With new developments in our company, it was time to evaluate our own website. We retain excellent clients who find us online, so it’s a priority to have our site represent our culture, services and work.
Site Evaluation
The first step was a site evaluation to review technology, user experience, content, functionality and, of course, design. Whenever possible we want to retain the initial investment that was made for a site. This is our approach with all new client work. In this case, the results of the evaluation gave us the facts: we needed a complete overhaul of the design and development.
Our analysis showed our conversion rate was slowly dropping and the custom-built CMS was not providing the flexibility that we needed. Also, the content didn’t tell users of our new services, it wasn’t mobile friendly and we wanted to present our portfolio as brand stories rather than small, single images.
New Site Features
Goal – Design and program a site that responds to all device sizes.
Solution – Using CSS with no javascript, we designed and programmed the site to be responsive for desktop and mobile devices. Mobile sizes are: mobile portrait (320×480); mobile landscape (480×320); mini tablet portrait (600×800); mini tablet landscape (800×600); tablet portrait (768×1024); tablet landscape (1024×768).
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Goal – Change the content from “what we do” to “why work with us.”
Solution – We rewrote the content to illustrate the benefits clients receive working with us.
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Goal – Implement best-practices SEO for optimum search ranking.
Solution – From comprehensive reporting from our SEO partner, the BRIM Agency, we wrote targeted keywords, used back-links and image tags and review our Google analytics regularly to make adjustments.
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Goal – Present our portfolio to tell the story of each project.
Solution – Color, images, words. These elements when combined in a creative way tell the story of a client’s product, service or company. We present the results of our branding and design to reveal the story of each project.
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Goal – Ease of updating.
Solution – We changed from our custom-built CMS to an open-source CMS to increase functionality and to simplify programming.
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Goal – Content marketing and social media integration.
Solution – Using the latest software for social distribution, we can easily “pull” our followers into all of our social outlets.
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Goal – Create user interactivity.
Solution – Using the metaphor of an office building, users have control of revealing our services floor by floor.
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Goal – Show our studio’s culture and personality.
Solution – The site uses photos of our staff, studio and our dogs Roxy and Mika, taken by our favorite photographer Steve Whalen.
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Considering a website redesign? Read Eight Reasons to Refresh Your Website or for an evaluation of your current site or contact us at 760-729-8205.
