A few of the thoughts from my head in no particular order

HotUKDeals - One Day On

December 14th, 2007 Posted in web

It’s now been 24 hours since the redesigned HotUKDeals website was launched and now I’ve had time to get acquainted with the new layout I must say it’s not all that bad.

Whilst the users on the HUKD forums are berating about being ignored in such a radical change, the guys behind the site have been firefighting a number of technical issues and it now appears that the site is working without error.

Ok so the redesign is a bit of a shock to the system and yes the main page content looks a little bland with it’s minimal use of colour and masses of white space. The forums are also a little vague, losing the tried and tested forum layout format but that’s where the criticism ends.

So what’s good?

Navigation

Now you’re no longer faced with dump of all the latest deals jumbled together. The new navigation bars along the top fold of the page encourage you to filter the deals by type. If you’re only interested in computers or clothing, then you can quickly show only those deals.
If you then only want to see freebies and not vouchers, no problem - just another click and you’re done.

Speed

I’m convinced the page loading speed has improved considerably over the last site. Yesterday was quite poor as the errors combined with the increased traffic wasn’t doing the site any favours but towards the end of the day it was all racing along.

Structure

The new design should give HUKD admin increased control over how the site is run which can only be a good thing. The site has also been written with modern coding standards in mind although it falls slightly short of that when it comes to accessibility and SEO (sorry, I said no more criticisms!).

PR and Marketing

A new website is a great way of generating some free press interest and this one has certainly done that with such a controversial change.

I think when all the dust has settled and people become used to the change, the new website will finally be seen as a step in the right direction.

  1. 7 Responses to “HotUKDeals - One Day On”

  2. By bob on Dec 15, 2007

    The site has also been written with modern coding standards in mind.quote>

    How do you know? In what way?

  3. By Joff on Dec 15, 2007

    Hi bob.

    You can see this from viewing the site source code. It uses a table-less design which is common practice for the current breed of “web 2.0″ sites.

    This is possibly just something inherited from it’s vBulletin underpinnings however it’s a definite step in the right direction nonetheless.

  4. By bob on Dec 16, 2007

    Hi Joff

    The old site used a table-less design and had done since 2006. The old site HTML was excellent from an accessibility point of view and usability point of view. It is clear that less talented individuals put the new site together.

  5. By Joff on Dec 16, 2007

    I didn’t realise the old site was so compliant! Well the motivation for the new site must have been to allow the site to develop more.

    Who knows!

  6. By karen on Dec 17, 2007

    ahhhh why didn’t i know it was changing!!! - very confused to start with and hated new set up but then like all things new i will get used to change. couldn’t find a deal with Tesco and i feel that there was one but just couldn’t find it. Once i have learnt to manoevre on the site it could be an improvement - haven’t felt that yet.

  7. By alan Gardner on Jan 2, 2008

    for some reason, I can’t view it in safari or firefox on my mac.

  8. By Joff on Jan 2, 2008

    Alan, it’s working fine for me on my Mac. What do you mean by you can’t view it?

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