Exabytes Facelift!

By admin ⋅ September 18, 2008 ⋅ Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Well the long awaited new website from Exabytes has finally comes to the final stages. We have been featuring and sharing many contest from Exabytes before but this time around I had been given the privilege for a sneak preview of Exabytes’s newly improved website to get some insight and return some feedback about it.

First Impression

As for my first impression, the site looks cool. The layout is well organized and placed with great suitability and practicality.

The colour scheme is also relaxing with White and Blue as their common color. Similar to their Logo colour I presume. Anyway, it’s comfortable to browse through the website with those colour schemes and does not stress the eye.

Standard style tabs on the top side for main navigation and standard links (site map and so forth) at the bottom parts creates a user-friendly navigation for normal user who knows that most website will have the same placement for this two items.

Main features or promotions can be seen through this frontpage via advert style layout. All features and info related to Exabytes can be navigated through this frontpage.

Recent testimonials on the frontpage are a good marketing strategy as well as the awards and noticeable clients. This will boost up new/potential customer confident in subscribing and using Exabytes services.

Method of payments also can be seen through on this frontpage and as for myself who don’t have a credit card will feel relief as they do accept payment from local online banking provider such as maybank2u and pbebank.

Well, what more can I say for the frontpage; Simple design, well organized layout, easy access and definitely a good first impression is ‘Exactly what I hope to see on the newly revamped Exabytes’.

Area of Improvement

After a few days browsing through Exabytes new website, I found that there are some areas that they can improve. Yes I understand that this is only just a preview and the official site might not be as it is. However, here are some areas that I think Exabytes can go more beyond their bytes.

Translation options/Functions
As I am aware, Exabytes is expanding their network from time to time and their clients are all over the world so it would be great if there is a translation function whereby people from different countries with different language can browse through this site and might have a go in subscribing it. This will enhance Exabytes flexibility ad go beyond the boundaries of language. There are many translation tools around which Exabytes might consider using such as Yahoo!’s Babel Fish or Google Translate Tool since it is free and will give a more profesional look that can be understand worldwide.

No link back to the main page after search domain.
First time visitor who might be interested to purchase a hosting or domain will get confuse after using search domain function on the main page since the search result doesn’t link back at all to the home/main page.

No link back to the main page after ‘Contact Customer Support’ at main page.
Similarly like search domain issue. Visitors do not have any link back to the home/main page. A quick links on the footer of customer support sub-pages for this links would be great.

There is a ‘Hot News’ info at main page but there is no listing of all news.
Frequent visitor or existing customer would highly appreciate if they can access a listing of all hot news & promotions including the previous histories. This will be easier for people to compare and see how much they can save from previous promotions. It is also a good place to “show off” Exabytes’s improvement and marketing strategy in the aspect of giving more value-for-money packages that is getting better and better all the time.

No option to increase overall text size on website.
Visitor has various preferences and some might think the text on web site is too small. Eventhough most browsers have the option to adjust the size of text on the main page, basic IT literacy in Malaysia is still low. By giving option/button to control the font size on Exabytes website, this will give a perception that Exabytes is really serious in ensuring that all their visitor and customer feel comfortable not only with their product but also their services.

Use of font type is inconsistency. Some part uses different font type and a bit confusing.
Font size is okay but there is a great inconsistency of font type all over the page. It is better to use 1 or 2 types of fonts to avoid confusion whenever visitors try to read/browse on the web content.

Link to Blog and Forum should be more visible. Not many people are aware that this resides in ‘About Us’ menu.
Exabytes is among few Hosting provider that offers a good update on Forum and Blog so it will be a waste if people missed out this great source of information especially on their first glimpse. Link to Blog and Forum should be more visible just like the existing web page. Placing on About Us is not really a good choice since not many company put a link to Blog or Forum under About Us.

To summarize, below is an image comparison that I have created which I feel might be able to ease the navigation of the site. As you can see, on the top right side beneath the Logo, a link for the common area or a link for the popular link that would be useful for the visitors. As for the right side of the page, I have added the translation and the font size options for adapting to the visitors preferences.

Original design

My suggestion