website crit please
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- leftwave
hello,
i'm making a new blog type of website for a financial news/educational website. audience is mostly women in 20s-30s. client has approved "beta" page here:
http://bullandbearessentials.com…
here is the proposed design for the website:
http://leftwave.com/indevelopmen…
(note the script "Finance Stripped Down to the Basics" will be a Flash animation with scrolling headlines)feedback welcome!!
- monospaced0
Immediate reaction: feels like a beauty product site.
It's so far from financial it's not even funny.
- <version3
- Tiffany meets bath and body works. thought the same thing.baseline_shift
- leftwave0
that's the point. it's not supposed to be like wall street. it's supposed to appeal to young women. here's some more of the headline ideas to give you a "sense" of the site:
-Finance Stripped Down to the Basics
-For those who think Wall Street was a really great movie.
-Finance for English majors.
-Because The WSJ is scary.
-Finance- in jeans not pinstripes.
-A Friendly Guide to the Root of all Evil.
-Finance for those who’d rather talk about.... anything else.
-A user's manual for CNBC
-You failed accounting, but nobody has to know.
-The financial iceberg broken down to a margarita on the rocks
- dMullins0
I'm with mono. It felt like a candy shop. The only thing I can see that you could do to improve this (without changing the design), is to change the greens to actual money colors. Unless of course, you live in a country with girly pastel greens for money **cough**youknowwhoyouare**cough...
- detritus0
Colouration could be a bit more money and perhaps it wouldn't be too bad an idea to work in a hint-graphic to bolster the finance aspect, but I get why you've gone this route, so don't quite share monospaced's revulsion.
- It's not that I'm revulsed, it's that I happen to work for a major financial institution, and women don't like to be treated special.monospaced
- specially because they're girls. These women are hardcore.monospaced
- That's one demographic. What about girly girls who are want to spin coins and gossip about penny shares?detritus
- -are.detritus
- or:
-want
+wontdetritus - lolmonospaced
- raskolnikov0
fucked up logo kerning. I still think that to have 'essentials' makes it sound like a cosmetic/beauty/underwear company and then to have an additional strapline seems like you're not too confident and are trying to balance the poor decision to stick with 'essentials' under the logo.
Looks like it could get old fast though I quite like the colours and the pinstripe. I don't understand your logic with capitalisation at all, you have all caps, you have all lower case, you have a strapline in another random typeface with mixed capitalization.
No option for images/pullquotes etc etc?
Seem like a half assed job so far, no offence
- See, I don't mind the "Essentials" because that is enough of the 'girly' metaphor for me. The colors are over the top, IMO.dMullins
- johndiggity0
- ditch that bg. way too intense. lower the contrast or do something else
- bring the site body to the top of the page.
- move the search to the right side.
- swap the sub nav and content areas.
- sort out the header, looks unfinished, kind of weak.
- typography is weird–using all caps in places, all lowercase in others. it's not working.
- monospaced0
Even if it is aimed at women, it doesn't have to be girly. Unless it's for teenagers, I'd take a clue from some corporate looks. I hate to break it to you, but women can do accounting.
- raskolnikov0
To have the logic that it 'the point' is for it to fee llik ea beauty site is absurd beyond belief. If you told me the colour and stripes was to reflect modern business dress styles al la Edward Pink then I could go with that.
- detritus0
The FT's pink, fyi.
- dbloc0
The stripes are killing me.
- Etype0
this may be trying too hard to appeal to to woman in their 20-30's... woman in finance are not teenage girls? It comes across as if you are dumbing the topics down or something?
- dMullins0
Those headlines don't scream "boutique candy store" to me. You can be friendly and engaging for your audience without bashing them over the head with the idea that they have vaginas.
- detritus0
For me it's kind of hard to tell if this direction is as candy as it appears without having genuine finance-related content in there. It might be that there are elements such as with the trackers on the FT page i linked that might help set the scene.
If it's just lumps of text then yes, you probably do need to depussify it.
- Etype0
LOL at the bottom left.... "send to your crush"
- raskolnikov0
Those straplines are awful. Patronising and undermining.
- dbloc0
the site looks extremely thin with those vertical stripes.
- leftwave0
wow... tough crowd today :) thanks for the feedback though. i agree with the whole idea that it should be more financial and less "girly" (i am one!), but this is what the client wants. here's some changes based on your feedback - thanks!!
http://leftwave.com/indevelopmen…- boy, you really made some changes there.raskolnikov
- I spy one header change
Etype
- leftwave0
PS: if you want to get a sense of the actual content, go here
http://bullandbearessentials.com…
(this will be transferred into this new website format shortly)
- monospaced0
Style aside, I feel that there are some elements competing for my immediate attention, and it's making it hard to focus.
1) Bull & Bear logo
2) "Finance stripped down..."
3) "our story - who's in charge now?"
4) "your essentials" (but to a lesser extent)Feels like you need to nail down a clearer hierarchy of information. The logo could go a lot smaller, the tagline probably shouldn't be screaming for attention in a black script. I can't wait to see where this goes.
- dbloc0
maybe introduce a new color for the background. The entire site seems too blue