I am bored with my website. So I'm making a new one. I've made a graphic mock-up of it. I would like some opinions.

The graphic is not optimized and will load slowly - I wanted it to look "good" for your critique. I also am going to put text in the big blank area in the middle, and buttons for buyer and seller info in the smaller blank area on the bottom right.

Overall, do you like the design? Do you like the new one or the old one? I think the old one is blah, boring.

New Design

Current Design

Please feel free to give me honest feedback. Remember, I know I can't have the blank space there. LOL. I have been working on this thing for hours and am tired of it already! LOL

like the new one better, however: don't like the info. box down in the lower right corner, you name needs to be much bigger. I think less is better, or maybe it is my ADD, but too much n too flashy aren't good

The new one is much cleaner and easier on the eyes. I like that I don't have to scroll to see the whole page.

Here's another one:

http://www.wallenpaupacklakeproperty.com/newdesign2.htm
I'm going to ditch the yellow links though and have yellow headings and white links in the blue area.

I'm not going to promise that there won't be srcolling, but I'm going to try and keep the "junk" at the bottom (required text for the company, etc....copyrights and franchise remarks, etc.) The middle field may scroll - I need to have enough text on the page to catch search engine attention.

Personally, I like the new design much better. It’s a little less distracting in my opinion. I guess I am the kind that appreciates a cleaner looking site without too much to try to take in. Does that make me boring? LOL

I like the new one too, though I think I need some more "color" in there...wonder if I should skip the blue and go with green? But green with the yellow weichert logo will be kind of icky.

hmmm.

I prefer clean. I tried that with my purple site and it just didn't happen. Wonder if I should keep the purple - cause the purple and yellow go good together - and just ditch the blue.

HEY GUYS CHECK IT OUT!!!

http://wallenpaupacklakeproperty.com/llbeandesign.htm

I think I've found it!!!

LL Bean Meets Real Estate!!!

My vote goes to this one Perky, I have a suggestion too put some footer and reduce your banner's height.

Adier,

thanks for the feedback. Yes, there will be a footer, with my contact info on it, and links,e tc.

I've had another person suggest making the banner size smaller too - I'm torn between making a WOW first impression...I've always had narrow banners on my sites...

LL Bean design gets my vote in a big way - much cleaner, you know where to look, i agree about the footer mentioned above...

as far as the graphic height...that's debateable...if you have a customer with a lower resolution monitor, that graphic will take up the whole screen...but on my monitor it looks great.

Good call.

I think it looks better but still could use a little work...

I noticed you have a blog, are you using wordpress? There are some really nice premium wordpress themes you could use to make a really sharp looking site - wpremix.com, briangardner.com, etc. For $70-80 you can have a really nice pro site in less than an hour of adding/changing content... you could have the site and the blog all on the same domain which would make getting search ranking a lot easier...I've used wordpress for a lot of things, and it's getting better and better

My own site is up for a redesign soon I think, lol.

I'm going to keep the current big banner for the home page but am going to go for a much narrower version for the interior pages.

The important links a customer will be looking for will be right there without having to scroll, while the search engine friendly text that is needed will be below it - naturally it will be useful info should customers read it. This will make the page serve as both a trendy "splash" page without the worthlessness of flash...and all the seo of a regular site. LOL

The other pages will have a narrow version of the same picture (just the canoe and part of the water showing.) I did not want to lose the impact of this image as a first impression but I also understnad that to scroll past it on every page will be tiresome.

I'm excited about some ideas I have for this site and I really appreciate the feedback. NOw, I've got about 100 pages to build... LOL. Well, not that many but enough!! Probably about 35 or so...