I took the tour and from what I saw it seems like an amazing service with loads of features. I also love the design (from what I saw in the thumbnails). Agreed that you should switch the logo and courtesy nav... logo on top left, nav on top right.
This is a no brainer: Make the whole continental thing, as well as the logo (only on the front page) link to the tour. I got to the site and didn't know what to do. As a travel site, guess what's the last thing you want your users to feel when using your site? Lost.
As per the tour (I have no need to sign up for this service right now), it looks incredible. All the thumbnails look beautiful and the site looks loaded with really awesome features. Unfortunately, the stupid slideshow kept moving forward even when I explicitly clicked on a number. Not a big deal because only a small percentage of people will care enough to view a picture in the slideshow anyway, but it wouldn't hurt to fix.
If you really want to impress users, there's no substitute for a live demo. Lead users to the tour, and on each page of the tour, link them to the demo account: "see it live in a demo" If you're worried about crap in the demo, just have the demo reset itself every hour.
If it were up to me, I'd keep the continental thing, but only as a background. I'd put a nice faded box on top of it with the following:
1 sentence telling me what you do: "[logo]zipalong[/logo] lets you organize and share your trips" and two buttons: "live demo" and "tour of features".
This is a no brainer: Make the whole continental thing, as well as the logo (only on the front page) link to the tour. I got to the site and didn't know what to do. As a travel site, guess what's the last thing you want your users to feel when using your site? Lost.
As per the tour (I have no need to sign up for this service right now), it looks incredible. All the thumbnails look beautiful and the site looks loaded with really awesome features. Unfortunately, the stupid slideshow kept moving forward even when I explicitly clicked on a number. Not a big deal because only a small percentage of people will care enough to view a picture in the slideshow anyway, but it wouldn't hurt to fix.
If you really want to impress users, there's no substitute for a live demo. Lead users to the tour, and on each page of the tour, link them to the demo account: "see it live in a demo" If you're worried about crap in the demo, just have the demo reset itself every hour.
If it were up to me, I'd keep the continental thing, but only as a background. I'd put a nice faded box on top of it with the following:
1 sentence telling me what you do: "[logo]zipalong[/logo] lets you organize and share your trips" and two buttons: "live demo" and "tour of features".