From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 07-31-2006 07:13
Can you guys take a look at this tentative design I put together for my company's website.
It's a simple layout and I'm trying to gets ome ideas for the mouseovers for the main menu links.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 07-31-2006 09:24
First thing that jumps out at me as a bit off is the 'order' of your menu. Seems to me 'Dining' should be down with 'banquets' and 'horse racing' should be up top with the rest of the gambling stuff. .. 'Players Club' & 'Forum' off to the right.
And FWIW... I'm not a fan of 'split'navigation. There's just too much space between the top and bottom buttons/tabs for this old brain to deal with. I figure if what I'm looking for isn't either across the top left to right.... or down the left side top to bottom it quite simply doesn't exist.
Old and slow and all that. =)
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Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
From: Rochester, New York, USA Insane since: May 2000
posted 07-31-2006 16:07
It doesn't feel like a casino.
When I think of a casino and am going to be picking one to visit I want to be shown how fun it is going to be going there. You are trying to sell an experience. When looking for a casino I tend to think about the night life associated with it.
Looking at a bunch of different websites for different casinos they tend to have a darker theme. Casinos are a little off center they are a little dark a little taboo, a bit of dangerous fun.
You will notice that turning stone has a different image. They are going clean and pure, for them the gaming is secondary to the ammenities, they seem like they are pushing towards being a place for business, or being couple friendly.
I would get away from the gradients and go towards a flatter look, maybe some textures, and let people and the experience stand out.
You are either trying to get people into the casino, or to play online you really want to make that your selling point with the site.
From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 07-31-2006 18:40
One of the things they wanted to keep with the site is the "fun" element of it and not the corperate feel. Being in california we have stricter gaming laws so majority of people coming here are coming strictly for gaming.
The menu order is temporary, just to geta feel. I agree with the double navigation bar, they just have so much they want "featured". I personally wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
I will make a few adjustments and post. The other thing I was curious about is converting my psd to html. I've tried with no avail at getting a full CSS site up that I could comprehend the structure so I've been forced to stick with tables for now. I do want to implement some basic flash elements for animation and pizzaz. (they really like flash)....
btw, the current site is www.playhpc.com
No I didn't design this one, take a look at the code, I'm no guru but I know theres a lot of crap in there.
From: The Land of one Headlight on. Insane since: May 2001
posted 08-01-2006 14:44
I realize it's just a mock up but I think you'd (we'd) get a much better feel for what you're going for if you put in a background color.
I did a screen cap and dropped in a darker cyan blue, (clearly not the correct colour but I wanted something dark back there)....and it started making more sense (to me.) The royal flush came alive as did the text boxes. The white BG is washing everything out ... at least for me it is.
Question about the Royal Flush. If that was your hand how would you be holding it? Mine would be running left to right.
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Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 08-01-2006 21:09
havent really messed with background colors yet... trying to get the general layout approved first.
As for the flush, we have libraries of stock gaming images and thats just how it came. eventually the main box will be animatied via flash. eventually. :-)
Beeing in the business, the highest poker hand is normally represented with spades, not hearts
These are the main online gaming sites we run, perhaps they can give you any ideas.
But as stated above, there is a big difference if you want to get people to visit a physical location or if you want to draw them into playing online. Imho you will have a problem if you try to give both equal priority.
It's too "bubbly" and those shades of purplypink and blue don't go well imho.
I dont have much to say other than that, I found it very hard making a poker site a while ago, its hard not to splatter it with graphics of chips, cards, green felt, spades, clubs, aces etc.. and of course royal flushes But at the same time you really have to keep to those 'cliches'.
From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 08-07-2006 06:37
Thanks DMS... I agree, I've printed out all the casino sites that I thought looked great and I've found out that working for a company that really doesn't grasp the whole "web presence" thing makes it a little difficult. Our main competitors sites look pretty basic as well, and their whole perspective is they dont want it to look "corperate" as sites like the bellagio, mgm, etc. It was explained that those are destination casinos where we are more of a local LA casino.
Majority of our clientel are local players from around Inglewood and some outlining LA areas.
My whole intention of getting an online free gaming site going is to get visitors to come back, practice, and recomend us to prostective new gamers.
I've found this whole experience to be a great learning enviornment, I'm learning tons about search engine optimization, advertising plans on other sites, etc.
As I mentioned, I just wanted to get some feedback before I start building all the elements that need to go into the site. I gotta get it done within the week so I'm a little more pressed now then I was a week ago. By all means, keep the feedback coming. I'd love to hear it. (good and bad)
From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 03-21-2007 17:49
Just to keep this updated, they decided to keep their existing look. www.playhpc.com
What a lovely mesh of colors eh?!?
I broke it apart into different .php sections for easy updating but that's about it. Kind of frustrating if you ask me but, ahh, what do you do when they want it like that?
Let me throw this out, any suggestions as far as trying to refine, or clean up the mess?
It looks "photoshopped" - which is to say it looks like you "conceived" (not meant as an insult) it by opening up Photoshop and fiddling around, instead of having a clear idea of how you wanted it to look beforehand.
From: Lost Angeles Kalifornia, via Hawaii.... Insane since: Jun 2001
posted 03-23-2007 17:58
yeah it's pretty... whatevers. once they decided to keep the site the way it was I lost all interest in sprucing it up.
"Lots of colors" is exactly what they want. I personally love the MGMGRAND website as far as casino sites go.
How do you convince someone who has no clue of "schemes" or "themes" to reconsider?
I'd like to get some specifics of what you think
(a) absolutely needs to be changed
(b) how do I keep the lovely vomit of colors and keep with a consistant theme overall
(c) general thoughts to provoke change.
posted 07-31-2006 07:13
