Newly redesigned GoBacolod.com

[gopilipinas]

Please critic my newly redesigned website

http://www.gobacolod.com

Comments and suggestions are highly welcome.

Thank you.

[YvetteKuhns]

The website has a lot of contents for its well defined target audience. Most of the contents are supplied by other sources since it is basically a portal website. The visitors can post unique comments to add to the website contents. The contents are well organized.

My major complaint is that there are TOO MANY ADS! The banner ad at the top is bigger than the website logo and is missed when people scroll down. At 800x600 screen resolution, I had to scroll to see the ads on the right side of the screen. There is an annoying, flashing banner ad on the left side. And there are many more ads at the bottom of the page, if people scroll to see them.

Reduce the number of ads per page. Do not have more than one animation per page, because it distracts people when they are trying to read. Place ads between sections. Visitors can read one section, have a break in color with an ad, read the next section and see the next ad. Surrounding the page in ads is like framing a page of text with images. My eyes go to the center and ignore the "border" of ads. There actually is an ad in the middle of the page. That one would probably get seen more than any other.

The current selection of ads are so generic and spammy. None made me want to click them. I don't want to see Paris Hilton EXPOSED. Other ads show stacks of money. Those ads are so terrible that I want to leave the site! But I am not your target audience. What type of ads would they actually click? By the way, I saw the link to cheap web hosting at the bottom. Links to other websites should open in a new browser window.

[Kitchensink108]

My first impression was that it's really busy. I think you should make the banner big, and possibly redesign. It might look better if you remove the white background and just have it be transparent (or just the same color as the background, essentially the same as transparent). It's impossible to read the small text in the banner.

Other than that, the top portion (nav, login, banner area) doesn't look too bad. I suggest getting rid of the Google search box as it has nothing to do with your site. If the user wants to search Google, they'll probably go to Google to do it instead of using your site. Also, the middle section looks like it's higher than the left and right columns. I suggest one of the following: make all three columns 14px from the topnav, or make the center column 14px from the topnav and the left and right columns like 24px from the topnav.

You have a lot of content, everywhere. I think you should clean it up a lot. My ideas:
-Get rid of Whose Online and Contact Us from the right column.
-Get rid of the site counter from the left column.
-Make the festival and picture gallery boxes collapsible (and default to collapsed).
-Get rid of the Advertise With Us box (or move it to the bottom of the column)
-Either remove stuff from the center column or make the sections collapsible

That's all I'm going to say for now.

[gopilipinas]

Appreciate your suggestions will do the improvements needed.

Thank you. :)