Websites - who needs ‘em? You do...
If you have a product or service to market, having an effective website is now an essential part of running the business. Several things are key to its success:
1/ Search Engine ‘Visibility’; if a search engine can’t find your site, it is severely reduced in its effectiveness for you.
2/ Look & Feel; is it consistent with the rest of your marketing tools and does it reflect the quality of your business.
3/ Functionality; how easy is it to use? Even if it looks great and is easily found, if it is annoying to use or doesn’t work properly, it will turn people off your business and possibly be detrimental.
4/ Content; does it actually say what needs to be said? Can the reader easily get the information they are after. Your content also affects your sites search engine ranking.
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The most important of all these is #1. The importance of this has spawned a new specialisation - Search Engine Optimisation, and it has become the absolute key to your site appearing in the ideal position, which is on the front page of a google search. However, be aware of anyone who promises you they will rank you 1st in a google search. It can’t be done and is illegal. All you can do is follow the ‘recipe’ for search engine success and keep at it.
When I design a website, it is as a graphic designer, not a web designer, two different skills. I apply the same principles of design to a web page as I would a printed page - good colour choice, imagery, typography and alignment are just as important in your site as in your print items. One of the most frustrating things I find is when a client employs me to design their Corporate Identity, then gets their website designed by a ‘mate’ for ‘cheap’ and undoes all the effort and expense that has gone into creating a professional Corporate Identity Design in the first place. So if you value ‘good’ over ‘cheap’ and see the benefit of working with one designer who can fulfil all your needs, call me now.
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| PJ Dick & Co. ltd |
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After creating the Brand ID for this West Auckland accountancy firm, including 3 metre plinth sigh and ACM building fascia, Paul asked me to redesign his existing website to incorporate this new look. The previous site had absolutely no connection to him or the business because it was a template and used poorly chosen American stock photos.
Because Paul is not your average accountant I wanted to make more of a feature of him as a person rather than a service, and target the site at his current clientele demographic. So the language is down to earth and there is no pointless imagery, just a good, honest, easy to use resource.
www.pjdick.co.nz |
| First Home Makeovers |
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The brief for this site was to create a site with web 2.0 design features & extend the brands visual identity, or key message, which is; “We will transform your crappy old house into a wonderful home”. So throughout the site, and other branded items, I’ve used a theme of transformation from rough old /grungy to a beautiful & contemporary damask pattern, plus textured segments & backgrounds as per an interior designers sample book. The result is a very distinctive, strongly branded website with character which perfectly represents the clients core business.
It is built into Wordpress so the blog can be frequently & easily updated by the client.
The logo was also designed by me as part of the initial brand ID package.
www.firsthomemakeovers.co.nz |
| Northland Society of Arts |
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The NSA already had a website but were not happy with it and for good reason. It had an illogical horizontal layout rather than the more common (and therefore familiar) vertical layout and was frustrating to use as a result, exactly what you don’t want in your website.
So this version was designed to be easy and logical to use, simple and clean (to maintain consistency with the rest of the brand ID), inexpensive to produce through a no frills but well designed layout, and easily updatable via a content management system, essential given the constantly changing nature of the content.
www.reyburnhouse.co.nz |
| SentryBay |
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SentryBay needed to be seen as international and not a distinctly ‘kiwi’ business. It also wanted a friendly, commercial, professional look, targeting two distinct groups, Enterprise (big business) and Consumers (you and me) so the home page was designed to clearly split the two along their separate paths. The flash animated headers are used extensively to add interest and retain the viewers attention to what is a fairly technical topic and intangible product - data protection.
www.sentrybay.com |
| Bathroom Concepts |
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The brief for the Bathroom Concepts site was to be professional and upmarket but not too clean and modern as their target market is the ‘empty nester’ older couple, not the younger Ponsonby villa renovator. I use the rollover function a lot in my sites as I really like the way it allows you to show a lot of imagery on 1 page without the need to open multiple pages to see the same thing, which makes viewing much faster and is cheaper to build, and it’s done in HTML so the viewer doesn’t need a flash player installed. I’ve used it extensivley in the Bathroom Concepts site for their gallery and case studies sections, where it adds just enough ‘oooh look at that’ factor without being too fancy.
www.bathroomconcepts.co.nz |
| Wishbone Construction |
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The brief for this site was for it to be clean, simple, elegant and professional yet masculine. It should also be easily updatable, so it is built into a content management system. It was also to be highly visual, with large navigation and images making it easy to use on mobile devices.
From my own experience looking for a builder to conduct renovations, I found it frustrating on so may sites, not to see ‘before’ photos so I could easily identify what had been done, so we agreed as many projects as possible would have before and after photos, which also serves to enhance the quality of the work.
Search engine optimisation has also been employed and after just one month (Jan ‘12) is already having great results in a very competitive market.
www.wishboneltd.co.nz |
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