Hands-on Web Hosting gets a facelift!

H

handsonhosting

New member
For the past year we have been struggling to find our footing when it comes to a new design that we liked. Well today, we launched the new version and reviews thus far have been positive.

Not only do we have a new site, but we have a new LOGO also!

Compare the sites;

http://www.handsonwebhosting.com
versus
http://www.handsonwebhosting.co.uk
versus
http://www.handsonhosting.com

The .co.uk site is SIMILAR to how the old site used to look, and the handsonhosting.com site is what things looked like just last year!

To help things even more, we're now on a CDN and have blistering site speed loading times. Who knew a CDN could do that much dammage (in a good way).

There's a couple of pieces MISSING on the site at this very moment (the link for Cloud Hosting and the details for Software/Scripts, but they're being added within the next couple of hours).

Any feedback would be appreciated - what would you change?
 
Thanks. Any issues with speed? I'm obsessed with speed ;) I've been watching the live stats on the CDN where people are logging into the site from and so far we've got a slew out of Los Angeles, which is unusual given that it's only just turned 8am out there right now - usually we don't see West Coast pickup until after 11am their time.
 
handsonhosting said:
Thanks. Any issues with speed? I'm obsessed with speed ;) I've been watching the live stats on the CDN where people are logging into the site from and so far we've got a slew out of Los Angeles, which is unusual given that it's only just turned 8am out there right now - usually we don't see West Coast pickup until after 11am their time.
Click to expand...

Looks great! The speed was also very good. If you don't mind me asking, who designed it?
 
Looks great here - someone there does good work :D Came up a little slow for me here (just kidding) - it's actually blazing fast. Good job. :D
 
The logo was a contracted job that I had worked on for about 2 months, hired a number of designers from different companies and nobody came up with what I wanted. I ended up going on freelancer, put a bid in for between $300-$700 and had a few people respond and I hired two people out of that batch. This was the version that was decided on after a couple of rounds.

As for the website look and feel, this was actually part of a template that I had purchased and then tweaked out in various places. While the template was static HTML, I don't like HTML and love the "php include" line - so I modified all the code to fit what I needed, added some jquery and as they say "Bob's your uncle!"

It's a long time in the works, and with the CDN it's just the icing on the cake to get a 300k page loaded in less than 2 seconds from pretty much anywhere in the US and most of western Europe.
 
I really like the color scheme you have. That Order Now link, it's radioactive, but that was the first thing I noticed. :)

Good work.
 
The new design is looking great. Speed is perfect. No issue at all.

I think the new layout is still "in progress" as I happen to get few "404 file not found" errors while browsing few pages.

I like the bright color backgrounds used in shared hosting page. I think you should use same color scheme in VPS page. (Currently all black) Just my $0.02

Overall, great work. :)
 
handsonhosting said:
The logo was a contracted job that I had worked on for about 2 months, hired a number of designers from different companies and nobody came up with what I wanted. I ended up going on freelancer, put a bid in for between $300-$700 and had a few people respond and I hired two people out of that batch. This was the version that was decided on after a couple of rounds.

As for the website look and feel, this was actually part of a template that I had purchased and then tweaked out in various places. While the template was static HTML, I don't like HTML and love the "php include" line - so I modified all the code to fit what I needed, added some jquery and as they say "Bob's your uncle!"

It's a long time in the works, and with the CDN it's just the icing on the cake to get a 300k page loaded in less than 2 seconds from pretty much anywhere in the US and most of western Europe.
Click to expand...

The layout certainly doesn't look like a template. It really flows well. Great job! :thumbup:
 
thanks for the feedback guys. The VPS page definitely needs a little extra color. I got sidetracked on some UK Hosting packages that needed to get up, and then for some reason we had 4 dedicated server orders come in. The site has only been live for about 18 hours with the new server pricing, and already I'm almost at a backorder (6 hours wait right now as we're configuring machines).

Sadly, customers come first, and while I wanted to work on those other pages that were discovered (thank you to those who have emailed), I have to make sure the people who paid today get their products, and then I'll start back in on the site. Sooner rather than later I'm sure!

Fastian, if you can drop me a PM with ones you noticed, I'd appreciate that too. There shouldn't have been any 404 errors on the site. I have a check running on the site currently for spell check and link check - but just waiting on that report to come in.

Thanks for the complements and the feedback - much appreciated.
 
Two suggestions:

1) Get a favicon like that cool hand in the circle in your logo.
2) Add some 3D effects. Currently, it looks a bit flat and I think that this design is perfectly suited for some more "pop."

Other than that, looks great.
 
Firstly I’d like to say it’s a nice design and applaud the fact that you have taken something off the shelf and made it your own... seems to be an increasingly good way to try different styles or techniques. Secondly I would agree with webfreak as to adding 3D effects in order to ensure things stand out, the logo possibly as well?

As far as the site is concerned Id maks the following suggestions:

  • Image Links | Users navigate by clicking images usually before text links, however on the homepage the images for “SSL, e-commerce, domain name, FAQ, Specials, live chat and FAQ/articles” where not linked.
  • WHMCS | Integration? A simple and painless header and footer intergration would work wonders when users are directed to FAQ and similar areas and should give a more uniform as well as fluid site. (prehaps someday the blog/forum)
  • Latest news | On pages like the hosting page where testimonials and latest news are shown (though currently unlinked) perhaps load these from your companies blog by selecting the latest article from a category “latest news” and or “testimonials”(randomly) allowing for easy administration and better exposure to search engines from both sites.
 
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Good job! It's always nice to stay fresh. :) Very clean and simple layout. I personally like the different bright colors on your plans page. The new logo screams "religious" to me (not that it's a bad thing) but it can be a double edge sword.
 
Thanks CSN and Cableguy and everyone else.

The WHMCS integration we're waiting on WHMCS to finish - I wasn't even going to bother doing it myself - too much time to do and not enough time on my hands. Rather pay someone $20 to do it :) But it hasn't been completed yet. Blog and forum are definitely next.

Images will be linked, good points on those - I need to get back in gear on that. The testimonias on the blog is a great idea - hadn't thought of that at all, and will put that to the guys here. We were using a flat text file and a php random script to pull a random quote - but with the CDN caching the page it's not rotating as often as it should. I'll have to see what I can do on that.

Colors - yes, I'm all about the bold colors - need to work on VPS as mentioned earlier.

Logo - that's a big deal to me. It's the reason we've had the same logo for 15 years, it's hard to change, but it NEEDS to change. It's very "trendy/generic" style and for lack of a better term "web 2.0", but with the long name, and the need to keep the "hand" or "hands" this was what we finally settled on. For the past year we have had different contracts with various designers to come up a new logo we liked, and we've shelled out enough money on it, but just were never satisfied until this one came along.

I'll get another update on here when I've gone through the rest of the site - we've uncovered a few issues here ourselves, but so far the response from clients (and forum members) have been positive on the design makeover. It was much needed.
 
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