Web Design Review - SummerFestWindsor.org

With the Windsor Ontario Summer Fest (previously known as Freedom Festival), right around the corner, I figured I'd give everyone a quick review of their web design. Overall the site isn't too bad. It's easy on the eyes, informative and very clean however, there are a few things about it that I would probably changed had I done the web design.

  

Judging by the copyright, the general look and feel of the site was designed back in 2009. It's been updated each year according to the dates and events of the Summer Fest however the main design of the site is unchanged. I really like the header of the site. The image rotates between a few different images every 10 seconds or so. What I don't like about the header is the fact that the summer fest logo wasn't saved in a high resolution. Just cheapens the site a bit. I also don't like the navigation links. My next big criticism would have to be the navigation links. Using images as navigation links is fine as long as all the images are saved in high resolution. The images are clearly saved in a low resolution and the white text is sometimes hard to read on the burgundy background.

As far as the details and information on the site. I'd probably have a daily schedule of what's happening. They have a list of general information that's coming up. I'd probably have a calendar on the homepage where each date is a link that opens to a new window with information about what's gin on that day.

My last two problems are the links for the OLG website and the Facebook group. First of all, I understand that the OLG is probably a big sponsor, but to have a link to their website in the main content section of the Summer Fest website just doesn't seem right. As for the Facebook group, why not change that to a Facebook page? Also, instead of having a link that says "Follow us on Facebook", why not add a "like" button to the site or possibly use one of Facebook's many cool ad-ons.

As I said in the opening, overall the web design of the site isn't too bad. I'd just really like to see a calendar on the front page, removal of the OLG link from the main content of the site and more integrated Facebook options.

Web Design Review - ArcheryBuff.com

I had lunch with a friend of mine who I went to college with last week and we started talking about what we've been doing lately. He told me he's moved on from being a web programmer to being someone who designs Blackberry themes. He mentioned that he had started a site a couple years ago about archery and he asked me to check it out and give it a review. Keep in mind that my friend is more of a web developer than a designer!

As far as the design goes, I'm really not a fan of this site at all. The good news for my friend is that he's one of the few Windsor web designers who'd focused on archery so the site does fairly well traffic wise.

When I wrote him back this week about the site, I told him I thought it could be much better. I thought he should get a cleaner, less busy logo and header. I also think the site should be a different color, I've never been crazy about that color brown for a site. I understand he was going for a forest/nature look, but there are ways to do that without making the site look so dark.

I would make his links a different color than the text (both are black right now, could get confusing) and lastly I'd make the Adsense ads blend in with the rest of the site.

He may have me re-do the design of the site while he works on the web development side of it, so if that happens I'll update this post!