Sound Magic Announces "commentator" Giveaway (3 free copies)

VST, AU, AAX, CLAP, etc. Plugin Virtual Instruments Discussion
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

In order to improve our servies to our clients, Sound Magic announces "commentator" Giveaway with 3 copies of software.
Recently, our new website is online and in order to improve our services, we are eager to know how our customers feel about our new website, So we are here to listen what our customers think about the new website, we want to hear brutal opinions.
Rules:
1.Visit to our website at
http://www.supremepiano.com
see how our new website looks like.
2. In order to compare, we provides
Here is the new style layout
http://www.supremepiano.com/product/blue.htm
Here is the old style layout
http://www.supremepiano.com/product/blue.html
3. You should comment on several points
such as "Does our new website really an improvements to old layout?"
"What do you feel bad about the new website, and how to improve that?"
or Any Other bad or good point you want to say
Please be more details
You can post your comment to our support Email at support@soundemon.com or post it here
The giveaway awars is 3 free copies of our pianos, which worth €99 each.
Detailed, and helpful suggestion will help you to win.
It is easy and everyone can have a chance to win, just contact us with your opinions.
Do not afraid of hurt our feelings because we want our customers feel good and provide best experience to you.
Good Luck!

Post

Hi there,

I'm sorry to say that, but the new site is horrible IMO. It lacks any consistency, any feeling for style and identity. It looks as if different idea, designs and scripts have been copy-pasted together. The old web site was already pretty bad, but the new version is a massive step backwards. The new site screams "amateurish" and "1997" all over the place.

I'm sorry to be that harsh, but there's no way to sugar coat it - I couldn't find a single thing the site has going for it. If you were just showing private vacation photos online I wouldn't mind. But you're trying to do business and I'm afraid that the site will drive potential customers away.

Alright, let's get more constructive, shall we?

The first thing that strikes me is the lack of identity. Funnily, I can't see a logo or the company name anywhere (except for the footer). I have no idea what your "corporate design" is, there is no distinctive colors or anything else that I'd remember.

Now into more details, mostly related to http://www.supremepiano.com/product/blue.htm
  • the border around the dark gray area in the center and at the top of the menu section is distracting for no reason.
  • The menu does not fit AT ALL. Arbitrary colors; weird, gimmicky animations; horrible italic typesetting; boring centered alignment. It looks like a default style for some kind of 3rd party menu component.
  • In general there's way too little padding around elements. Give the information room to breathe! Examples: links in the sub navigation ("shiny" bar with "Sound", "Modelling" etc.); all text blocks. That was one of the main issues of the old site, too.
  • The separators between the sections (pseudo 3D) is pretty ugly - looks like a default <hr/> element
  • The color of the links in the sub nav does not fit, especially not the a:visited color (light orange on light grey!)
  • The icons in the area below the sub nav lack any consistency (download, buy/cart, view cart, purchasing step); just some arbitrarily combined clip arts I suppose.
  • The price information is comparatively small - why is that?
  • Unnecessary use of images to show textual information (right side of header, "Superior Performance" section, and version information Win/Mac etc.). Bad for search engines and looks out of place.
  • The a:hover color (dark blue) for the orange links is unbearable
  • The colors in the "Superior Performance" section are too aggressive and don't fit
  • The price information at the bottom of the page shows different currencies, the one at the top doesn't - consistency?
  • Missing space after "Copyright" in the footer
  • The "Download manual" button again is completely unfitting and has a very ugly hover effect
  • The demo player feels arbitrarily placed
  • The image in the section "Model Every Aspect of a Piano" looks horrible
  • Without JavaScript enabled the layout pretty much breaks.
A final word: apparently someone without much expertise and experience in web design has created the site. That's no big deal in general and nothing to be ashamed of! I can't repair a car, either. But if my car is broken, I have it fixed by someone who knows his stuff. And that's what you should do: hire a proper web designer and start from scratch.

