Redesign For A Free Ads Site - Abadoo

http://www.abadoo.co.uk

Abadoo is a free ads website located and targeting users in the UK. Please see here http://www.abadoo.co.uk The site is targeted at anyone who would like to advertise an item, service, business, event etc
We would particularly like to target small businesses wishing to list their services in their particular locality by posting a long term advertisement on the site.

Anyone wishing to advertise an item, event, service etc
Particularly small businesses

We require some work on the homepage to make it more attractive. At the moment it is too bland. We would like the design to be light and simple and should tie in with the inner pages, which are predominently white.

We require the general layout of the homepage to remain similar to what we have - think of the current page as a wireframe. Consideration should be given to the time it takes to load a page so we need to keep the design light-weight.
If you click on "Currently not signed in" then click on a coloured theme you can see the coloured bars change colour. We are thinking of keeping this idea so designs will need to go with the other themes.

At the moment the logo and "Post your free advertisement" icon stay the same colour across the colour themes and do seem to go with the themes.

Regarding our current logo and "Post your free advertisement" icon, we don't feel that these are particularly bad and could keep them. Modifications to the categories text probably would improve things and maybe some nice icons for "Currently not signed in" and "Change location" would bring a bit more life to the page.

We also require a design for the listings page and the item display page, however there shouldn't be too much to change - they just need a tidy up to make them look a little neater. Maybe a divider on the listings page to separate each ad. But heh, I'm not a designer so please feel free to be creative.

For inspiration 99designs isn't too far away with the exception of some of the colors. Bright, simple and appealing is what we are looking for and especially appealing for local businesses.
For inspiration here are some classifieds sites we like:
http://uk.freeads.net/
http://www.toplocallistings.co.uk/
http://www.gumtree.com/
http://www.friday-ad.co.uk/
http://www.adoos.co.uk/
http://www.192.com/
http://www.vivastreet.co.uk/
http://london.craigslist.co.uk/
..and here are some non classifieds sites we like:
http://www.wordtracker.com
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/
http://www.twitter.com