Need Input on Our New Web Design

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Permalink Reply by Mike Seidle on July 10, 2009 at 11:14pm

Can I vote for neither? Both designs are boring and dare I say way too corporate for your company's unconventional approach to what you do. But a little more life in it!

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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ball on July 11, 2009 at 9:46am

Thanks for the comments. Did you get a chance to see the working templates?

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Permalink Reply by Robby Slaughter on July 11, 2009 at 12:59pm

While both designs are more attractive and more modern than your current design, I generally recommend against wholesale site upgrades. Doing so alienates current users (remember the backlash against the Facebook redesign?), creates usability challenges for those who are accustomed to the previous design, and can negatively impact overall findability.

Furthermore, I would suggest that tweaking an off-the-shelf template might be a great move for many companies, but not one who does marketing, design and branding work. Your site should be a demonstration of something wholly unique, as this is the ultimate level of expertise you can provide for your clients. Using a template is like a car company that buys someone else's vehicles for their service fleet: sure, you can wrap those trucks in your logo, but show off the cars that you can build!

There are some good ideas in these templates, though. So instead of a complete redesign, I'd suggest that you take your current design, refine it based on these inspirations, and come up with an updated site which honors your existing users and user experience but demonstrates your unique design and marketing capabilities. Here's a 5 minute Photoshop job which demonstrates what I mean:



Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Admin Smaller Indiana on July 11, 2009 at 4:12pm

Robby, you have certainly given us lots to think about... Particularly the idea of making loyal customers feel at home when they come back.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Clarke on July 28, 2009 at 11:19pm

Amen!

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer Swineford on July 13, 2009 at 10:28am

I would have to agree with Robby. I wouldn't expect your site to be tweaked from a template. It is very easy to take nearly any web site design and make the necessary adjustments to work with WordPress, so you shouldn't feel like it's necessary to just tweak templates. Hope this helps and that your transition is smooth.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Friedland on July 13, 2009 at 4:56pm

Have you thought of creating your own Web site from scratch? We find that templates aren't very effective in promoting a business as unique since, by the very nature of templates, the same layout can be used by a limitless number of people.

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Permalink Reply by Robby Slaughter on July 13, 2009 at 5:06pm

I do think that Roundpeg should create their website from scratch and not use a template, since they are a marketing communications company that designs websites.

However, modifying a template can be just fine for small or local businesses who don't need to have an image which is 100% distinctive. In fact, organizations who are in a well-defined segment might actually benefit from having a website with a familiar layout for their industry.

Finally, a template is not necessarily available to a limitless number of people. Most template companies offer a "unique price" which you can pay to take the template off of the market:

http://www.ewisoft.com/a/library/unique-price.htm

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Permalink Reply by Kyle Lacy on July 28, 2009 at 5:03pm

I agree with this to an extent. You can design a template out to look fairly different from the original theme.

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Permalink Reply by ashan jay on July 28, 2009 at 7:20pm

Liz that is actually what first came to my mind as well. But there's some point in Robby's comment.

That is true if the sites of a similar marketing communications companies look similar, it would make the user interface familiar for people who use them, but in this type of a business field we aren't talking about being like others, these companies need to make themselves unique in a way that would show their visitors from the first look that they are not like the others in the field. A different look and feel, including their website design, would suffice this goal.

Its true that you can buy the template and alter it, but it still look the same and cheap way to go out. If a marketing company want to make themselves unique and different from all the gazillions of other marketers out there they have to have something unique, is what all I am saying, and this include their website design and making it in a unique style rather than buying a cheap generic template.

________________________
AshanJay Designs : Graphic Design | Website Design | 3D Rendering & Architecture

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Permalink Reply by Kristen Horton on July 13, 2009 at 6:36pm

I like the size of A, the roundpeg images of B; the video of Lorraine on A, the simplicity of wording on B; the colors of A - although I do like the black around the logo box on B. If left exactly as they are, I vote for A.

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Permalink Reply by Jillian Koeneman on July 28, 2009 at 10:08am

Lorraine,
I took the survey and gave some additional comments. I really think version B is the most user-friendly and guides users immediately to your portfolio, which is what you want I believe.

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