Website Review and Suggestions

**Reckoner** · 01-31-2011, 10:26 AM

Hi there,

So I'm building a woodworking site for someone, but am a little bit uninspired by the design I'm using, can someone please take a look and offer any suggestions?

http://firstclasswoodworking.com/wordpress/

**ramonacole** · 02-01-2011, 07:24 AM

I think you should use some wood patterns... Current design says nothing about woodworking.

**janecooke** · 02-01-2011, 07:39 AM

The image of the person shown is pretty dull and needs something which conveys your business more clearly. The menu can be improved on as well. Wood working related imagery and a good punch line is needed to emphasize the business message.

**Reckoner** · 02-01-2011, 11:34 AM

Thanks guys, yeah I think I might include a background image of wood planks or something in the menu.

I like the header I made since the original one looked similar to that but much crappier. This guy does some amazing woodwork so I want the site to be a little classier than what his original branding suggests. Ill post here again for a mark2 review.

**Whathadiv** · 02-01-2011, 11:55 AM

Your design really needs some color balance and texture.

**Reckoner** · 02-01-2011, 11:29 PM

Care to elaborate?

**meo** · 02-02-2011, 08:39 AM

Green and blue... font, the rest too plain... should start it over.

I agree with ramonacole about wood texture which could be used to provide warmth and richness to the site...

**WebBlitzBlog** · 02-02-2011, 08:55 AM

Hi,

This doesnt inspire me for woodwork either!
In my opinion you need photos (a picture says a thousand words).
Also the font type (although nice for maybe an art gallery) is quite difficult to read,

Hope that helps and best of luck,

Kind Regards

Sarah

**Whathadiv** · 02-02-2011, 01:41 PM

If you had a person chiseling a piece of wood displayed on your site in a unique way. Maybe that would help inspire what you're trying to convey.

Next, a nice wood texture background would be nice. Maybe try to experiment with two dimensional space. Here's a good example of adding dimension to your site: http://www.basilgloo.com/

**a3d** · 02-03-2011, 12:04 AM

from my point of view, this site is slow on loading..
its ok to create compact wordpress site,
people are now lazy to scroll down the page.
i dont know if its currently on develop or not,
but all the images are missing!

**Reckoner** · 02-04-2011, 04:21 PM

Okay, thanks for the replies and input, but the client INSISTS on using:

1.) the typeface used in the logo
2.) the lime green logo guy
3.) dark blue as the background color for everything, white text used on everything else.

On top of that, he does not want it to be too much like a typical woodworking site - wants to have the images (WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN UPLOADED YET) to convey the work produced. I suggested to use some woodworking textures in the layout, but he does not want to do anything like that. He's very stubborn in what he has in mind, so I'm just trying to keep him happy at this point - he wants something classy, but the green on top of blue doesn't really work in my opinion. It's difficult because he and I don't see eye to eye at all on how this thing should look.

He now wants his site to look simialr to this site for the navigation menu to be on the right... which I personally think looks pretty bad.
www.seascapephoto.com

Struggling to come up with something nice... I'll post again when I've designed a new layout.

**Whathadiv** · 02-07-2011, 02:52 PM

lol, just like most clients... no sense of what works in design.

I've turned down clients because they were more frustrating than it was worth.

**rjman** · 02-08-2011, 04:30 AM

not bad