Feedback on a banner design
-
I was hoping to get some feedback from you guys regarding some banner redesign we are working on for our website. We are currently using the blue one, but we werent happy with the logo we had of the hat and hands shaking. So once we started working on a new logo, that logo doesnt match at all with the current design so we were messing around with the banner and came up with these ideas.
Id appreciate some feedback good or bad
edit: sorry guess [img] doesnt work in here
Current Banner
http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/banner_zpse92b853f.jpg
New 1
http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/21-03-banner_zpsfc224501.jpg
New 2
http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/19-03-banner_zps17c3f2f1.jpg
New 3
http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/20-03-banner_zps966bb780.jpg
-
I apologize for not seeing this somehow it passed right over me.
The large advantages for using a managed WordPress host our primarily speed, security in the form of powerful firewalls and if they get through that which they do very rarely do every one of them uses http://sucuri.net/ this allows them to know if there's any malware on your site and have it cleaned and running perfectly at no cost to you. You get hosting that is built around just WordPress an incredible abundance of WordPress knowledge at your fingertips and the idea of you have enough toward about without having to spend what would amount to a real lot of money in order to get a WordPress site to load in under one or two seconds consistently both nationally and internationally. I highly encourage you to read not just the pages I've sent you, but everything on the sites that are about the host.http://wpengine.com/fast-page-loads/
https://www.zippykid.com/benefits/speed-fast-wordpress-host/
https://www.zippykid.com/benefits/
http://websynthesis.com/features/
https://page.ly/features/For instance I'm currently writing a Moz blog post on the subject so I can't give out too much information or I'd be self plagiarizing I know it's unfortunate. I best advice is go to their websites I think everyone of them has a done a wonderful job of informing people of their benefits. I also should tell you that I have an account with every company am about to mention. You cannot go wrong with any of them. Pay attention to the band with and page views you are allotted and know that some of them are maybe a better value than others. Regardless you can rest assured that all of them will do a great job.
My other piece of advice is contact them and ask them why they're the one you should pick. Take a lot into account as to how much time they take to get back to you I will mention this is public knowledge automatic has invested in both WP engine and Zippykid. However web synthesis is still an excellent choice as is Page.ly
All of them run on top-quality hardware and are built only to host WordPress because WordPress has a database unlike a pure HTML website the time it takes to access the database with caching on the server where somebody has spent a great deal of money to have that website cache so in the event of a person going to another page you have removed what made WordPress slower in the 1st place many of them have content delivery networks built-in the ones that have CDN's built-in also have a lot more going on on the server side meaning you have a faster host the more solid website.all of them use Nginx instead of Apache you can run a website with 10,000 visitors on Nginx with merely 2 MB of RAM Apache uses far more than that for 5 people.
I hope you can do some more research I recommend using this as a research tool as well because I cannot use my own content look at the hosting section on my website there's an FAQ at the top as well just click the FAQ you may also private message me of course if you have any particular questions that I cannot answer here I'm sorry for that.
http://www.blueprintmarketing.com/hosting/ -
I agree with Thomas on the hosting. I haven't personally used Zippy Kid, Pagely, or Presslabs, but I do use WPEngine and Synthesis. I am in the process of migrating 2 more sites over to Synthesis this week.
There are lots of great benefits to host your wordpress on these servers. They are built very specifically for Wordpress and have gotten rid of the bloat of a traditional server. Your sites will load faster, even without a CDN. They keep everything backed up and secure too. Peace of mind is what I always look for in a web host and that is what you get when you host with a team that loves wordpress and only do wordpress.
There is not enough room to cover all the benefits and details. Just look them up and be sure to read the FAQs on each.
-
Thomas thanks again for the information. I took a look at those sites and it looks like webdevstudios does build nice wordpress sites.
Why do you recommend those hosts rather than anyold host? I dont get the reason. We currently use godaddy and are satisfied with their service. Is there some benefit of using a WP host that I am not aware of?
-
well I can give you some very professional companies to hire.
