New Black Viper Energy Website

Thanks for all the helpful critiques on the old Black Viper Energy website everyone! I've been teaching myself how to use photoshop and I've made a preliminary new Black Viper Energy website. The new one doesn't have any pictures yet, but when I find one I like I'm going to stick it to the left of the text and right underneath the viper logo. I'm still adding to it, but I just wanted your opinion on how it looks as of now.

My boss said he doesn't like the black background, but I wanted to get a professional opinion. Maybe I could go with a dark gray background with light gray lettering? Does the black background melt your eyes?

Anyways, please take a gander at my companies websites and tell me what you think.

Old Black Viper Website

New Black Viper Website

I think everything is to dark, lighten it up a bit. Maybe use a light gray background, or as you suggested a dark grey background. I like the overall layout of the page and I think the top graphic is great.

Aphonik

I agree on the background. Black backgrounds are cool, but they don't give a professional look.
Think too about minimizing/getting rid of the middle banner with the logo and stuff... it's pretty big and pushes relevant content down. It might still be good for the home page though. Maybe keep the home page the same, and for the other pages, get rid of that banner and put the snake up in front of the name on the top left.
Also, a rollover effect on the top buttons might look nice. Nothing fancy, just changing the text colour is all that's needed.
In the content as well, you may want to make use of different text styles (different sizes, bold, italics) to identify headings and such so it's easier to read.

Another small thing: on the contact page, for some reason the president's email address isn't underlined like the rest of the links. Is that intentional?

I wont meantion that its way to dark,, :-) But I really find websites that have a bigger area for banners/headers/static graphics really annoying. If i'm going to your website ,, i'm going there for a reason,, and most likely not to see a huge head of a snake and a fuzzy area with the words dedication, excellence and so on..

Remember not all users today have a 30" apple studio display :-).

Make room for the content!!

i think your website should be oriented more about your product than your logo. i dont like the black.

I've used my rep for today, so I'll post rather than agree with
everyone. Black backgrounds and huge headers are the worst
things you can do. The make a site look so unprofessional, and
are up there with things like auto-resizes and blinking text as
annoyances that make people leave your site in a hurry...

i agree with about half of your post (up)

def too dark,
nice logo, but its a nice logo FOR THE HOME PAGE
get rid of it in lieu of a smaller version of teh same thing or something of the like.

images for links just piss me off in general and i automaticaly lose a little respect for anysite that has them.

and one more thing, the text alignment on the right hand side of the page looks good, at first, but where i disagree with the alst poster is that aut-resizing is annoying. I like it, and especialy a site like yours where the text stays to the right and disaapears in exchange for blackness is not a good idea, either align it left or make sure all of the text can be seen on the page without scrolling side to side

dont let people need to scroll side to side to get information.

and this is for a professional company, not a video game geek site, try cleaning it up a little bit and though i like the logo, its not professional and people wont like it for a company because it alienates so much of the population that would be interested i the services these people offer.

you have an audience, never forget this, always cater to the audience first before playing whack it up until you think it looks cooler than anything else. cool is not good, its just cool and useless.

GOOD = FORM+FUNCTION +AUDIENCE+Style

in my opinion of course, in that order too

well animusdk i dont totally agree with you there, images can be good for links if they are incorporated into the design the right way. and altho i do agree it looks a bit video gameish now i dont agree that the logo is bad, the logo can be worked in with no problem. i dont think you give enough credit to his site IMO.

what im saying is that someone looking for some angled well drilling in north texas may not neccessarily want to go for a company that has a big, albeint good work btw, black viper with a black background on their site.

they are looking for drilling, not to murder someone in their sleep with a big frikin snake

Hehehe, thanks for the replies. I'm still trying to incorporate y'alls suggestions into the new site. I've just been really busy with my actual job that I haven't had time to really put pictures or effort into redesigning the website. I'll work on making it more professional.

I have a question though: I know there are a lot of programs out there to help you design buttons that light up when you hold your cursor over them, but which one should I get? I don't know if my boss is going to want to spend the money to get a program like that so I may be buying it for personal use and be using it for the company's website on the side. What are your preferences?

I searched Google and got a few that look good.

Easy Web Graphics by Net Studio ~ $130 USD

GIMP ~ $FREE USD?

Paint Shop Pro 9 (price varies, see link)

PhotoShop CS (actually 8) ~ $650 USD

AlphaButton ~ $50 USD

Hey, JsKid:

CSS ~ $0 USD

[Scroll down the page and click on 'Example' to see it in action...]

Never saw that on Google <sarcasm>(weird)</sarcasm>, though is a free.. looks good too!

did see the example... very nice, though Oronis did ask about
programs to create the buttons in the first place.. I guess it
is a bit of a preference thing..

CSS is a good alternative to many things, just not for making
custom backgrounds for the buttons.