www.besthotel.com - Review

Hey guys/girls,

Sort of redesigning a site and want any opinions/comments.

- What's the first thing that caught your eye?
- What does this page "say" to you?
- How is the color scheme, the layout, pictures used?
- How is the theme, the style of the page?

I'd like your opinions and comments on the above as well as any other things I may have left out or you wish to add.

Trash it and/or appraise it.

Thanks in advance.
Your time and comments are must appreciated.


http://www.besthotel.com/new


 

I think your info-architecting is pretty cool but the color scheme is a bit too intense, The BG blue should be desaturated, either add more white or black to the color.

The Best Hotel Logo could be improved with tighter kerning or letter spacing.

Have a look at Adobe Caslon font family (http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/1712.pdf)
very nice swash character set.

the slogan Select, Reserve & Save do not have to follow the logo type font, instead try using a secondary sans-serif font to compliment the logo serif.

For that try Century Gothic, I think this font comes with Windows, anyway try all uppercase for that.

(Did a quick one to show what I mean. See attachment ... *I am doing this on a Saturday night ... need to get a life* )

anyway hope that was helpful, all the best!

Hey bambam,

Thanks for the response. It's specific, detailed, and you even provided some exampes.

I will see what the tuned down blue will look. When you say tighter kerning, what do you mean exactly. Is that the type of font or the way the font is designed?

I've read and heard that you should not use to many different fonts. On this page im using Arial, Lucida Calligraphy and I beleive a 3rd one somewhere in there.

I like your revision of the logo - clean, sharp, clear. Maybe I should get you to design the page if you "need to get a life*". JK... thanks for the info.

Thanks for your kind words lunatic.

Kerning just means letter spacing, also known as Tracking.

Delayed response ...
- What's the first thing that caught your eye?
A. The orange middle form area

- What does this page "say" to you?
A. It looks that besthotel is serious about business, because of the various path one could locate a hotel. But the crude graphics is a downer.

- How is the color scheme, the layout, pictures used?
A. I would say the colors are too loud. I hate to use this as an example but ... http://www.crohnsresource.com/about/symptoms.jsp
that site uses a neutral(*) to warm color scheme. the colors (and photo) give it a sophisticated feel yes? its quite unusual for site like yours to use this type scheme, maybe its bad but maybe it'll stand out.

Small note on the lady image you used. Needs to be brighter and slightly more saturated, it also looks dithered at least on your sample.

(*)Neutral = gray, black, white officially. But tweak most colors with white, black or gray and they will start to look neutral.



- How is the theme, the style of the page?
I like the tab based GUI. but change the tab a little why dont you, they look too much the ones on another site I seen

I have to agree to bambam.. the site certainly directed me quickly to what I came here for .. to look for a hotel. Very easy, to the point - I like that. The loud colors seem "amature" (no offense) and in combination with the logo, made it hard for me to take the site as a serious place to get good deals.

I took a step back to look at the original design and I like it better. The functionality is missing, but the site appears cleaner.

I'd drop the border all together, find a more original way to use those tabs and integrate the functionality of the new design into the old.

.02

I think 640k is right about the original site.

All my fussing I never saw the original site , I thnk you should keep this text in the new design. It makes it clear how to use your site.
----------
1. Select: The Hotel that's best for you.
2. Reserve: Quick, Easy, and Secure booking.
3. Save! With our special Hot Hotel Deals.
----------

But I like the location listings on the new one right on the homepage, Its good for SEO-ing too.

Thanks bambam and 640k,

The colors are a bit to loud and I'll try and tune them down a bit. as for being offened by being referenced as an ameture, none taken. Considering up untill a year and ½ ago, i only knew HTML and very little javascript. now i know alot more things such as apache, freebsd, XML, javascript, css, php, perl, mysql, photoshop. For web design and web graphics, those hasn't come quite easily

The pictures were from a program that supposedly compressed the file to use the least amount of colors but to keep the same amount of quailty. The picture in the upper left was a jpg, turned to gif and compressed. Therefore seeing the banding. The same with the lady picture.

No 640k the functionality is not there, it's just a picture. didn't want to take the time to code it all, if it doesn't look good.

So in comparing the new vs. the old, I see that incorporating certain aspects of both is the goal here.

Thanks again.

I think business issues should be addressed first before production. One example is the newsletter subscription box, if its important it shouldn't be down there. But I can't really comment on how much emphasis you should place on that, as it depends on your business / marketing strat.

There is a another Besthotel thread lurking around. Is that newer or older mockup? You folks should place it in one place so we can compare, old and new and alternate designs.

anyhow, I think skillwise yours is better, but the other design is more directed by business. Generally I like that one better though

2 things I like better are, the sentence "Find me the best price" and the location list on the left. The "Find me .." sentence makes me want to do a search immediately! Your design make me spend time figuring out what to do first.

I started out much like you Lunatic, self learner too, but started as designer then learned programming

Good read, The elements of user experience book by Jesse James Garrett (sample chapter - http://www.jjg.net/elements/elements_ch02.pdf)

All the best!