No one has to egg me on to say that I hate the main site for Xna. It goes against several rules that many web developers including myself abide by. The biggest problem with the site is the gigantic lack of contrast between any of the elements. When my eyes are search for information they are drawn to nothing but a gigantic collage of images and text that seem to follow no standard.
So as a design study I have decided to mockup the site as I would have created it. Step 1 is to copy over many of the elements into my editor (Expression Design) and change a few minor things. In the below image you can see that I have changed the background, text size and color as well as how elements are placed on the page. I have attempted to minimize the logo area because you know what the site is about. Having a large area for a logo and blank space means the user may have to scroll, and scrolling is bad. I will come back to this many times.
You will also notice that I have begun to break the mold of layout design by forcing elements outside the container area. This is ok so long as it is meaningful and done in a nice fashion. Here I have done it to add extra space for a gigantic center image. Why? I want to attract you to the biggest news: making money with Xna! Elements like how it works and downloading the software are secondary because they won’t attract users to stay. Money does!
