Hands-on Web Hosting - Redesigns Website

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handsonhosting

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Hands-on Web Hosting has relaunched with a whole new look and feel. http://www.handsonwebhosting.com

But wait, you say that we had only just redesigned the website last year! This is true, we did. We found that in the past few months our support staff were being swamped with questions from visitors asking how to find various things on the website. While the navigation made sense to most web users, when it came to people that were new to web hosting and setting up their own websites, those customers were getting lost.

We've stripped down the website, made ample use of whitespace and restructured the website with a focus on eCommerce websites (our primary audience).

The entire website is now built on Wordpress which allows for easier updates and additional information added when needed. During the next week we will be adding some new resources to help new business owners get the information they need without having to spend 15-20 minutes looking for it.

If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them. The site is currently a little slower than we would like (main page over 500kb), however this is being adjusted and should be back to the 1-2 second pageload time rather than the 3-4 seconds that it takes currently.

Check it out, let us know your thoughts - http://www.handsonwebhosting.com
 
Looks fabulous, Conor. I did notice that the light blue titles like (Web Hosting Package with cPanel: Ultralite) all seem to have a portion of the top of the tallest characters sliced off. Probably a simple fix.

Navigation was easy - search worked fine - didn't order anything though ... sorry :D

Good Work Conor - :thumbup:
 
Looking good Connor, not what I had expected based on the last revision but I do like the lighting effects (top banner) as it really adds emphasis to the logo, navigation and offers.

I would put an emphasis on changing the offer slider somewhat back to the default ?(transparent and angled) and perhaps use a blue border/background transparent rather than the green and get a bit creative :D.

Otherwise the usual WHMCS integration and perhaps show an onsite SSL page rather than referring to the old design (handsonssl) to keep up consistency but overall It looks good :)
 
Thanks. Yeah, I'll have a few more banners coming online. What did you mean about changing the banner back to an angled banner?

I know there's a blue and a purple banner suposed to be done here tonight/tomorrow. We had to dull down the banners as it detracted from the logo and other info on the site as the eyes went to the banner ONLY.

The sites have definitely been through several changes, and we're toying with the idea of bringing them all back under one roof. It's handy having them separate as we get the extra links through google for that, but consistancy plays a role too.

Compare the following sites and you'll see they're all different (but the SSL, Dedicated and handson, kept the same "style")

http://www.handsonwebhosting.com
http://www.handsonhosting.com
http://www.handsonssl.com
http://www.handsondedicated.com
http://www.handsonwebhostng.co.uk
http://www.xcarthosting.com

Then our Blog (http://blog.handsonwebhosting.com) and the billing/support system (http://support.handsonwebhosting.com) also need to be skinned and redone.

Definitely still work ahead of us. I'm not graphicly gifted any more and have my employees here (or outsourced personel) do the graphic work for our site. It would take me 2 or 3 hours to do what someone else does in 15 minutes. I've got the ideas, but I can't make it do what I want on the screen ;) The joys of being management and being out of the design world for 10 years.
 
handsonhosting said:
Thanks. Yeah, I'll have a few more banners coming online. What did you mean about changing the banner back to an angled banner?
Click to expand...


By the banner I was referencing the original or demo content (here), personally I would stick much to that style (specifically the height due to the centre left navigation) or perhaps longer billboard styled advertisement such as our software note, (right side) or similar?

Ideally the shape needs consistency however the content of the slider should change(specifically colour), and the gradient edges/rounded corners then also help to diffuse the content over the background as a result a similar but larger rounded rectangle for example would be effective.

handsonhosting said:
I'm not graphicly gifted any more and have my employees here (or outsourced personel) do the graphic work for our site. It would take me 2 or 3 hours to do what someone else does in 15 minutes. I've got the ideas, but I can't make it do what I want on the screen ;) The joys of being management and being out of the design world for 10 years.
Click to expand...

Despite being a web/software designer/engineer, Photoshop and Fireworks are also my biggest flaw.. our graphics artist has somewhat of a love hate relationship with me.. much for the same reason :P however with a bit of communication (argument) generally the result is as envisioned :D.
 
Thanks for the feedback. We may temporarily go with something that large. The two buttons on that blue bar (Blog Hosting & Free Site Move) are getting two more beside them - I've done quite a bit of modification of the orignal design due to the original really being laid out as a graphic portfolio. Also found that some of the plugins by the author were out of date, and newer ones were incompatible. Things which should have been an easy widget drop and replace were actually hard coded into the theme. Little things that really weren't needed.

But yes, need a designer or two that I can just say Here's money - make it work, don't make me think about it :)
 
Thanks for the feedback Hostix. Over the past month there's been a number of new pages added at client requests. It's nice to have the full backing of our customer base and their feedback also to help mold it into a site they want to visit to get their information from.
 
It looks great, Conor! The only suggestion I can possibly give is to better integrate WHMCS with your site design. Other than that... :thumbup:
 
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