Totally re-dessigned site, need your comment

Hi,
Last week I requested DP members to help to review my site. Result was very bad. Actually my site has rich content, there was comment that my site looks like spammy site. So I decided to re-design every things. It took me three days. Personally I think it looks better.
May I please you to review again?.
Thank you for your input.
Tuan.

 

Closer but still a little spammy looking. Just an idea, make the colors a little more earth tone. Change the link colors to a pretty color that matches the site. The adsense on top makes the site look like a big ad. You are heading in the right direction.

 

IMO I think the ad designs and ad placements are good. Now go get some traffic.

 

I agree. I cant help but feel that it's spammy. Dont know why. Maybe the fonts you use are the contributing factor.

 

http://www.jessett.com/

I found these people at a website critque site. At this link on their website: http://www.jessett.com/web_sites/graphics/ they have color charts, free advice and ideas. I am a terrible designer so it really helped me with color temperatures, what colors mean, etc.

 

You should add a nice image at the top, but other than that it's fine. It seems cold to me because of the colours you used. I know I would prefer warmer colours but that depends on people's tastes.

It's not a great site as it seems quite simple and the build quality is not enormous. In my opinion, if you want it to look very nicely presentable, you should use more advanced CSS. Take a look at this site for example, and compare it to yours: www.csszengarden.com

 

Ad placements are good.
but..
I feel the whole site does not gel well enough. changing the background to a more 'eye' friendly color may help.
I see lots of gaps...say in the first horizontal menu section

 

I think it "looks spammy" because there are "Ads by Google" all over the place, and you see it immediately once you go to the site. I would suggest replacing the Adsense leaderboard with an actual banner/logo, leave the Adlinks unit leaderboard where it is, and then add another ad block below the fold, away from the other Adsense ads, if you must.

 

I thought the ads leaderboard makes my site looking like spammy site, but my site has not enough traffic to trace the performace of each ads box. Does someone has experience with performance of Ads leaderboard on the top?
Yes, I will try to change the Ads leaderboard by good welcoming image, and try some warmer color templates.
Thanks all for your valuable advices.

 

That site you referred to http://www.jessett.com/web_sites/graphics/ is very old and out of date. You don't need websafe colors anymore. Nobody uses 256 colors. Also, those color combinations at the bottom are highly scary.

 

I think all sites that have at the very top a google adsense leaderboard a spammy site.
Get rid of it, up to you really, and put in nice graphics of the country.

 

Get a nice logo or banner on top. I would use a green theme color.
Here are a couple sites you are competing against:
http://www.amitourist.com/
http://www.footprintsvietnam.com/
http://www.amitourist.com/culture/
None of them look all that great. Come up with a good design and you will be king of the hill
that and lots of traffic

 

Maybe I'll develop a site on that niche too. LOL. This looks promising.

 

template or design is good,but colour scheme is not upto the mark

 

Yes, I am now hardly working on this: change banner at top, change color template to warmer, fill-up some blank spaces. I hope I will finish tomorow. Please remember to come to look and give valuable comments .
Thanks all.
Tuan.

 

also, use hyphen or underscore on your url's

 

Thanks Bentong.
Yes, I am considering about it, but now SEs are starting to index my site and reports many errors when I change URLs, even I update sitemaps after each changing. Do you think that can it impact on indexing process of my site ?

 

just blocked the old url's on your robots.txt. I think it would be fine since SE just started indexing your pages...

 

The site is much improved, colors are great, warm and inviting.

 

Definately change that bluey background to something more yellow or darker. Will make the actual content stand out more.

You also have potential for a square ad at the bottom where those links are next to images. Would fit in really well.

But yeah, get some traffic