This is only a proposal and has not been approved or reviewed by the site admin yet
I have been in contact with the site administrator, and it seems that as I suspected he is very busy and has not been able to give his full attention to the site, I have said that I would work on some site redesigns and logo re-branding, and I wanted to share my solutions so far with you guys and see what you think...
First for the logo, I have tried to keep the existing colour scheme and obviously the name is there still too, however I have explored the idea of using an icon to make the site more recognisable.
This is a few of the final logo's I produced...
As you can see they all use visual language to communicate the sites name, and the idea would be that only when your not on the site would you see the words say no to 0870 printed (with or without the logo).
It draws on the ideas of a speed sign, no smoking sign and a speech bubble to create what should be a quite easy to understand logo.
The logo lacks wording and is therefore reinforced by the title and url of the page but would only be used as an icon on the website, else where it would be used with type next to it stating the site name.
I then took a look at the site structure, its very cluttered, the advertising is not effective because it links to sites which advertise the opposite of what this site is about.
Better targeted adverts in fewer places but better placed will help the site pay for its running.
This is my proposal for the new decluttered home page...
As you can see everything is cleared away and there is a search box on the home page reducing the amount of clicks to get to information and making the site easier to use, also by default only one box is shown, by using smart processing in the background it will search for numbers if numbers are entered and companies if letters are entered.
You can see the redesigned favicon also...
It uses a square version of the icon which is better suited to the tiny 16x16 pixel image that a favicon is.
Another thing the site owner is keen to get done is the mobile versions, and with the recent announcment of a iPhone app its clear the site needs to provide such a option for all mobile users...
WAP versions will only allow searching and will have limited graphics to improve speed, only one graphic on the front page to brand it and then again a smaller graphic on the results.
Colour WAP phone:
B&W WAP phone:
WAP phone:
The iPhone version will be slightly different as it has a banner ad and would be formatted for the iPhone display but essentially the same.
As before these are only mock ups and have not been seen or approved by the site admin so things may change but I wanted to get some feedback from other users on the proposal.