Feedback on new site design please

[TheShortStack]

I figured it was time to give one of my first sites a new coat of paint to help with conversions, and the first draft of the new design has come back.

If you've got a spare couple of minutes, could you have a look at the images below and let me know your thoughts on them please? I'd be really interested to hear them before I get back to the designer.

Cheers,

HOME PAGE:


REVIEW PAGE:

[GregW]

Looks nice overall.

I guess this is more of a tip than a design critique, but make sure you have a plan in mind for the colour scheme of your text links.

I noticed you have a lot of blue text that could easily work well as links, but then you have headers also in blue that probably aren't going to be links. Then you also have the green "read more" text that is obviously intended to be a link. I think it would be a good idea to have a clear plan for what colour you want all your links to be from the start so that they will be easily distinguishable as you navigate across the whole site. Therefore, you'll avoid having some blue text as links whereas other blue text won't be.

It's just a small thing, but if you consider it and mention it to the designer now it should make your life easier as you build the site (CSS and all that). Will be good for usability too.

[TheShortStack]

Thanks for this Greg - good point, I'll need to get some of the headings changed.

Anyone else? Nearly 100 of you have seen the design now.

Cheers,

[Unknown Webmaster]

I like the look of the site, and it is definitely prettier than anything I use on any of my sites.

I'm not really a design guy, but I have written some of my thoughts down and hope that they are helpful to you.

Play now button on review pages
I think it would be a good idea to add a "play now" button that the button besides the "visit site" button at the bottom of the poker room review pages and maybe at the top too.

Summaries/standfirst (all pages)
If it were my site, I would incorporate some kind of summary at the top of each page. The purpose would be to convince your visitors that the information on the page is relevant, so they will stop messing around and pay attention. Randy Ray writes a bit about it here: What Jakob Nielsen Can Teach You About Making Money From a Poker Website.

This article focus on what I believe is called a "standfirst", which is what I use on most of my sites: Stickyblog Web editors: 5 reasons to love standfirsts.

Bonus of the month
I would replace the "bonus of the month" and "promotion of the week" boxes on the review page. I think the visitors to this page will be looking for a nice ranking of the best poker bonuses, and the table on the page gives them exactly that - You don't want to confuse people

[TheShortStack]

Really appreciate the feedback Jakob - I really like the idea of standfirsts and summaries. I think standfirsts can certainly play a roll on the website review pages whereas the page summaries might be more useful in general HTML content pages (something which I'm going to have to cobble together myself when the code from the two pages above comes through).

As for the bonus tables, you're right - I hadn't thought about that. Perhaps to make things clearer, I can have the mini-table entitled 'Other Strong Poker Bonuses' (or something similiar) and then start the table ranking at '2' in order to emphasise the strength of the bonus listed at the top of the page.

Definite food for thought.

Thanks again.