I came upon Ready Made Designs while going over a few designs on The CSS Awards and was pleasantly surprised by its creativity. My first thought was that the colour scheme is unique, it’s not one we often see in designs. The dominance of brown didn’t make it too dark or hard to read. Blue and brown, it’s not a colour scheme I’d put together.

The navigation rocks out of simplicity and style. I like how it’s placed on the shed, the 5 links makes navigation easy for any novice. It’s known that reduced choices increases conversion because the less users have to think about, the faster they will make a decision.

When navigating to other pages, I feel the navigation links should have an active state to remind me where I am. That would be useful.

The area where we have ‘Your Website’ on the top right is very nice. It uses basic information architecture to explain just what goes into a website, something many clients do not know. However, I feel they could have added a pop-up or some type of info box to elaborate on what CMS, W3C and all this fancy lingo means. I mean, you and I as web individuals know but not the average client.

It’s good they quickly get to the WHO, WHY and WHAT because at this point I’m wondering just that. Key point here is to note how the text is very short and not overwhelming to readers. I personally have some issues with the layout causing it to have only 2 words per line. It’s a little annoying and doesn’t allow me to read as fast as I normally would if it had more words per line. This might be just me but I’d do it differently while including those lovely illustrations that keeps things visual.

This area got a little busy for me but I find myself enjoying the illustrations. It does a great job of breaking up boring text with great visuals. The only problem is that the content ‘how do they do it’ took precedence over portfolio work. It seems fitting at this point to stop talking and start showing what exactly it is they do. The entire ‘how they do it’ to me can be discussed verbally or even be presented on another page. The portfolio is completely downplayed. In fact, when I go to ‘Designs’ I expect just that but get more copy.

I know personally, if I’m hiring, the last thing I look at is text. I simply absorb the portfolio but considering this is geared towards average clients, a more sales like approach like this might work.

The footer looks great but I’m not sure what’s up with the boxes. This is a great segway for me to go into branding. The name ‘Ready Made Designs’ seems to imply that they are template designs but according to the site copy, it’s not. The boxes seem to reinforce the message of pre-packaged designs ready for shipping. I’m being sent mixed messages and as a client I would be a little confused. Their name doesn’t seem to align with their message of ‘tailor-made’. Truth is, ready made and tailor made are the exact opposite.

Here’s something to look at; because I cropped the footer to show only the part with the boxes downward, how does it feel to you? To me I can easily take this for a shipping site. That’s just an observation but luckily it’s the last thing on the page I see.

Visually the site design is great and usability is on point. There are some great details in the site design you’ll enjoy if you look around (hint – the contact page, I love the dropdown). Of course like any design there can be improvement and I feel they’ve overlooked certain things like branding; still, nice design.

What are your thoughts on Ready Made Designs?

Critique Agent: "dmadray"  -  http://twitter.com/depthskins

Damian Madray is the founder & creative director of Depthskins Studio & DesignersCouch, his responsibilities are in the areas of branding, web design and project management. Damian’s keen eye is always absorbing design elements around him which lead to the creation of DCQ. More posts by this author.