30 Minute Redesign: Week 66 Vote
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Week 47: Gap Chile
This week I will be redesigning: Gap Chile.
In the space of 5 minutes I can identify some of the key strengths and weaknesses of this design, and sketch out a mockup.
STRENGTHS:
- This is one of the best designed websites that I’ve had to redesign. Overall it’s very professional, clean and clear.
- The color palette is easy on the eyes, the logo is professional and there is amply use of white space.
- The menu is clear and easy to navigate, the active state for the ‘home’ links helps users know where they are within the site’s structure.
WEAKNESSES:
- The main issue is that it’s unclear what the site does without searching through the homepage content. It lacks any kind of prominent welcome/explanation message to explain what the company does.
- The main textual content uses a very small font. Whilst their is visual hierarchy established through the larger headings, the main text is tiny and hard to read.
- The header is attractive, but far too large. It’s size means that the content is pushed down the page too far.
- The site lacks calls to action. If some were introduced the scheme should encourage more business.
My Redesign
As always, I was limited by the 30 minute time-frame, but I tried to improve upon several of Gap Chile’s features, adding a few design flourishes and a clearer layout that promoted content over wasted space:
MY AIMS FOR THE REDESIGN:
- I reduced the height of the header in order to bring up the vital content and reduced scrolling.
- I introduced a large, prominent welcome area that helps explain what the site provides.
- I used larger typography, and made areas such as the testimonials more prominent.
- I introduced calls to action that should help encourage user sign ups.
Before/After:
Here is a quick comparison between the original design and my 30 minute redesign. Sure, my design could be more polished, but I believe that a lot of the basic elements have been improved upon, creating a more pleasant browsing experience.
How and Why To Enter Redesign Saturdays
You can have the chance to have your website redesigned in next weeks post. All you need to do is leave a comment to this post with your website address and why you think it needs a redesign.
The Benefits of Getting Your Site Redesigned Include:
- Most obviously – a FREE redesign job!
- Your website gets exposure to PSDFAN’s thousands of readers
- You understand how to improve your website. This isn’t just a redesign, it’s a lesson in design principles.
- You will get emailed the .psd of your redesign and can do whatever you want with it!
NOTE: I can only accept sites with English content, as foreign language websites are simply too hard for me to work with.
So please, leave a comment today for a chance to have your website redesigned next week!
About the Author:
Tom is the founder of PSDFAN. He loves writing tutorials, learning more about design and interacting with the community. On a more interesting note he can also play guitar hero drunk with his teeth.
19 Comments:
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This is awesome.
By following your work every week, i get a better idea of the how-to of web design.
Yet a little detail saddened me: the grey color. The original site is very clear and net, and the subtle cloud effect plus the blue and white theme give it a very attractive and refreshing look. And i feel that the grey you added cuts off with the original ambiance of the site.
Yet again, good job.
Hi Cedric. Thanks for the kind words and constructive criticism. I actually agree about the gray area. I think a good alternative could be really light blue, or possibly even white, just using dividers to help differentiate between blocks of content. These are the small things that I’d focus on had I had more time
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Both old design and your redesign looks great and profesional tom, i like it very much
Thanks a lot! I really hope that you’ll submit your site again for this week’s poll, I’d love to redesign it.
ok Tom please list my site on your next week poll again. thanks
Will do! Good luck for this week.
What I like about this redesign is that it was less about reconstructing the aesthetic of the site – which was already very strong – and more about making the message of the organisation abundantly clear. Just the simple idea of having a map graphic to emphasise which country the site’s talking about is really quite clever.
I think I agree with Cedric about the grey outer boxes; that’s one aspect I’d put up for discussion.
Incidentally Tom, after your piece on typography last week I can see you’ve put some thought into choosing the font for the large heading and using bold elements to highlight the significant words!
That’s totally what I was going for. Like you said, the aesthetic of the original site was pretty spot on, so I was trying more to realign the elements and clarify the message. I’m glad you noticed the typography efforts too!
Thank you very much Tom!! We love it and we agree with all that you say in strengths and weakness. We recognise that was not an easy task to do, with not many information and clear website.
Can’t wait to receive the psd file and start to work on it
Good job.
Thank you
GapChile Team.
Thanks Paulina, I’m really glad you liked my redesign! I’ve just emailed you the .psd file, I hope that you get to implement at least parts of it.
Wow, when I saw the first image I thought thaaaat was your actual redesigned concept! This post just goes to show how what seems like a good design can be vastly improved. As mentioned before though, I think the biggest lesson here is making the message of what the site is about right in people’s faces so they can’t miss it
Thanks a lot! It’s actually refreshing to work with designs that are already attractive sometimes, as it really makes you think more about usability and purpose.
Hello,
I am looking after a non-profit organization website. It’s using a free template and it’s not really good. I am planning to redesign it anyway, or searching for another free template, but i thought a helpful hand of a professional designer (I’m just a programmer) would be great. And as a non-profit’s, we can’t spend money on designs…
I hope the language of the website is not a problem (Lithuanian).
The link : http://www.kljo.lt (Klaipeda’s liberal youth organization)
Thanks!
Thanks for the suggestion fosron. However, unfortunately I can’t enter your site in this week’s poll as all suggested sites should be in English. It’s just too difficult for me to properly gauge a site’s purpose/content without being able to read it.
Hmm, well there’s Google Translate (it’s possible to translate Lithuanian), and if you had any questions, i’d be really glad to answer them.
Hi Fosron. I’m afraid I can’t really bend the rules on this one. Unless your site has a prominent translation feature built in I can’t include it.
I would love to have you redesign the website I made for my school. It’s address is http://www.octaihomeschool.com
I would really appreciate the redesign because I have very little experience with wed design and would love someone else’s opinion.
Thanks,
David
Sure! I’ll just go and include it in this week’s poll post.
I would love to have you redesign this website made for tutors in my area. It’s address is http://www.search4tutors.ie
I would really appreciate the redesign because I have very little experience and budget with wed design and would love to be able to make regular updates myself. I have a site with an idea of what i want?
Thanks.