Difficult Design Task: New homepage for FurnaceCompare.com

FurnaceCompare.com

FurnaceCompare.com is a small company that helps people make decisions about which furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps and boilers to buy. The people that use our site are typically in crisis -- the furnace just broke and the house is getting cold! We can help them reach a decision more quickly and with more confidence.

Target audience are homeowners in a crisis. They aren't sure who to trust, and they aren't inherently interested in the subject matter.

The design for FurnaceCompare's homepage is challenging for two reasons:
1. The homepage has 165 links on it. Some people think that's too many -- but it's part of the spec for this project.
2. There are some built-in constraints for this project:
a. The basic layout of the site needs to be header, left toolbar and footer.
b. The logo / basic colors for the site have already been defined -- and are attached to the project description.
c. Pixel size should be: 1024 x 768

The homepage should express that the company is trustworthy, professional and well-informed.

Despite what you might guess from the domain name "FurnaceCompare.com", we also cover other types of heating and cooling equipment (furnaces, boilers, heat pumps, central air conditioners, water heaters, space heaters, etc).

Design Pluses:
a. I like white space and simplicity
b. I don't tend to like curved edges on boxes -- they require lots of images (or more HTML chops than I have).