I appreciate the design isn't done yet, but I can only review it "as it is".

I have to say, as this is your third attempt, and all three are equally weak, it may be time to consider the input of another designer to try and expand the ideas a little, as from what you've come out with so far I get the impression you're a little stuck. You're basically sticking to a layout which I feel isn't working.

First off, the navbar. There's a hideous chunky green line and then buttons clipped on top with quite a strong gradient. The whole thing really looks kinda ugly.

You also have a big problem in that you clearly have no distinguishing colour scheme going on here. You've got green buttons at the bottom which are a different green from the navbar, and then you've also got an odd blue CTA in the middle. There's no connection between those colours, there's also no connection between them and the logo which is another shade of green.

To make matters worse, the photoshop-trigger-happy buttons in the middle are another three different colours which also don't at all fit in with the rest of the design. Put simply, you've clearly given little/no thought whatsoever to one of the most crucial elements of web design.

Secondly, the big boxes in the middle. They're too big, and there's too many effects on them. Additionally, the text is all mis-aligned - and as I've said, the colours are just ugly and ill fitting with the rest of the design.

The text beneath is another problem. The alignment again is dodgy and I can't think for a second why you've made one text area wider than the other.

Generally, two big areas of web design, colour and layout, have all but been given very little thought here and the result is a very muddled up, messy design that fails to capture the imagination. It fails to look modern, intuitive, and classy. To be honest, it looks like the kinda thing people churn out of Frontpage, the professional look just isn't there.

I hope you do not take any offence at all to any of this, I do just tell it how it is and give my honest opinion - sometimes people don't like it! But at least this way you can see the mistakes you're making that you might not otherwise see :)

So my suggested steps for you would be:

1. Develop a good colour scheme consisting of 5/6 colours. You should have colours for text, headers, highlighted elements, buttons etc.
2. Get out those guides on Photoshop and USE THEM. You really need to whip them out and use them to help arrange the layout of your page and align everything correctly.
3. Use of images. You've got one image on the page. Is this enough?
4. Stylized elements. When you style elements, be very careful and try and be as subtle as possible. When people get too carried away it just ends up looking a bit silly.
5. Fonts. Your typography needs some additional thought here. I feel the current fonts are a little clunky.
6. I suggest a "before and after" method for advertising the product. Telling me it'll look better than an eBook - so what? SHOW ME! That will impress people a lot more if you can immediately show them the side-by-side difference.

Good luck and keep going!5.

Hi Richard,

Props for tackling a landing page. I’ve continually been optimizing my own websites for higher conversion rates and it’s a hell of an uphill battle, so I feel for your goal here.

I’ve had a look at the previous revisions and get the impression you keep moving towards the safe-zone (i.e. plain white background), whilst not addressing some of the more fundamental issues.

On to my comments…

Layout

Overall, the elements are more or less where we’d expect such items to be with current landing page trends. This is no way a bad thing (probably even a good one), but the major issue here are margins / padding and adherence to a consistent structure.

When I refer to a consistent structure, I mean such “starter” frameworks as the 960 or Square grid systems. Both are available with PSD templates (as well as other formats):

960 Grid System - http://960.gs/ Square Grid - http://thesquaregrid.com/

This will greatly help with your current design, which is leaning towards a 3 column layout. If I can give you a really helpful tip; is to take screenshots of popular websites and paste them in one of these grid templates to see how well utilized they are. Visually, it’s so much easier on the eyes. In terms of programming, it’s much easier to handle (as the structure can be re-used across all pages), which in turn drives the cost down slightly.

General Design

Color – This was one of the things I liked about your first design. You had your “brand” green as a base and then used a warm analogic color palette for the USP (Light Orange / Orange / Red). This more or less goes out the window on this latest design, whereby you have:

• 5 Different Greens
• 2 Different Blues
• … and Pink

What complicates matters, is that the greens vary across saturation & hues. Keeping saturation fixed will greatly help you achieve a more consistent look (i.e. note: not brightness). And if you can, reduce the Blues & Pinks to a single color which you’ll use to draw attention where needed (i.e. CTA’s / USP Text).

Style – This is something I thought you did better on your first design, i.e. keeping it simple. The glass buttons, drop shadows, outer glow, gradients can in my opinion get significantly reduced. These are things we used to do 5-10 years ago, and no one is forcing you to get in line with the trends. But being in line, communicates that you’re up-to-date (and indirectly, so is your product). Something simple with a soft gradient would be more appropriate in my opinion, here are some good examples:

http://houseofbuttons.tumblr.com/

Typography – Part of the issue here is the padding/margins and positioning I described before. The rest is quite fine, although you can benefit from a little more line-height to let your text breath some more. I’ve put individual comments on the screenshot itself. Also, I'd make sure you're not getting too fancy with special fonts (i.e. cufon, sIFR), you do want maximum compatibility, especially with institutional/corporate clients.

I've gone ahead and also added other notes to the actual design.

I hope this is helpful and please let me know if you have any questions.

Cheers

Noel

I love whole design especially the logo!

The pink block should end as a arrow as well. Currently seems to hit a wall rather than move ahead with better results!