Website for new technology service

Hi Richard,

I like your clean and simple design. It supports the hierarchy and looks structured for a reader who will know which way to read through it.

Unfortunately there are some serious problems which I will try to list below in no specific order:

1. What is it? I read the whole page twice, then your concept description you put here on CF for us and I still don't know what it is. Your prospect customers will not spend 1/10 of this time to trying to understand it.

2. You have a link to How it works page but if you need users to visit this page in order to understand it your concept will most likely fail as they will never get there. First page has to explain the concept.

3. IMHO every project should be possible to explain in one short sentence, so called One-liner like: 'free encyclopaedia that everyone can edit'. If you can't do it your concept will most likely fail as people will not understand it and they will not investigate further.

4. Science behind the Letters does not work as a good tagline. It does not explain anything and is not promising any value.

5. When user does not understand the idea he/she will not read Successes page. Also why should they read it anyway? They are not interested in your successes but in ways of solving their own problems :)

6. 'Read smart is:' section does not tell what it is. Two of 3 points there try to explain Who is if for so maybe the H2 should say Read smart is for: On the other hand 3rd point says something completely different. Users will be confused.

7. Which is more important to you? Learn more or Try it now? I would say that Try it now (Upload you file) is far more significant for your conversions. Of course if the homepage does the job of explaining the concept.

Hope this helps.

Keep up the good work.

Cheers!

Michael

(user experience designer & strategist)

Looking at this page at first glance, I can not for the life of me tell what your company is about. I only understood more from reading your copy which you used to introduce your concept here on CF.

I really think you need to go back to the drawing board to come up with a better concept to better communicate your product/company.

Working harder, I can see that you have the arrow blocks starting off with 'Your Content' leading to using 'Read Smart' which then leads to Improved Results. This needs to be reworked so it is much clearer that using Read Smart is the link between their content and getting improved results.

In terms of the technicalities of various parts of your design, I know you have said that it isn't finished but even in terms of putting up a rough concept, there are lots of inconsistencies all over the place in it. I've put a few design notes on...

Your design focuses way too much on claims (ie the "benefits") and feels very vague. Like a good sales pitch, your home page should explain features and benefits of your product. Right now I'm only seeing benefits. The problem with that is it just leaves me thinking of it way too much as an advertisement, and with no real sense of interest in the actual product.

You need to answer the "how" question a little. For your main heading try something more like: "Increase response rates and donations by ____".

If this were a banner ad, I might expect to only see the claim. But on a products home page I expect to clearly see what the product is, what it is for, and even how it works.

Just by looking over your design I have no idea whether ReadSmart is an online subscription to something, a printed curriculum or material, a web application, a piece of desktop software, etc.

Especially where you have "ReadSmart is" and then a bunch of claims, but no real explanation of what it is.

As far as the design aspect, I could pick apart a few things - and I will in my notes - but honestly you're more detrimental issue is the presentation of your content at this point.

Richard

I really like the overall feel of the site, it's easy to navigate and READ what you are putting across, there are a few tweaks that I would make, just to add more oomph...

See notes...

So that's it really, I am sure that others have picked up on more, however overall I think it's a nice clean and easy to use design...

Good Luck!

I am not going to say very much because you already have some nice reviews on this one and there is not much left for me to say. I did not understand what services you provide either.

You have some design elements that or nice but I don't know if it's for the right purpose because I don't know what your service is.

The 3 arrows in the middle gives you a bad felling because you go from yellow to red. Usually red is for danger, don't touch etc, you could inverse that and you could go from red to yellow and then to green. And the shadow in the back of the buttons it's very ugly.

Hello there,

At first look I like the website, the green header takes my attention, but when I stay longer and take a closer look you have some serious design issues:

1. No header expand possibility

2. yellow > orange bars really not so cool

3. Nav link hard to see there

4. Too Small content Zone and doesn't say what's this project about

I will use notes to highlight the points above!

You have lots of review if you follow just a 2 or 3, your design will rock!!!
Good Luck my friend

While this is a very clean and appealing design. It does not really show what Read Smart is.

The middle progress bar (orange - red middle bar) could definitely use a little revising in order to tell the story a bit more.

It sounds like the ReadSmart app/product is kind of a black box for improving copy based on proprietary knowledge.

So why not show a document icon "Your Content" going into a black box or widget labeled ReadSmart and then show the document icon coming out of the black box with a list of improvements * high response rate * better comprehension * retention etc.

I might also consider uping the size of this middle graphical explanation of ReadSmart as the top rotating area is too big for what it is delivering (headline + contextual graphics)

basically you have almost all of the correct elements just need to work on telling the story a bit better.

best Jon

One thing that jumps out at me when I view this page is I don't know what the service is. I can see it's about response rates, but are we talking about emails newsletters? Postal letters? Website Landing Pages? Adverts? The tag line doesn't sounds goo but doesn't tell you anything. You need to make it 100% crystal clear what your product is.

Design wise this is a really nice start, however I think there are a few small things that could be tidied up to make it looked smarter/ more polished.

So, I would:

• remove the drop shadows from the arrows. Where the shadows overlap there is extra darkness which looks a bit sloppy.
• where the orange/ red arrows meet the green the colours clash a bit. I would add a 1/ 2 pixel white border at the top to reduce the fighting between the colours.
• the layout uses a nice simple three column structure, but the margins are all misaligned making things look untidy. Keep vertical alignment consistent to give the page more structure.
• I would make the 'learn more' links towards the bottom of the page more 'linky'. Either turn them into buttons/ underline them so it's 100% clear what they are for.
• Maybe you could consider adding numbers to the arrows. I assume the arrows mean there are three steps so maybe numbering them would show how little work is needed.

Besides these I think you have all the important things covered and with some tweaks should be good to go.