The Lucky Winner

It has been a busy few days here in the RightSite Idea Factory, so apologies for not posting earlier.

The big development since our last post has been the choice of a RightSite layout concept. Thanks to all of you who have provided input on the different design options and helped us to decide on Layout Option #2. Here it is again, in case you have forgotten what it looked like:

Here are the reasons that I chose this design:

• Search: It’s big, clear and hits you right in the face. Most of folks using our site will be looking for a site
• Clarity: The design is simple and uncluttered. There won’t be too many things to distract folks from the core elements of the site
• Flexibility: The layout makes use of ample white space, which should be important in giving us the flexibility to accomodate the different space requirements of Chinese and English text in our multi-lingual site.

However, even though the design has all these advantages, it is still not everything that we could hope for. So our next phase of design will focus on improving the design in a number of areas. Here are the enhancements we’ll be working on this week:

• Branding: The design lacks character, so we will be looking at ways to add more distinctive branding to the layout
• Ads: Actually, we won’t have any advertising on our home page, so all of the ads will be removed to make more room for editorial content
• Login block: We will be working hard to get people to register for the site, so this section will have to get spicier
• Content Balance: Trade shows don’t need to be that big, and we need lots of space for information on how to choose a property effectively. So there will be a bit of shifting going on still

Using my all thumbs Photoshop skills, we’ve already come up with a simple way to bring some more colour to the page. What do you think?

There are a few problems with my colour replacement skills, but I’m hoping that adding some orange instead of the dark grey in the search bar will serve the dual function of adding to the site’s visual identity, while still further emphasising the pre-eminence of the search function.

I could tell you about the rest of the RightSite goings-on this week, but I’m not sure that you would find today’s discussion of a functional requirements document for the admin module to be nearly as visually enticing.

So stay tuned for the next draft in our next exciting episode, plus, the Chinese version. All coming soon, right here in Mingtiandi.