4 links of website design tutorials that i am looking at currently to help me with my re-design.
http://alfoart.com/notebook_design_1.html
4 local competitive jewelry brands (businesses)
Thoughts: Really like this website. In my view it really for fills what a professional website in the business of jewelry should look like. It has a small layout just like the others but this one sticks to its shape. Its fixed and doesn't go form using less than half a page to and entire one, the consistency is there and therefore reflects on how professional it is. The navigation is simple but the rollover effect is great, each word will slowly turn black to indicate that you can interacte with it and then stays black to further indicate that you are currently he
re at this tab. also the design for further links withing the tab is great and uses the small spacing it has wisely. when it comes to showing its products they show each one individually and slowly transcend form one item to another as well as giving you full control of which ones you want to see, by doing this they can give each product its individuality and unique moment to show a nice clear close up showing how well crafted it is, really bringing out its worth.
Thoughts: POH KONG a very famous jewelry store around Malaysia. For me its website just about satisfied me, the design was OK, the use of color is nice and has a good consistency, although i felt the typo lacked in area such as titles and the navigation is OK and similar to other websites like caratclub although POH KONG offers additional information which in my opinion inst a smart move because it compromises the design, switching from less than half the page to longer than one page. But also like caratclub they show their products individually which is great.
Thoughts: When i first see the home page i thought it was OK, and that the deisgn layout is the same, but as you explore the website further on they actually make more use of the space which i found was a bit annoying for a website that should be showing a lot of professionalism. Because on certain websites they decide to use up the whole page it feels less exclusive and less of a precious feeling which is what i feel the website should feel form the users point of view. when when viewing the products of the company they show it all in one go on one page, which again makes it feel less precious and fragile and delicate. They should have shown each product individually to give a feeling that each product is unique, rare, fragile
and worth alot of trouble.
Thoughts: Finally Habib jewelry is another local competitor, i like the design of the website very dark and gloomy allowing it to shine as a website like its products, i thought the typography was nice although i would change it a bit for the 2nd level of navigation to help the user differ form the two different navigations. I like how they played with th space of the website, they used to width of the website nicely, especially for the text and navigation.
They also add a small amount of description and text to accompany the images when they view the products they have. At one point they seem to have ran out of space and wanted to advertise some new products, they did this by having a empty box with a dotted outline and when you rollover it would show images of the product, i thought it was a good idea to lure the user but its placement seemed out of place.
