The Adsense heat map is not conclusive – I’d agree. Of course, the best way to see which works best is for the designers to do a usability test and then do an eye movement study like what Myron described.

Well, if they bothered.

Heh… but anyway, they probably would already have enough computer and electronics fanatics to sardine pack the Singapore Expo halls and make the hotdog, candy floss and popcorn sellers rich!

Most people will notice “Your Digital Playground” because it is BIG, compared to the other elements on the screen.

I agree with you that the freakin icons below “Your Digital Playground” are one of the most irritating navigation ever invented. It is what usability professionals term as the “mystery meat” navigation, where you have to mine-sweep the buttons one by one with your mouse cursor just to find out what they are.

Even worse, subsequent pages contain too little information (just a few items in point form!) and fall short of what users would expect. You don’t make the users work for a simple list of items.

As for your quick 3 min redux, you got it right as in shifting the logo to the left of the page. In this case, users will know what page this is even if their browser window is not maximised. Important info such as time/date is also listed at the top of page in the content area.

However, the information architecture of the site is horrible and could use some massive rework.

Yes, I’d have to admit my screenshot looks very cluttered… but as mentioned, its a 3 min photoshop job. It looks cluttered because there are too many different colors all around the layout, particularly the reds.

Also yes, putting dates and stuff in the top left does work well, if the middle section is primarily text of one (duller) color. The Digital Playground thing is big and too colorful which I feel is more of a distraction.

Actually if I had more time I’d desaturate some of the elements to bring more attention to the center.

The home link is the first text link on a PR 5 site! That is a lot of very powerful link reputation wasted, considering its 214 indexed pages (of which some are PR 4).

A good solution to this while keeping the usability would be to javascript the link (or link it to a redirected page blocked with robots.txt… or some other means to rid of it from the SE’s interest) so the juice flows better to the other links.

But still, there is a need to get an internal link anchor tags “SITEX” to the web root despite its rankings.

Sitex’s is already ranked #1 when you search for that term. Changing “home” to “Sitex” doesn’t add any value SEO wise but rather raise confusions for the user (Nobody would assume clicking on Sitex leads to the front page).

Based on eye movement study, the original Sitex site intelligently places the location, date and venue as prime focus on the website but your revision places emphasis on the Sitex logo.

Whilst the original site is not without its flaws, yours just seems too cluttered and unfocused – But you’re spot on in the lazy page title naming. =)