FresherImage Design Marketplace

Hi Jason,

I like you idea of connecting 2 separate models (contest + template marketplace) but you still have to do a lot of thinking and 'mockuping' before taking the crayons out.

STRATEGY:

1. You can't talk to 2 groups at once because in the end you will convince none

2. IMHO you should target mostly buyers because this is where the bacon is. Designers will follow because they need the money and they will like the idea of 'reselling' their work which was unfortunate and did not win.

3. Homepage has to be simple - just the opposite to what you have at the moment. You will have only second to convey the message to prospect clients and to convince them to try. Nobody will be able to notice anything apart from the MAIN MESSAGE in these few seconds.

WIREFRAMES

1. Don't waste time on design before you know what you say, how you say it and where you put it.

2. Shell you need easy tool to make wireframes use Balsamiq Mockups http://www.balsamiq.com/ Online version is free.

3. Have a wireframe for each and every screen in your system before you even start thinking about design.

4. ask the CF community to review them. This way most people will not comment on colours and fonts but on the layout, data presentation and overall message.

USABILITY

1. Sketch wireframes with usability & user experience in mind. Always ask yourself what users will need at the certain stage, what is the most important information they need to know.

2. Everything has to be simple & self-evident The rule is if they don't get it they don't use it :)

3. Do simple usability testing with your friends and other poeple who know nothing about your system. Ask them to do simple thing and listen to what they say.

4. Try to build a barebone first. Don't put every nice-to-have feature in the first stage. You can always add them later in next releases. Believe me that most of the cool features built in the first stage are never used.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers!

Michael (user experience designer & strategist)

To mee the homepage defiantly feels a bit too static. This is going to be a website which is going to be completely community driven, with new content being published very often (hopefully). With so much community generated content being produced you have a lot of potential to make a website that is 'alive' with data.

To me, looking at this homepage I get the impression that this website is trying to sell me a service and one which does not change that often.

Think about the content that is coming into your website from your users and think of ways to visualise it in a useful way to help make your users more productive and to also encourage them to interact.

Take a look at freelancer.com, 99designs.com (has room for improvement), themeforest.net: all of these websites use their home page as a way of summarising/displaying recent activities . Ideas like 'Recent Items', 'Weekly Features', 'Latest Featured Projects' and 'Latest Projects' are themes that you will see recurring on the home page of websites like this. Features like this also 'tickle the ego' of the producer of the content as they get to see their creation/content on the homepage (think of the 'picture of the day' idea employed successfully by deviantart).

So to sum up my thoughts, bring the site to life! Your website will be swimming with data, show it to us...

it needs a lot of work, it's not polished, the menu looks bad, the header feels empty and inappropriate. The left side bar with all the links needs some design to.

It's a lot of content and you should start with some wireframing from scratch.

I don't think a designer created the design for this page it's like someone took bits and pieces from the web form various designs and they don't match.

Hi Jason,

I agree with Lonut and I think you need some wire-framing from scratch so once you set with your actual requirement then It won't take much time to polish the designs.

I just click through your website design and I think you have a great idea of design contest where a designer have scope to participate in design competition and simultaneously selling his designs. I think if this idea executed well then it could be really a good place to work.

Following few of websites done nicely and good place to work:

http://inkd.com/ https://www.crowdspring.com/ http://wooshii.com/

I observed that you don't have much going on on the home page of your website, however, it's not done aesthetically so it's look crowed and boring, if you check inkd.com, it have a lots of things going on but still I am comfortable to scroll and visit the website just because of visual.

As you know the fact of window shopping, we are habitual to get tempted with the outer look of showroom and starting doing window shopping and even start purchasing something so Inkd give that kind of experience to me.

you really need serious work on your architecture and visuals.

Look to see some good revisions!

The previous reviews have said good things to keep in mind...probably better than what I can offer here, but I will offer my feedback anyway.

The first thing that jumps out is that the page does not move as the browser changes sizes. It is stuck on the left side. I think that contributes to my initially thinking that it is a basic, static site.

What also contributed to that feel was all the text on the left sidebar. Another review mentioned getting rid of this in hopes of increasing space for content, to which I give my nod of approval.

Overall, the graphic element of the website needs some serious work. Besides the images with the funny girl Bee and the previews at the bottom, there are no images. You could spruce up the background with almost anything.

The rounded corners are needing to be consistent throughout the site. There are square and round all mixed in together without any reason.

I think this was mentioned, but the texts above the template previews need to be centered over the content. Also, did you intentionally only capitalize the first word of each title there?

The footer section is also a work-in-progress. It seems to draw my eye more than you might intend. Consider a darker background to separate it from the content.

I hope some of this helps.

There's a lot wrong with this, although it's got some basic things right. It's the kinda place that's too hard to work forward from because you've worked details without your broad strokes being solid yet.

Biggest feedback would be none of your typography goes with the rest and the second two pages completely change the tone and confuse me entirely.

If you want to go with the community designed thing, it could be pretty awesome to start like craigslist - completely naked… and only shiny up the marketing for the contest.

There's a lot of content, and by trying to correct little parts of this design you risk sacrificing the usability and community side of the site.

The homepage is just too crowded. People, and especially designers are already used to certain standards of "web 2.0" desing - clean, big fonts, etc.

Check out web creme for some inspiration.

Hi Jason. It's really nice, although I have couple of suggestions.

1. Align your elements to each other, it's very important.
2. The menu looks isolated (in the header), try to change its' gradient and stick it to the header's bottom.
3. The gray area at the top is empty, move the "create account | credit prices" to there.
4. I'd say space up your left column
5. Improve your typography
6. The logo doesn't fit the idea of the design. I'd say change the logo's font.

Good luck, Adam.

the logo is 2 in the left the site have no contrast in the content the buttons in the top is nice the login button is not nice it should be aliened to the credit prices side

i guess you need some more contrast in the page shadows and stuff , but the layout is nice

The colours are quite dull, you should have less grey. maybe have more splashes of orange or the green of the logo.

Hello,

There is just one thing I would suggest and that is I think the header (the gray part) and the footer are a bit too plain and needs some jazzing up.

Also the

I like the "Buy and sell templates" banner and the two sign up buttons beneath it and also the font used is nice and modern.

Overall I think it just needs a few tweaks here and there.