This blog is about the experience of non-designers (i.e. Newmarket Consulting) working on the redesign of our website, the approach we took, what we learned about digital media and what we achieved. We hope it is of interest to others facing the same daunting but exciting task.
The evolution of Newmarket Consulting’s contribution to the world of websites is about to enter its third stage. In 2004, we very proudly launched our first site and very much regretted that there were no Golden Spiders at the time. Our use of stock images and business language surely combined in a way stood out from the many, many, many other sites for business consultants that were exactly the same. The realisation that perhaps we hadn’t changed the face of the world wide web forever came when a friend in digital media described our site as looking like it had been “designed with a ‘Create Your Own website’ CD that came free with a box of cornflakes” (I still remember that Liam but understand/respect the cruel to be kind intentions).
Stage Two was a much better site which was much more in line with our identity and brand. We worked hard on translating the business language into language that made sense to people. We tried to make it more personal by including photos of ourselves rather than anonymous strangers with bright white teeth. We were happy and it looked professional because it was created by a professional.
The process of changing it this time was mainly motivated by having Gary our digital media intern working with us. We were still relatively happy with the old site but when Gary did his analysis of the site, we very quickly realised how little the site reflected the changes in websites over the last few years and how dated it had become.
It is much easier now to create sites on platforms that are really user-friendly. Content management systems have progressed so much in the last few years and the glitches in the last system we used don’t seem to be an issue anymore. Before simple things like font size would look perfect on the back-end of our old system and then appear as varying font sizes and formats on the front-end. Photos were much harder to upload. Moving imagery was way too much to ask and if we had tried to upload a video, we probably would have broken the Internet forever.
The other really interesting realisation is that if you haven’t updated your site in a while, you are probably communicating an outdated impression of who you are and what you do. In the few years since we created our last site, we have ended up working in some new sectors, with new clients and in lots of new countries.
There are lots more tools available to us to get our message across that hopefully will show what is different about how we do what we do, our personality, specialities and quirks.
We said No to stock images. We got out chalk and a chalkboard and Gary got sketching. We used lots of photos to paint the thousand words rather than write the five thousand. We got professional photos done (but forgot to smile and have our teeth airbrushed afterwards – missed opportunity). Most of all I think we had fun coming up with ideas and lots of excitement seeing Gary make them happen.
For me the biggest lesson is that if you don’t update your site you are telling a story and presenting an image that reflects what you were before rather than what you have become. So, if you are dynamic, you are making a big mistake if the impression your site gives is that you have been standing still for a long time.
This site feels like us, it looks like us (except for the airbrushed bits!) and we spent time thinking about what we wanted it to say, how we wanted it to look and how we could get a short but clear message across about what it’s like to work with Newmarket Consulting. Hopefully we have done that. Comments and suggestions and nominations to the Golden Spiders welcome.
