Site re-design OvationChurch.com

[DesignHideout]

We just launched our new website re-design ovationchurch.com
Let me know what you think of the design and seo friendliness, things to fix or things you like.

[Gene]

Overall a nice looking site. Easy to find the time and directions, though you might want a link to that directly from the front page as well as in the 'about' menu.

The logo takes up a fair amount of vertical space -- have you considered putting the "OC" to the left of "Ovation Church"? The Flash-based image viewer takes a lot of vertical space. Between it and the logo, it fills 3/4 of the available screen. While I like the image viewer and the transitions, I'm less fond of it when it's filling much of the screen -- sort of visually overwhelming.

Something else to keep in mind. I tried it on my phone, and while it currently doesn't support Flash (so I just see a little Flash icon where it would be), some phones do and that image viewer will be truly giant. I think it's important to make a church site (and restaurant sites!) mobile-friendly, and easy to find the directions and time. Someone may be looking for your church on Sunday morning

[DesignHideout]

Thanks for the critique.
We do use the "OC" on the left sometimes, it's not like were locked in to it one way or the other. I might try it on the left again. Last time it was just to long and ran into the menu. Maybe I can scale it down a little more and see how it looks.
I was debating what to do about the mobile aspect of the site in-regards to the Cu3er flash rotator... so I just wrote a custom fall back if the browser doesn't have flash installed to use a non-flash based rotator instead. It works great and nearly looks the same on my iPhone as it does on a PC/Mac. Check it out now and let me know what you think.

[Gene]

Looks great on my Google-based phone.

[KeckCreative]

Looks nice. The animation is cool but becomes distracting after more than one cycle. Maybe if it started on the church picture, goes to the invite, and back to the church picture and then stops (with user initiated animation change) after that. I found my self trying to read the other parts on the home page and getting visually drawn back up to the animation think I might see something different.

Anyway... that's my .02 for what it's worth.

[DesignHideout]

I went ahead and scaled down the logo in the header and put the "OC" to the left and I like the way it looks. Much better flow and it takes up a little less room at the top.
I also lengthened the time a slide is shown in the rotator to help make it not so distracting... When all is said and done there should be something like four slide total so it should seem as redundant.

Thanks again for all the ideas.

[Gene]

Definitely like the changes.

[DesignHideout]

After adding the fall back code for the non-flash rotator and really liking the faster load time of the non-flash rotator plugin I pulled the plug on the cool flashy cu3er rotator.
The site loads super fast now and the animation is minimal and not distracting.
Thanks again for the ideas...
ovationchurch.com

[mickmel]

The site looks great! A few things I'd fix:

-- On the "New to OC" page, you have some things underlined. For usability, only links should have underlines.
-- You use "click here" far too often. Just link the relevant text.
-- Not all nav items are clickable (like "Kids / Students"). If nothing else, just provide a landing page with links to the sub-pages.
-- The calendar is slick, but so empty. Is your church doing NOTHING for the next six weeks other than weekly "Worship Service" and "Youth Service"?
-- Are there any employees other than the Pastor?
-- Twitter and Facebook are legitimate forms of communication; include them on your "Contact" page.
-- Pastor's blog hasn't been updated in over a month.
-- Solid use of Facebook, but I think you'd agree that your Twitter account is pretty pitiful. It can be quite powerful; use it!

I hope that helps!

[KeckCreative]

Nice changes. I really like the baby looking at the camera picture on the "About Us" page. Sends a great message saying, "your family is welcome here!"

[ccw]

the footer is a little over crowded... leave a little white space.