Archives.gov Redesigned Home Page

I like your use of color and the 5 column layout. I have attached some notes with feedback on what I would change. Hope it helps, Keep up the great work!

The design is getting there. It has vibrant colors, it is organized, it feels trustworthy. But, as Coco Chanel said once: "When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on" (http://www.iwise.com/lLceR). Based on this quote I would:

1 - Get rid of the two gray/blue lines. The don't add anything to the design. They have no purpose. These lines are actually making your page busy and less attractive.

2 - As most of designers suggested on this tread: place the connect with us links at the footer. I would suggest this website for the icons: http://www.iconfinder.net They have very colorful and interesting icons for social network.

3 - Left align the contents of the boxes. It is harder for the human brain to organize information that doesn't have an invisible line suggesting continuation or structure.

4 - Unify the photos in the boxes. The photos look too different from each other: they have different look and feel. On this website, the designer gave a unified look to his thumbnails by making them monochromatic: http://www.mikemcquade.com/ These guys here (link bellow) gave the thumbs a very thick border and and a subtle drop shadow (bottom of the page): http://www.saraverochepinocchio.it/

5 - I don't think you need buttons at the base of the boxes as you have now. Again "... always take off the last thing you put on." Since each box has a line dividing the contents from the "explore" button, get rid of the button and make the whole base of the box, under the line, a color that slightly darker than the box background. Ex: on the green box the base would be a darker green.

6 - Make the labels more significant. Everything says "explore". Ask your copywriter to come up with nicer wording.

8 - Put a splash of colors on "News and Events" and the columns underneath it. The top of the website is so colorful in comparison to the rest of the page. You should try placing some very simple 2D icons for each column underneath News and events. Be careful or the final effect could be a disaster.

9 - The woman with the eyeglass is kind of creepy. I would find another picture for that one.

Cheers!

overall it is a decent design, however,

when i land to a site like this, i really need to know what the site is about- the about statement is missing and so is the About Us link.

People from everywhere in the world would visit the site- you should mention that this national archive is about USA.. especially when you say "explore our nation's history.." one would wonder- which nation.

logo and national archives text on top looks cut off from bottom.

you can make the description text "explore our nation's history.." a bit different in color than the heading "Research our collections'

among all the section colors, our locations orange is the brightest one and attracts the most attention- if that the idea, it is fine otherwise you can make it just a bit saturated.

Well finally looks like the emphasis is more on the content which is the way to go.

The minute somebody reads the word archives means huge collections historical data.

The main question is how do users find what they want in three separate scenarios

scenario - 1: When users know exactly what they want. This is where a good search comes in handy. In my experience generally; only less than 15% of users fall under this scenario usually. But looking at your contents and your kind of users (people who are interested in this kind of information) 75% of users fall under this scenario.

scenario - 2: when users know approximately what they want but are not sure. For this you must have a well categorized list. Categories of content classification, dates or time period, and all other key words. The solution may be to let the users tag content. This way one does not categorizing them in way the others don't understand and one can avoid a lot of effort on creating them. Tag are user generated and the content get categorized automatically with terms that are more relevant to the users. Generally more than 75% of users fall under this scenario usually. But again looking at your contents and your kind of users (people who are interested in this kind of information) 25% of users fall under this scenario.

scenario - 3: curious visitors who do not want your content. And only less than 5% of users fall under this scenario usually.

Currently your site caters to the users who fall under the 3rd scenario more than 2nd. Thus you are now catering to the wrong group of audience.

My final recommendation would be for you to focus on

1. Search and its criteria, explicitly displayed in the center of the first row

2. Display content that rises up from the pile. This is usually what people want and you can make it easy for them to access it. You can do that by having a prioritized list of they most searched, popular, downloaded, highly rated, frequently accessed, etc content. This will form different boxes in the second row.

3. Then ofcourse you can show what you have here as the third and forth row of information.

Look of the site comes after this in usefulness. Hope this helps

See the notes on the image for my full praise and critisicm, but overall, this is a fantastic looking site

Marcio's review is fantastic and he's covered pretty much everything I was thinking.

Points I particularly agree with and were some of the first things I thought of when looking at your new design:

1. Left align the text in the boxes and also you don't need those extra buttons at the bottom of the boxes and the line making the bottom of the box separate from the rest. Make the entire box a button - a simple right arrow largish in the bottom right hand corner could indicate alone that the box has a link.
2. Unify the photos in the boxes and the one with the girl and the eye glass is definitely creepy.
3. Include some of the colour from the top of the page in the bottom area to unify the design.

I do really like your new logo but again I don't like it when it's not contained within a square as it feels an unbalanced crop which makes better balanced visual sense when contained - I think it worked much better in your last concept.

I have put notes on the image for a few extra tweaks I noticed...