I hope you don't mind me being so direct. I've tried to be as constructive as possible and I don't mean to offend you. I believe that an honest answer will help you more in the long run.

Best regards,
Andre

P.S.: feel free to contact me if you have specific questions. I'm a software developer for a living and I frequently implement web-site designs. Maybe I can give you more specific ideas.

Post

I actually prefer the new layout. It's clearer to me as a potential customer, as it's easier to read. The horizontally-scrolling tiny text of the old layout was a pain to decipher. This one, more vertically stacked than in a blank white table, is much less headache-inducing. Cosmetic issues aside, I prefer this layout for its ergonomics and immediate access to the information that it's trying to convey.

Certain non-cosmetic things that irk me, problems in the actual formatting, are the floating toolbar and the floating audio demo bar. It'd be a real improvement if those things stayed at the top of the page instead of following the scrolling.

Post

I prefer the dark design of the new sites home page over the glaring white on the old one. The home page seems to have everything squashed up at the top though, with a lot of emptiness below it. If what is at the top of the page could be across the whole page it would be much more striking. The old sites home page is way too busy for my liking though and the writing too small.
I much prefer the menu system and page layouts themselves on the new site. Much clearer to my eyes.
The pages themselves are very clear and easy to read, with plenty of relevant information regarding your products. Once I got past the home page I found browsing the site easy both on the eye and to navigate. The scrolling mentioned by nineofkings didn't bother me at all. That's not to say that I'm right and they are wrong, we all have different tastes. It'll be impossible to please everyone. Ultimately it's the products that count most and judging by the demos they sound really good.

So all in all I prefer the new style layout. I just feel that the home page needs to stand out a bit more, after all that is the first page visitors see, it needs to grab the attention and make people want to look around the site further. I'd like to see the current content of the home page expanded out a bit too fill the page more. Failing that maybe something else to fill that empty space and grab ones attention.
In my opinion though it is definitely an improvement on the old site.

Best Regards
Armadillo

Post

OK. Regarding the style, I prefer the new design, mostly because I feel that white text on a dark background is easier to read than black text on a white background (in the long term, the white background cause eye fatigue, IMO).
What I feel bad about the new website: Not exactly the new website, but the instrument. The GUI has nothong to do with a piano, IMO. It doesn't deel right, and it's ugly, IMO. I have the same impression regarding the other GUIs, BTW. I think you should redesign the entire line of GUIs. Something more in the line of maybe Pianoteq, or True Pianos (you could, for example, take the harp background of the Steinway that's in the second image, and build the graphic controls inside it, or use some kind of analogy - just some ideas. What you have now could be anything - a synth, for example.
Regarding the information, I would follow the "Industry-Best NEO Hybrid Modeling Engine" with the "Artificial Intelligent Tools"and the other informative boxes, and would place the "Superior Performance" in the last before the specs and the demos.
But the best thing would be a redesign of the GUIs, really. And maintain an uniform design basis among the entire collection, to create an image trademark. After all, they are all pianos, right?
Fernando (FMR)

Post

Thank you for above participates. I will emai or PM you with the gift this weekend.
There still have chances and we hope more people can join in. We just increases the gift number.

Post

Late to the table but, knowing from experience how important user feedback on web development is, I though I would add in my tuppence worth.

I prefer the darker colour scheme - it is slightly easier on the eye than the white template.
I like the access to more information by clicking on Learn More buttons in the old system. It keeps scrolling to a minimum thus making information access a choice by the site visitor, and improving initial impact navigation.
The new website "feels" a little snappier in response when opening new fields. I like the audio player but it may have been more helpful to have that positioned so that it is available at all times when scrolling down a product page so that you can quickly browse demo tunes whilst reading product information.

Branding is very low-key on both sites. It also strikes me that there is a lot of real estate untapped in the new site. I guess that is there for promo activity in the future?

