New Website for Visiting Angels Franchise

Try to depart from the current design - its relevance has run it's course. The lack of color, seems so early 90's website - and seems more like a utility than a home health service.

Advice: 1) Color will be your best friend for drawing in the audience. Notice in the quick mocked-up attachment, that color adds energy and life to your clients meta-message (in other words, Visiting Angels is trying to convey warmth, caring, vibrancy). You have a lot of potential in making the design more contemporary (directionally similar to the attachment).

2) Level one (homepage) navigation could be presented in the banner. This treatment level 2 and 3 page templates. The banner could be used to establish a "hero" image - which in the case of the mockup, is the caring giving relationship. From a superficial standpoint, there are people who will respond to this type of image and connect emotionally. Other visitors will see it as fulfilling a heuristic (an expectation - or rule of thumb). In other words, those visitors would think, every website like this should have this type of care-giving photo. In any event, this helps you get their attention.

3) Be careful not to present content as you would on a printed brochure. People scan on the web, versus read large dense areas of content. Successful websites use the "inverted pyramid" style of writing See these guidelines for advice http://usability.coi.gov.uk/theme/writing-content/structuring-content-for-the-Web.aspx

4) Use the Fat Footer concept - and present awards & affiliations that engender trust and credibility. See some approaches to fat footers in this pattern collection http://ui-patterns.com/explore/collections/fat-footer

5) FAQ's are excellent trust markers for visitors - however you need a different method of presenting. You may want to group in a series of topical tabs, versus using the anchor technique.

6) Make certain the Services page tells a story - versus a narrative of what services are provided. The idea of presenting a banner - to depict a service offering (a visceral emotional photo) is a better connector than words.

Overall advice: Persuade your audience to emotionally connect to this website through providing a contemporary look and feel. Even though the target audience may be elderly, remember that the decisions for elder care are typically an extended family decision. If the site looks dated, and lacks color and warmth, younger extended family may make assumptions of the quality of care and facilities. Some of that is sub-conscious thought processes - versus what happens in the visitors logical mind (but it may lead to objections for engaging in reading the website)

Partner with a designer - update the sites look and feel -- your client will love you for it...

Hope this helps.

Good:

readable large logo

engaging and descriptive photograph

consistent color

Not Good:

boring

weak layout. there is no allowance to make distinct and brief selling points. One column encourages long winded narrative that nobody reads

Also one column layout makes for long lines and thus very difficult to read

small type. Your target are children of people in their 70's and more, who are likely to be over 50 themselves. So larger type is easier to read

Services listing seems like a menu

A logo with exactly FOUR typefaces!

very important selling points (24 hours and Nurse) hidden away on bottom line

logo with two slogans (one above one below)

truncated menu background (feels like you pasted a white block with logo over the menu bar)

very weak typography. Specially next to photo

unnecessary (contrived?) "fade" element that is inconsistent with overall design

FIXES:

take "Americas Choice.." from logo and make it the main headline next to photo

make graphic distinctions between main layout elements (for example a blue background to the right column

move 24 hours and Nurse to the right column and make then stand out

broaden your color palette a little

make the main text two or three columns with headings

This needs a lot of work. It reminds of something that would've been designed 10 years ago. If your target segment is seniors you need to:

a) Have a bigger header/call to action somewhere. Older people can't see print as well as we do. Look at an ad for prescription medicines, there's always huge headers/graphics etc. The details are in fine print.

b) The top navigation menu needs to be brighter/bigger.

c) Too texty.

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I think that you should try something a bit more modern, as well as the text under How do I Get Started is illegible. Also you should make sure that you are using the logos of the foundations according to there logo guide, as I don't think that they would be very happy with it the way it is currently, as a type of watermark. I think the menu is also rather lost, as it looks rather small and insignificant.