Is an amazing studio they do a lot of incredible work and they start
Reasonable price
A another way is to use 99 designs and build it on a quality framework like Genesis
have looked at WP engines developers link and you will see some very good developers list.
I noticed you are running WordPress with Apache as a server you might want to look into
WP engine, Zippy kid, web synthesis, Pagely & Presslabs they are all dedicated to WordPress and will make an excellent host for your website.
The way I would do it is make the site from Photoshop and have a developer build it.
Either that or find a theme that you like and have it constructed on a high quality framework if you're using WordPress if you're not you can still have it turned into HTML or most other platforms.
However if you want guaranteed quality Webdevstudios did LEXISNEXIS.com & happy cog does Fortune 100 websites mostly. I didn't want to give you the name of the studio that I thought would let you down so I gave you once I know will do well. Web dev studios is much more reasonable, and I would encourage you to give them a try. I currently have a time set up to meet with them and plan on having my site rebuilt by them.
I would also grab the .co of your domain and believe if you could help your rankings.
I hope I have been of help,
Thomas
-
Thanks Thomas and please, we welcome real feedback and that means negative as well The funny part is the guy who designed this for us is a regular on 99designs, but yeah it may be better to see lots of options rather than a few.
Maybe its time for me to think more about a complete redesign (we just built our current page one month ago for $1,250). We aren't really happy with the way it came out we want a more professional feel. Its difficult figuring out who to hire for something like this. Guess thats going a bit off topic for now.
-
Thanks for the feedback Tim. We would love to try to split test though we don't currently have a webmaster that can help us with that and our budget is pretty low (new company, only a couple months old).
-
PS. You might get a lot of more free advice if you go on Twitter and then put #WebDesign then simply ask people for their opinion..
-
I too am not a web designer and if I want to get the same disclaimer
However
I don't understand why you guys are trying to force the social media into the web banner I think that makes it look a lot worse. If anything the social media should be customized to blend with the banner if you're going to put it into the banner or it should be a different part of the site as it is in right below or above.
I would go to use only number three honestly I wouldn't use any of the other ones in my humble opinion.
I agree with the other gentleman I don't like the other ones 12 are really not very well put together in my opinion compared to number three. However I think you should plan the social media world lose it on the banner and just an idea and this is not criticism at all as I think you did a great job with everything maybe you should have a professional have a crack at it it's very inexpensive services below and this is just if you want to go that way not that your work is bad at all.
If you want to know a very inexpensive way to get all these things blended and have multiple different designers take a crack at it 99designs.com and designcrowd.com Will allow you to have professionals make a new banner for you for approximately anywhere from hundred dollars and up. You get more than 30 designs to look at and you don't have to pay if you don't like it.
Please don't think of that I think any of the designs are bad in any way shape or form. However if you want something that looks extremely professional this is my best advice. So it blend and social media. I hope I've been of help to you
sincerely,
Thomas
Second disclaimer. I have dictated all of this on mobile phone so if there's any spelling or glaring grammar errors or words that don't belong where they do please excuse them.
-
Disclaimer: I am not a graphic artist/ designer.
New 1 and 2 seem unremarkable and kind of disappear on the page. New 3 stands out a bit more. I guess I am not clear on what your new logo is. In # 1&2, it seems to be the USA map with arrows and SDR. On 3, there isn't one, unless the grad cap icon is it. #1 actually has both the map and the grad cap.
On 1& 2 you use a sans-serif font on the SDR, but a serif font on the words spelled out. Was that intentional? Nothing wrong with using 2 different fonts in a logo, but going from sans-serif to serif when switching from the initials to the full words seems a bit strange. I personally prefer sans-serif fonts online, but I get the connection between serif and academia for a student targeted ad.
Have you tried swapping the logo with the words spelled out in options #1 and #2. Put the words spelled out on the left and the logo in the center? Even if this looked better, I will still try to get some attention-getting color in there like you did in your current one and #3.