Overall, I would be slightly biased toward the new site but would prefer some of the quick access to info of the old site as indicated above. Either site allows me to access the information relatively intuitively and quickly though - which is exactly what I look for in a website.
Thanks
Always learning....

Post

HI, the new site is not responsive - it does not scale properly to different formats - eg phone. Perhaps look at using bootstrap, a very common framework http://getbootstrap.com/
you can reskin bootstrap pretty easily.
On the positive - you have put a "buy" right up front which is much better than the older page - which also seems to suffer from a fixed font

new page - the header has some problems - your name "sound magic" is way too small and indistinct. almost blurry. You should be upfront and proud of the company name. Find a nice font for the name
I would ditch the gradients - they are a bit old fashioned, particularly for the 'Blue Stone Piano' that one sees immediately, but generally I would ditch them altogether.
For the colour scheme - find the blue colour you want for the piano then go to https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/ and generate a colour scheme that has an aesthetic relationship with Blue Piano

re layout - go to http://www.wirify.com/ and use wirify to check out your layout structure as a wireframe. It is not very good - things do not line up. You can also see how you are using some effects - like bevels - that are also not really working with the rest of the page.

and get rid of the html5 thing in the header as well.

other things like the images not being refined eg the wheel of the piano for "Industry-Best NEO Hybrid Modeling Engine" hangs over the bottom a little bit. That should be cleaned up

Post

i like the compactness of the old page, but really, black, white, some people are always going to prefer one, all you can do is make a decision in design and stick with it. and that's pretty much how i feel about most of the aspects.

i like the new page having the various explanative sections 'expanded', eg. if i were lazy and operating the pc with one finger, i can read the page by scrolling down instead of having to find each 'learn more' button :)

personally i do not like the horizontal separator bars between each section. they don't contribute anything to the organisation as each is headlined pretty clearly.

the company logo could be bigger/more visible. i'd also ditch the 'html 5' logo - though it's probably the reason why the pages are being updated, in a couple years it will look outdated. i'd say keep the reader in the experience, don't mention the html version :)
you come and go, you come and go. amitabha neither a follower nor a leader be tagore "where roads are made i lose my way" where there is certainty, consideration is absent.

Post

Designing a functioning website that is also pleasant to look at and interact with can be just as challenging as writing a good piece of music. And clearly some time was put into the new website.

Looks
Your new look is easier to read and overall more appealing. The larger print and darker colors make it feel modern. However, more and more I see pictures that are smaller on sites. When you click on them, a "lightbox" appears with the larger image. Maybe a size down in the font and slightly smaller pictures would complement each other for the perfect blend.

The menu appearance is WAY too big of a contrast however. It feels like it was just plastered on. Maybe some tweaks in color will help.

Navigation

Again with regards to the menus...the popup is a little better than before, but just like the old style, too quick. All the mouseover effects are also quite old. Either highlight or move...but not both. Simplicity really is key. Personally I like the old order of the menus. It might help to look at other sites with many products to see how they compensate for all of the their products and keep their menus condensed.

Functionality

I like the idea of a cart versus clicking on a product and having to buy one thing at a time. The Paypal cart feels a little clunky but is a step in the right direction. It does make it easy to get what you want and having it appear in a new tab is a great move.

Overall

This clearly took some work on your part and it is a huge step in the right direction. The issue for me if I had to pick just one is- simplicity. Keep it simple and you can sell a lot. If on a product page you had sub-tabs labeled Description, Specification, and Requirements that might make your product visible on a single page with no scrolling. Screen shots could be off to one side while the tabs switched what you were seeing.

Keep up the good work. I am unfamiliar with your products...hopefully that will change and I can get to know them better!

Jon

Post

Hi, I clearly prefer the new site. Better overall color scheme, reactive menus, easier to read. Looking "modern" also. I can't find anything to criticize at the time.

Thanks for the giveaway by the way.

Post

This Thread sealed and PM all people in this Thread.
The Giveaway Ends Here

Post Reply

Return to “Instruments”