Our New Website is Live!

confettiBreak out the champagne and confetti! At least that’s how I feel after finalllllly getting the new website out the door.

We launched the new site this past Friday afternoon.

It was a long process, but one that required patience and attention to detail to get right.

Out with the old

It has been a number of years since we’ve redesigned our site. The “old” website was starting to look a little dated. It was designed for a small screen, used small text, and did not properly convey our focus and expertise.

In a nutshell…. It *HAD* to go:

Old site (click image to enlarge)

Old site (click image to enlarge)

The Process

Six months ago, we decided on a web design firm to help us find a new look that best represented our strengths and services. We opted to go with a local firm, although we could have worked with a remote company just as well.

Getting the homepage look down took a few iterations. From the size of the site, to the text, updated logo, and style of navigation, every aspect was examined in detail. Once we decided on a framework, work was done to build out landing pages, sub-pages, and come up with various templates we could use throughout the site.

The new site is not fully responsive, but is designed in such a way as to scale well on mobile. Our Google Analytics data shows we do not have a lot of mobile only traffic, so adding complexity for full responsive did not seem to be the right path.

We knew we wanted a site that expanded to fit the screen that is viewing it, along with fonts and text that were easy to read.

The Last Mile

The design process took up most of the time. After just over four months, we had finalized the design, and had our templates. Now the “hard work” began. We opted for an html based site, not one in a CMS like WordPress. We do use WordPress for our blog, but the main site is html based. We had to convert a few hundred pages into the new design – improve titles, alter layouts, re-write content, etc…

It was a lot of work, but we think the final product made it all worth it.  :)

new_website

New website (click image to enlarge)

The homepage now has a slider displaying our four areas of expertise. Our top global navigation bar allows a visitor to easily find most pages on our site. The footer has links to all the main areas on the site. Throughout the website we try to convey our focus on personalized service and in-house support for our hosting clients.

We’re still tweaking elements here and there and re-writing some content, but the bulk of the new site is now live. I invite you to browse around, and provide any feedback (both good and bad) on our new look.

photo credit

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9 Comments

  1. Gari Anne says:

    Looks great!! Congratulations!

  2. Congratulations! Love the new look/feel.

  3. Mike Masin says:

    Great design, worthy of the great hosting company it represents!

    Mike

  4. Pam Wright says:

    Sorry, we are late to the celebration. Y’all did a fabulous job on the redesign. Very clean, good navigation system.

    We are preparing a redesign of Wrightslaw. Have mixed feelings since it will require a huge amount of extra work. Like Lexiconn, we know that the old site has to go.

    One question: Why did you decide to stay with an html site? At this point, we plan to shift to a CMS (WordPress). Pros and cons?

    • Thanks Pam! We chose an html site (it’s a hybrid actually using common header, footer, and some dynamic elements) due to how we manage our site. A CMS like WordPress is actually a great way to go, as it makes site maintenance easy by anyone on the team. In our case, we don’t mind html/css coding, so it gives us a bit more flexibility, although that means more manual updates.

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