Mock up of A-Eon website

Hi all,

A few weeks if not months ago now, the talk on Amigans was about the quality or lack thereof A-Eon's website.

Many stated it was only temporary, many said it was here to stay ha. Many grumbled and said 'if you think you can do better let's see you do a mock up instead of constantly nit-picking'.

That last comment or words to that effect inspired me to do exactly that, see if I could do better so rather than sit on my laurels I had a go.

So I thought what the hell I could do with brushing up my CSS and HTML skills so last sunday (6th June) I began to do exactly that make my own mock copy of their site.

The link below are the fruits of my labour, some may say its waste of time, I say well it was fun making it!

But at least I have done something which I believe is productive and shows what can be achieved and could appear on any future A-Eon site.

Thanks to the few who kindly uploaded random images here on Amigans I still need(ed) more, but what the heck without an Amiga anymore myself its hard to finish what I had set out to do.

I hope you enjoy the following effort and have positive comments for me. Of course I do listen to constructive criticism as well.

I would love to see some of the content appear on their website, chiefly a Download section of popular software, user themes and backgrounds and an introduction to AmigaOS.

In closing, I wish the A-Eon's web design team well on re-designing their site ready for the X1000 launch this summer and hope they have listened and taken in many of the positive and also negative comments of the whole Amiga community.

Here is my mock-up of the A-Eon website.

Enjoy.


http://www.uploads.beaverpromotions.co.uk/x1000/index.html


PS. I designed the website with my screen resolution at 1680 x 1050 (I have a wide-screen iMac) I fully expect there to be some layout issues on lower resolutions. I freely admit I am not proficient when it comes to ensuring consistency at different screen resolutions. Some tips and tricks wouldn't go a miss.

PPS. Yes some pages are incomplete, I felt I had spent enough time on it already.

Hmm strange... thought this will appear at the top of new posts lists. :s

Perhaps its because its in Free For All?

Maybe I should move it elsewhere. :S

@djrikki

The linked site will block OWB!

probably due to this

@djrikki
Imho you should use css for making "right border canvas". For now its a bit messy in terms of canvas (looks like just html "center" tag).

@djrikki

Way better than their current one.

@djrikki
Looks pretty good to me, even on 1280x960, although it does need a bit more work IMHO:

The front page (aka Home) should have a picture of the X1000, so it looks more interesting & thus entice the user to look at the other pages.

The front page is a bit wordy, probably should be made easier to read, by using shorter sentences, reorganising, etc.

I would be inclined to reorder the "tabs" across the top of the site, so that the X1000 comes before AmigaOS, and perhaps even before News.

The site seems to talk about OS4 a lot, which A-Eon may not want to do, since Hyperion is responsible for OS4, while they are only responsible for the X1000. Perhaps the site could be made a joint development of both A-Eon & Hyperion though?

The mostly Black & White theme of the site seems a little bleak/boring. I think some graphics (even if still mostly B&W) could spice it up a lot. e.g. Make the black headings look more interesting.

The X1000 pages needs several pictures of the X1000, currently is has none!

@djrikki

I like that it is a simple clean design and not gimmicky the way that the actual A-Eon site is (though I do understand their decision to make it the way that it is).

@All

Yeah lots of shortcomings and things to do on with it, but I just felt I had spent enough time on it - especially as A-Eon are very unlikely to use it.. although they are welcome to the source code. I'll address some of the individual posters this evening after I return home from work.

@djrikki
I like the fact that is show some content and "featured" downloads, it needs more "graphics" though, not too fancy, but right now it's a little "bare-bone" in that regard.

Also put AmiBoing LightUp and All Flat screens in the customizeble screens, the first shows how "Win7insh fancy" it can look, the second how serious/professional (but modern at the same time) it can look (MO).

I think A-Eon should use your layout instead the current one

@djrikki

Looking very good, but i thought that AmigaOS4 still is NOT a fully 64-bit operating system. I could be wrong, though.

Still, very impressive

@djrikki

Yeah I think its just the hardware atm. Like I said already, the web site is pretty work in progress and on hold. ^.^

@djrikki

I like the community page, but you ought to include a link to Aminet also. As the premier AmigaOS software library it still holds a lot of interest for Amigans everywhere.

B-)

The A-EON site design is pretty damn great.

Updated Mock-up A-Eons website.

Some requests for improvement have been made.

To the person who said you only got one picture of the X1000? Yes, I have how many have you seen posted across the internet?

www.uploads.beaverpromotions.co.uk/x1000/index.html

@djrikki

Very professional look

@djrikki

good work..i like it

@all

Thanks for the feedback.

I have also designed an email newsletter to go along with this, a few million email addresses would be cool though. =P

At present I have a database of 4,000 email addresses, but none are software developers it would be great if people could or would be willing to do some market research into this and build up their own individual databases with the intent of bringing it into huge email database that A-eon/A-Cube/Hyperion could spam *cough* I mean showcase their hardware to a wider audience as possible.

I would really like to know how or what is already being done by all those involved in advertising their hardware.

PS: Few more changes to the site, mostly making sure the html syntax is more adherant, but also started on the Developer menu option.

www.uploads.beaverpromotions.co.uk/x1000/index.html

I don't like what you're doing at all.

@khu

Thanks for the detailed reason of why you feel that way. ^.^

I don't know if its the website or my email idea =p - an aggressive marketing strategy is required on a shoestring budget to push the X1000 into the spotlight and that requires almost immediate action.

In the case of UK and European law as long as personal email addresses contain an Opt-out link - any company can send them advertising emails, when someone opts-out you must comply. Administrating Opt-outs falls into the same topic as do we chose to add tracking urls to an email so we can see which things in a newsletter people are clicking. Such services like DotMailer exist for providing such a service, contacts can easily Opt-out, but they can also handle Opt-in (ie. join your list) from a suitable web form. Of course they also have some novelty features like Forward to a Friend etc.

Of course such a service is not free, but in my humble opinion such a service is not necessary from the beginning and can easily be integrated later as necessary.

Aside from personal email addresses, there are Shared Email Addresses, examples are info@, developers@, press@, marketing@ etc... these are pretty useful as mail sent to it often gets sent to multiple-recipients elsewhere in the business - this in particular makes it difficult for someone to unsubscribe a shared email address; of course you would have to honour any new requests to opt-out from personal email addresses you may get as a result of this.

And also under the same law a company or individual is not compelled to unsubscribe a shared email address; most companies would choose to impose a temporary block/pause block on that account. This is because who is to say the person at the other end had the authority to unsubscribe? Also is this same person still employed with the company?

--

In short, having news posted on the web on such sites as OS News and Slashdot is not enough you must target people in their homes and businesses.