Welcome!

[Andris]

I recently created a website for some customer and I'd like to know what you think of the design. It's a website for a beauty and wellness salon in Switzerland. Besides the design and layout of the website I shot the photos and created the logo.

http://www.balance-solothurn.ch

[wandernauta]

Very nice!

I'm no photographer, but maybe you should boost the saturation of the photo's a little bit.

[Andris]

Hey Wandernauta,

thanx for the tipp. I'll try this.

[heygrey]

For my taste I would like if the opening page would not be scrollable - put there just one picture that would communicate the atmosphere. I would use either second or third picture as they play very well together with the site colour scheme and look more inviting. After the picture put this invitation text (with some nice styling) and it would be very nice opening page.

For other pictures you could for example create additional gallery menu item and then it's quite fine if that one is scrollable

[welovethebart]

Hey Andris, I like the unconventional layout. Personally I would prefer some more depth as the images and text look a little flat on the plain color background. However, if the client loves it then go with it.

[blanklabel]

i think the balance of the website is off. you should shift the navigation further left because it's a lot of wasted space and the eye is naturally drawn to the left and with that much space wasted, i personally feel like your website is just not going to have much to offer on the right side

[Andris]

Thanx for all your comments.

I will think about all your suggenstions. Especially about the opening page with only one image and a new menu item: gallery.

I really do love whitespace (http://www.ilovewhitespace.ch) so I don't think the whitespace on the left side is wasted space. But maybe I have to rethink it.

And yes, I agree. The images could have a little bit more saturation.

Thanx,
Andris

[bjuneau]

Nice site with a different concept. I think it waste too much white space on the left. I understand the concept needs this but it just seems to me to be a lot of wasted space. Also, your menu isn't centering in IE6 - this may not be an issue for you, but something like 20% of the web still uses IE6 unfortunately.

[murphyslaw]

Hello Andris,

I collected a few points that caught my attention, while browsing the site...

Suggestions:

• I noticed a little "jumping" when switching from one link to another. "News" and "Über Mich" have a different wide than the rest of the sites. All sites should have the same wide, so the middle division of the site always stays the same.
• I also find the pictures a little bit flat. Maybe you could pick up the pattern on the left to help decorate the pictures. You could either create an overlay on top of the picture, or create a border with the help of the flower pattern, which would make it look much more interesting.
• Your content links don't have a hover state. I would suggest using a soft highlight on mouse over.
• Your price list looks somehow boring to me. Maybe you could make use of different text sizes to point out, that the product is more important than the price. You could also alternate the row colors to make it easier to scan the page. You are also using column headlines for the price, but not for the time. The distinction between man and women is not clear. I felt lucky to find the man section. Maybe introduce a table of contents in the beginning, or separate the pricelists on two sites.

[Andris]

@bjuneau:
Thanx for the hint. I didn't check the site in IE6. Shame on me! I will fix that asap.

@murphyslaw:
- I never saw a "jumping" when switching from on site to another. Maybe it's because some site's get a scrollbar on the right if the content is longer than the browserwindow. And that will cause kind of a jumping. I guess the solution to that would be setting the height of the html-tag to like 100.1% so the scrollbar appears always. But that's something I didn't wanna have. So I guess I have to live with the jumping.

- Picking up the pattern to decorate the pictures is not a bad idea. I'll think about that. the Problem is, that the site is built with wordpress and the customer puts in the news.

- hover state is always good. that's something i'll change asap.

- again the same problem as mentioned before. the customer will make the changes on the website. And I'm not sure she'll be able to handle a zebra table. Maybe I din't find the right plugin yet.

Anyways. Thanx a lot for your criticism!

[apixelaffair]

I tend to agree with some of the other comments about too much space on the left. Whitespace is good, but so is the rule of thirds and I think it can be applied with success here, especially since your theme is balance! You might consider shifting the split to the left so that 1/3 of the layout is the whitespace and 2/3 is the content. I think you will be able to keep enough whitespace between the illustration and the divider line, and I think you will find that your website feels more "balanced" than before! And in doing this, you're tightening up that space between the illustration and the menu, which may help to create more depth and drama (tension = drama). Killing two birds with one stone! Can't beat that! I love what you've done so far though and keep up the awesome work! Good luck!

For more information about rule of thirds, check out this handy SM article:

Divine Proportions/Rule of Thirds

[roacha]

I would suggest re-aligning the website a bit and not having so much space to the left hand side with your creative design. The website is for "Balance Wellness Center" so you need to focus 100% on that. Right now it seems to me the design is taking up just as much space as the actual company information. I also think on the landing page you should not have to scroll down much to read the information. If you expand the "information" section to the right than you could save space and users would not have to scroll down. I like the color palate and think you are on the right track.

[webbeetle]

I completely agree with the writers above about too much white space left; 1/3 to 2/3 green background would in my opinion get the page more balanced...
Maybe you should do some proof reading, too - LOL. eg. it's not "Produkte – Linien" but either "Produkte", or "Produkt – Linien"...
I also notice that the font ker ning is very errati c - don't know wh y ...

Overall I like the design.