Its not bad, but it could be better... My thoughts:

Pros:

• Good color scheme, check
• Rounded corners, check
• Visible search box, check

Thoughts: As some people noted, the website doesn't quite "get the point across". In addition to adding some flavor text or a mission statement, what if you tried this? Limit the boxes to 3 or 4. 5 boxes leaves too little white space. Then use the boxes to illustrate why people need the national archives:

1. Research History
2. Record Retrieval - don't specify just veterans. Its better to give ideas such as "veteran records", "birth/death records", etc.
3. Resources - again, don't specify just give examples. You are basically summarizing the landing page for this button.
4. Reproductions, books and gifs? I was trying to find something with an R. "Shop online" breaks the mood.

Below that, add another tier with popular website tools:

1. Top requested articles
2. Facility locator form
3. Upcoming Events
4. Support the archives?

That will give people a better idea of why they are there, as well as some other services that the archives offers.

Last suggestion: The top right links should probably be "Our Locations", "About Us", "Contact Us" instead of "Blogs" and "Bookmark". You have more than enough blog/bookmark/social links under "Connect", and "locations" should be readily available on every page.

Good luck - you have your work cut out for you!

The design and purpose is very clear and organized. This site will appeal to a broad audience and the navigation seems to be well thought out.

Explore Buttons Contrasting colors might be better for the explore buttons or maybe using a consistent color for all of them. Try matching it to the dark blue background.

Search Box I would try using rounded corners and making the input text area a little smaller and change the color of the Go button to match the dark blue background.

Social Icons These seem a little out of place to me. Also with the popularity of sites these days it might not be necessary to have the names next to them. I would try laying them out horizontally and putting them above the nav links at the top right.

News and Events It would be nice to see this expanded a little and contain more information. A brief synopsis of the news instead of just the expanded title and maybe it could scroll a few more news items. This would make the front page a little more dynamic and give the user more than just links and navigation.

Bottom Section Columns There is nothing wrong with "whitespace" but the screen real estate could be better utilized by expanding the columns on the left.

Overall I think this is a great design and the colors and layout are very appealing. Well done!

I am surprised to see another concept! I hope your clients approve one soon, you have been working very hard on this project! This one looks very good. Here are my notes:

I love the simplicity of the design. Easy navigation. Great colors.

Hi Viderity, this is a nice design. It is easy to navigate through and is appealing to the eye. Here are my thoughts about making the site better:

1. Better alignment. That is really the only thing I would say is bad about your design. You should keep all your information(except for the news feed and footer info) within the 5 column footer you set up. I would suggest moving the connect with us links to the footer and put all the other information under one of the 5 columns.

2. Organize your footer. I feel that a strong footer that complements the overall site layout is necessary in any great design. Right now our footer seems a little out of place to me. There is no place for a double footer here. I would suggest trying to keep it on one line.

Overall good design.

Overall I like the design. The navigation is well designed, great use of colors and good typography. The only problem I have with the design is that the bottom area takes up so much space it grabs my attention more than the navigation "boxes".

Also, having worked on government sites before, I would be concerned that the homepage leaves little room for content. If the client decides they want more content on the homepage in the future, the design leaves little room for adjustment without destroying the continuity of the design.

I also noticed that you are using mostly rounded corners, yet the search box is squared. For consistency you might want to consider styling it with rounded corners as well.

This is lovely! I think this is a great design for your audience, which I would assume to be mostly students & seniors (probably?) who need a clear simple page to navigate. The colours are great, the layout is easy to follow and understand.

The only thing I would change is to have your second row of columns line up with the top row of coloured columns. You'll then need to make another thin row, for the social icons. That would be my suggestion.

Good work!

As others have said, your buttons need to be more than just "explore." Use something more compelling like:

• Begin research
• View records
• Browse resources
• Find nearest location
• Start shopping

This one is really amazing. corporate and creative. =] best of luck.

Hi Viderity

This is a huge improvement on this layout judging by the current website. Even though the lack of a grid layout is the main problem. Follow my tips and i hope they could help you. I'm looking forward for a newer version of this layout.

Fine

design is good as showing important section or services at very start of the page. please make it everything in a proper margin from above to bottom.. you can play with footer section too its feeling very dull according to header .. as it is not balancing..

it will look great if you do some changes

Generally, great redesign!

1. The central alignment makes it more difficult to read. I would stick to right alignment.
2. Contrast - it would be a good idea to change the color of the Explore button so that it stands out. Also, you could also rename the button, you could change the name of the button for each section, something like shop for the online shop or find us for our locations...
3. news and events - I don't quite get how this will work, how does one navigate throught the news?
4. search box - from usability point of view, it would be better if the button is simply called Search and not Go
5. footer - if the news and events section was bigger and there was more content, the footer would look OK, but now there is this problem with the alignment of the sections in the footer and the colored boxes.