one the best http://www.lawsloop.com/index4.php

**LawsLoop** · 04:00 PM

I said I would stop editing the page for a while but felt compelled to take on some of the new advice by posters here and mock up a few more pages.

If you look at the current homepage: http://www.lawsloop.com, you'll see there is a welcome message at the top and a quote midway down. These have both now been removed partly to remove the number of page effects and also to remove excessive text.
I need your opinion on these removals. My worry is that the idea behind the site may not come through without the top info.

Test pages:
http://www.lawsloop.com/index_again.php
I've combined the left section and added a gradient in the middle, I quite like it, the right hand side with the registration and Log in area needs work but just focus your comments on the Left hand side.

http://www.lawsloop.com/index_again1.php
Same thing as before but the pages bit are separated with a different shade of grey. Even though a few of you said you weren't really into the page effects, the separation of the two forms of page display looks alright to me.

http://www.lawsloop.com/index_again2.php
Someone said I should try and put them all in one page effect, this is the result. It looks rubbish and I didn't bother ironing out the minor problems because I'd already decided I didn't like it.

Basically if you could give me your opinions on the left hand side of the index_again and index_again1 pages. Which you like better.
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Quote:

From usability point of view...these icons (eye, book, comments) have different meanings to some users. Just a suggestion. Remove them. You don't need them with that design element. Write a short sentence below the header for an explanation.

I did try the idea of putting the page title below each page icon but felt that with the length of page titles ranging from 1 to 65 characters, sometimes the difference would make it look really bad. My logs also show that people are quite willing to hover over each page until they find one that takes their fancy and they do click.

Quote:

Button "Next" is not a good name. Basically it is to find a page subject for the users right?

No, the 'Next' is for the next stage in creating their first page. So someone may want to have their page title as 'Webmaster-talk', they click next to complete the next stage of writing the Page Text.

Quote:

Or www.Rate-my-manifesto.com

The site offers much, much more than that, its aiming to be a centre of political discussion in a social networking. The 'rate-my...' idea is associated with cheap and cheerful sites and I'm aiming for a more dedicated user base. The name thing doesn't really strike me as a big issue anyway, you could take examples of Google (a misspelling of Googol), eBay, YouTube and so on.