Healthcare website design feedback

[jshjohnson]

Website can be accessed via: http://myankle.co.uk.s156312.gridserver.com

I am a bit iffy about the design, not sure if I have just looked at it for too long. Any suggestions?

[jurotek]

What kind of suggestions or feedback you looking for? Are you not quite sure about the layout or design whether it allows some portability or extensibilty or you just interested in subjective opinion to validate your work?

Shouldn’t you be more concern about the audience you build it for because that’s where the validation comes from by data like: How many visits I got. How long they spend on site per visit. How many pages per visit they view. What’s the bounce rate. Do I have any conversion in form of: Do they contact me? Do they purchase stuff? These are the matrix which will validate your work and based on them you take actions. Time will tell whether you did well or not. HTH.

[jshjohnson]

@jurotek I am looking for feedback/criticism in terms of design. It seems a bit bland and boring to me so I would be interested in an outsiders opinion.

I can only start analyising the audience statistics when the website goes through its official launch.

[jurotek]

I never think about the website design in terms of bland, boring or what not. This is not the make or brake of a website but just the icing not the cake. The cake is the content.

As far as you asking for opinion on the design, you should be asking that question to a client you build it for.

I think the bland and boring to some degree came in to play when we started to design responsive by using predefined frameworks and grids which forces us to conform our content to it which makes lot of websites look the same or as you would say bland and boring instead going other way around and built our own grid or framework which the content calls for.

All said and done, at the end the content is the king.

[jshjohnson]

@jerotek I would argue design is equally as import as content. Poorly designed website = inaccessible content. Frameworks do not influence design, they influence layout (but not always)

I would also argue that a bland or boring website _can_ make or break a website. If a website is dull and not enticing, it influences bounce rates and returning visits.

Regardless, I was asking for someone else’s opinion on design, not someone else’s opinion on me asking in the first place! ;)

[Eric Gregoire]

You’ve probably been looking at it too long. Just a few suggestions from a guy sitting at a “typical 1280 work monitor.” The logos in the “as featured in” section are a bit light and could probably use more contrast with the background color. Similarly, I think the background color of the “modules” are a bit close to the background color behind them. I think a slightly darker overall background color would remedy what I’m seeing and help define the boundaries around the content.

I did notice a bug with your nav. If you open and hide the nav in mobile and then scale to desktop, the nav stays disappeared. It’s not a big deal when you consider the responsive feature really isn’t for desktop, but you never know with the type of demographic that this site will appeal to; not all tech experts. Here’s a reference for the script that’s just a few lines of jQuery :: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/responsive-web-nav/

Then again, who’s to say you won’t have people split-screening your site window with another and then maximizing your site window and having the nav gone.

[will_wallace85]

I see where you’re coming from thinking it’s “bland”. It kind of is from the aspect that there’s not very much going on, but, at the same time, should there be? The typical user coming to this website, based upon what I can see from the design, heard about it being an informational resource from one of the news outlets in the footer of the site and came looking solely for information. The “single” pages like [this](http://myankle.co.uk/treatments/ankle-fusion/ “”) do that very well. The simplicity of the content pages points to the other pages being simple as well, to maintain consistency.

You could go in and add some long shadows to the title boxes and things like that, but that would pretty much just be adding design elements for the sake of adding design elements.

Everything else I would add would be coming from a place of personal preference as opposed to documented here’s what works kind of things, which usually ends up not being super helpful. Perhaps some of the strong design focused peeps here could be of more help.

[jshjohnson]

@Boogiesox – Thanks for your feedback! I have slightly altered the footer to make the logos a bit clearer and to separate out the footer. I am less concerned about the nav problem, it will be rare that someone would scale down and hide the nav and scale up again – I think only web devs do it ha!

[JoshWhite]

I think the problem for me is that everything is just one color and there is a lot of it.

The blue for the h1’s is huge for what’s actually inside of it. If there was some kind of imagery there, maybe something real subtle in the background, I can see why you’d want to give someone enough room to see it.

Also, why are the page titles repeating in a huge point and then again in a smaller type?

Once I’m down the page and I’m looking at the images and videos, it feels nice and clean.

I think for me it comes down the monochrome design is just too basic without having some brilliant colors within the page content itself. The gray at the bottom isn’t helping because it’s another muted color.

[jshjohnson]

@JoshWhite Thanks for your feedback. In regards to a subtle background, do you mean something like this: http://i.imgur.com/uwKwdbQ.jpg

The page titles repeat because on some pages the subtitle is a more detailed version of the title (see: http://myankle.co.uk/treatments/ankle-fusion/) – I may remove the title for the single pages such as FAQ, Contact etc though as it is repetitive .

[JoshWhite]

Yeah that does help I think. It definitely gives you more of a reason to have the vertical space. Is there any way to bring another color into the mix even if it’s just another blue to brighten it up? Maybe just a highlight or two with borders or something like that could help break it up.

Interesting about the page titles… if they are going to break them up like that what if you made the large type the menu category. So it would be

Treatments (large)
Ankle Fusion (Arthrodesis) (smaller)

You’d have to get a little creative with things like “About Us”. So you’d probably have things like “our mission” or “our focus” as the first heading to appear on the page so it wouldn’t repeat.

[jshjohnson]

@JoshWhite – Yeah that makes sense – just implemented new titles.

@CrocoDillon – Thanks for that – I must have missed putting links there

[JoshWhite]

Nice… I personally like that green you used. At least for me that really rounded it out quite a bit.

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