I'm building a website for a new company and right at the homepage there is a main action where users need to select wich city they are located in order to show specific results, which depends on the city. It's like a service to find places next to you.
Because this is a new company, new website, etc.. There is part of the homepage dedicated to explain how the website works, even if it's "easy" it's better to show the user why he needs to select the city and what results he may get.
Because of this, there isn't much space to work with on the homepage, or at least not enough space to show the main information without harming the layout, which is something I'm trying to keep as clean as possible, specially because the idea is to have a dynamic header with big hero images at the homepage. You can see this design I'm working on (low fidelity, but you can get the idea): Desktop and mobile.
With this in mind, I ended up leaving the logotype a little bit off the screen. Although it is always visible at the main navigation bar, I know it's important to keep users aware of which website they are navigating in to enforce the brand for the users who are not used to it yet. Specially with a new company.
Is this an acceptable decision to make? To make a clear layout focusing on the main actions of the page and providing a better user experience? Or should I try to find space on the homepage to give a better view of the companys Logo/Name, in order to make a better presence of the brand?
This is an alternative layout I was working with: Desktop
This is an example of the 2 desktop designs using images, wich seems a little "too much" when using the logo on top of the image: Desktop with logo, Desktop without logo.
For me, it seems too much when using overlaping text/image, specially on the header with bighero images, which gives a better design appearence in general. But I don't want it to look just beautiful, I prefer to have a better, functional and more intuitive website.