When I look at websites, I don't take that much time at each one, and the design of the home page helps me decide wether to go with one company or another. Well... JodoHost's front page is well, not very eye-catching and rather plain. You might want to center the website an redesign a bit.
Suggestion: Better designed Home Page
- Thread starter Bliss
- Start date
Bliss said:
I can understand that a bad design steers me from doing business with a company but only if it looks unprofessional. I disagree that jodohost's website is a bad design or unprofessional. I find it as eye-catching as a webhost should be. They are not a 3d design studio and that is not why I am with them as a customer. When I go to a webhost, I go there to find information. I, with jodohost, can find all the information I need within 1 click and that should be the most important thing. Design...well that is too subjective to comment on as what one person likes, someone else won't as can be seen by the overuse of flash websites that waste my time.
I would rather them spend their time keeping the excellent service and reliability that I have experienced over the past few months that I have been a customer.
Of course, that is just my 2 cents.
Dave
Perch
Site design is indeed very subjective, but there are rules to be followed in creating a useful and/or pleasing design. I think JodoHost's design is simple, but not plain. The design looks professional, to me anyway. Making the information easily accessible to users and looking professional are probably the two main criteria that they are striving for.
However, one thing I do agree with is that since the display is designed around an 800 pixel fixed width display it should be centered on the page, rather than left aligned. On a high resolution monitor it does look a bit odd with everything way over on the left.
However, one thing I do agree with is that since the display is designed around an 800 pixel fixed width display it should be centered on the page, rather than left aligned. On a high resolution monitor it does look a bit odd with everything way over on the left.
Ron said:
Well, it is a little tough. We should be having one or two more people exclusibely for support (not administrators) behind the ticket system by next week. Atul finally seems to be ready to hire some more people (I've been asking for some while now). Ticket volume has been growing rapidly and we are missing one or two every now and then. These people should have some experience with .NET and Cold Fusion because it seems a majority of our questions have to do with that these days.
Whoa... Don't take this the wrong way. I was referring to how cheap JodoHost's prices were, yet that was not the first thing that your eye turns to. When I was looking for hosts, I pretty much went for the cheapest one, but I had to look a bit to find JodoHost's prices.
Well that's what I think.
Well that's what I think.
Dave
Perch
Aesthetically, and ergonomically speaking, I believe the particular design of JodoHost's site would be better suited to being in the center. If you have a monitor display width of 800 pixels it makes no difference, and at 1024 it probably makes little difference. However, once you get up to 1280 or 1600 you're actually looking at a dead space of a third to half the page on the right. You physically turn your head to view the page (no one instinctively looks straight ahead and moves their eyes to the left to read a web page on the left side of the screen). I'm not talking about centering the text of course, which is ugly and hard to read, but the whole design, just in case someone misinterprets.yorri said:Well...I vote to keep it at the left. I am not big on centered websites (as you can see...can't keep everyone happy
Why not put the information right in front of a visitor's face where they're looking? It's a similar concept to putting important information at the top of a web page. You don't see people putting all their menus at the bottom half of the page where users are forced to scroll to find them. (Actually I have seen that, and it's totally ridiculous. It's a great way to stop a lot of visitors from going past the first page.)
It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But a lot of things about a web page design will affect people psychologically. My view is if you're trying to attract paying customers, the path of least resistance for the potential customer is the best way to go.
I'll stand down from my soapbox now.
I know that the majority of users on the internet are not browsing the internet with their monitor set to 1600x1200, but I am. Also, I'd imagine that in the web hosting business, a significant number of your potential customers are using high end equipment (larger monitors, better video cards, etc) and are likely to have a higher resolution than the typical internet user. Here's a screen cap (resized for filesize and dimensions) of the jodohost homepage from my computer. You've got to admit, it does look a bit odd with the whole thing left aligned because of the vast amount of blank space on the right and bottom of the screen.
Regards,
Ryan
Regards,
Ryan
Well I have my monitor set at 1280x1024 and it looks fine. I doubt there are many people who are using resolutions higher than that.
If you go to one of the most popular sites on the internet www.msn.com it is designed the same way...It is obvious that dead space on the right is not turning people off.
I think it's a matter or preference.
Although i just thought of something...I just realized that it is a grey background. Why not make it purple like in the forums to create some consistency and make it look like you didn't forget to put in a background color (the default on most browsers if you don't set a color or image as a background is grey)
If you go to one of the most popular sites on the internet www.msn.com it is designed the same way...It is obvious that dead space on the right is not turning people off.
I think it's a matter or preference.
Although i just thought of something...I just realized that it is a grey background. Why not make it purple like in the forums to create some consistency and make it look like you didn't forget to put in a background color (the default on most browsers if you don't set a color or image as a background is grey)
ungrounded
Perch
I'm running 3200x1200 (actually 2 1600x1200). With IE maximized the page does look silly - but I never look at web sites maximized. Even if they 'look' okay at that resolution I find them difficult to read and navigate. To each their own...
ungrounded
Perch
yorri said:Yeah...so why not put the whole website on one page then? It would fit no???
Now if I could only convince the rest of the world to run at the same resolution that would save me sooooo much work!
Hey - this is off topic for this thread, but speaking of resolutions, my wife can't stand the 1600x1200 that I run at home but it doesn't seem like XP Pro lets you specifiy different resolutions for different logins. Does anyone know a way around this? I had to turn the disability options on for her so all her icons and menus look bigger - I think that offended her...