The best way to decide is to run a split test and see what behaviors occur with each one. My guess is that #3 would outperform #1 and 2 simply because it stands out more. This is a perfect thing to split test and keep tweaking until you get the best results.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can the design still be considered adaptive if the URL is different?
I was under the impression our site had a mobile dedicated design, but my developers are telling me we have an adaptive design. The mobile site is set up different and has different content and the url is as follows: www.site.com/MobileView/MobileHome.aspx Can it still be considered adaptive if the URL is not the exact same? Hopefully this make sense and I appreciate anyone's input!
Web Design | | AliMac260 -
Any new tips on how to speed up re-listing after re-design?
A few things around re-designing an older but well performing site for search and retaining/ improving SEO value. Lots of effort has been put into content marketing and optimising individual pages on this site, it has a lot of links coming in from well-respected sites (but the domain name will remain the same so that shouldn't be an issue) so I'm very anxious about how the redesign will effect ranking, although the new site will be far more user friendly, beautiful, responsive where the old one is not and faster to load. Would really like to avoid the search engine drop when the site first goes live if at all possible- One idea on this was to make the new site live on another domain - .co.uk for example, whilst keeping the old site up on the .com for a month or so, then switching the records so the new site is then visible on .com and the .co.uk redirects to it. Does this sound at all sensible?! Also any more advice on how best to ensure the new site will do better, not worse for search is hugely appreciated. We have cut a lot of content to make it more user friendly and easy to find information. We will be making sure all old links are redirected to new site (but as there are fewer pages on new site, will it matter if 5 old URLS point to one new URL for instance?) Also what's the difference between 301 and 302 redirects! Thank you so much in advance, massively appreciated your time!
Web Design | | Emjmoz0 -
Web Design and Development Leads
Friends, Even though we get organic leads related to Web Design and Development we are looking for other sources to buy real time leads related to Web Design and Development. Any pointers are much appreciated. Thank you
Web Design | | INN
Chris0 -
New Website Redesign: Any Design Comments or SEO Suggestions?
Hi! We recently launched our new website after MONTHS of work. Now that it is live, we are looking to fine tune the design and SEO efforts. This is our new website. And for reference, this is our old website. Any and all comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Mike
Web Design | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Looking for feedback on our nonprofit site
I work for a nonprofit org which of course means a low budget and paying out of pocket for things (such as training). Our current website is done by a 3rd party vendor and although it looks nice, we can't make any changes to it without paying for it. (We can only upload documents). I'm wondering if anyone in this group will give their feedback on the site in terms of SEO and recommend a platform that would be relatively easy for a small shop to manage. Our site is www.coastalcommunityfoundation.org Thanks in advance
Web Design | | TinaA0 -
Site Re-Design - Running old XML site map for 301's
Hi all, We are going to launch a new site design for our current e-commerce site. I have taken this opportunity to change some categories due to keyword research and all old categories will be 301ed to best fitting new category. So I have 2 questions about moving stuff over; 1. I read that leaving the old xml site map running for the first week, would help, because this would give crawlers the chance to run through the site and follow the 301s, which would help pass the juice. How true does this sound? 2. I was thinking of re-writing all category and sub category titles, meta descriptions and on page content. The positive of this is loads of fresh content - but doing this all at the same time with the new site launch might see some major dropping in search ranking. I've identified our top traffic keyword terms/pages, would it be more wise to leave these pages, and change the others, or would the total new fresh burst have a better impact? Cheers
Web Design | | ToxicFox0 -
How can the Web site designer and the SEO strategist work together peacefully?
The organization I work for has decided to re-design or re-develop the existing company Web site. My part in this project is to come up with new features to add to the site, as well as making the site SEO-friendly (copywriting, link-building, keyword research, etc.). I don’t know a thing about Web site design, coding, format, etc., and I guess I will have to work with a designer on this project. How would I go about finding a Web site designer? Should they have some SEO knowledge? How much designer, coding and site structure knowledge should I have? And how do we not infringe on one another as we work together? (Sorry so many questions.)
Web Design | | Obie0