No matter how long a website is in development and testing as soon as it goes live generally there will be further updates, we are happy to work with you to make these changes and can either do them all or guide you how to do them yourself, here is an example conversation we could have with a company employee tasked with reviewing the website and suggesting updates:
[Company Employee] I have attached a starter for suggested changes for the website which I have run by the company owner first, she is ok with everything so far, can you have a look and see what you can get started on, I am going to be doing some more work on this now. I don’t know if you have heard we are doing two exhibitions soon so it would be good to have things up and running for then
[Website Designers] Thanks for these notes and it’s nice to have a fresh set of eyes over the website, I have done my best to read and understand your points and have made comments accordingly. The fact you suggested putting the telephone number back to the top of the site has officially made me a fan of yours. Saying that I think its good to reflect on how much time / effort / work / testing has already been put into the site and changes need to be carefully considered. The framework is flexible to a certain extent but having skimmed over your notes quickly there are some comments on all the documents you sent that need to be discussed in greater detail. Am sure we can improve the site and these notes are going to be a good basis for this new improvement phase.
[Company Employee] The current website example given is, I believe, a good benchmark for reference and layout, I have spoken to a couple of buyers and asked them to compare our website and this one and they felt that ours was good as you instantly knew how much the product was however this site was better as it was built on creating the need to buy.
[Website Designers] Agree that the site above is visibly good and was initially identified as a guide website but they are a direct competitor and personally I think it would be wrong to try to mimic it, the main fundamental aesthetic differences are that the revolving image is shaped (curved) and the colour scheme is blue on white. The site above is not responsive and the videos do not play on any Android / Samsung galaxy mobile phones (requires a plugin)
[Company Employee] It gets back to the old adage shout the benefits and whisper the cost, what I think is missing on our homepage is the question what is it The website has a ‘what is it’ snippet of text – that was made more prominent during development but perhaps this could link to your new proposed ‘about’ page that has this info in more detail and why I need to buy the product.
I know we are working to a framework/template within the website therefore I can only go forward and make suggestions based on opinion and looking at other business models.
Here goes.
The company name should be in the top left hand corner I am not aware of many websites who do not do this.
[Website Designers] We wondered why you stated this for a while as the logo is top left but going back to our phone chats I remember you questioned the social icons at the top of the page – If you are suggesting that the social icons / google translate selector and the buy it now buttons are moved just to put the logo at the very top left I would disagree, they serve a purpose and are effective where they are. I agree that generally ‘most’ websites have the logo in the top left – but there is always flexibility in design to allow other functionality / links / social media.
[Company Employee] The logo could have the strapline words fit in between the letters; This would make the logo more integral and tighter for space.
[Website Designers] We initially thought this would make the words too crammed in and small to be effective and created a draft of this to show using your extra strap line that you mention below also. What do you think?
[Company Employee] Under this logo we could say another strapline. What I am trying to get over in this statement is important. As a Company I think it is important that we educate with our target market who will buy into this. This statement will also be useful should we do any collaboration in the future.
I like the idea of education but think it’s too wordy – short and sweet strap lines are the way to go – I can never remember seeing long strap lines and personally think the original one is perfect.
[Company Employee] The left hand side of the header, Twitter Facebook links can be moved across, with the google translate all on the same line so that they do not dominate the page and that brings me next to the menu bar and my suggesting changes.
[Website Designers] Agree with ‘about’ being standard but previously I believe we concentrated on a graphical / non-wordy construction but as months have gone by we have slowly increased the pages / titles / menu and website size in general. Regarding social media / translate icons – this is a good point – we have managed to get them all on one line and have removed the google branding on the translate product.
‘Markets’ is a good idea but believe that shouldn’t be part of the main menu especially by sacrificing FAQs (consistently I find FAQ pages to be the most visited on sites we manage, they are great for website visitors and great for the search engines. I suggest we discuss markets and link to the markets section in the About page. Perhaps ‘markets’ should be ‘Business Sectors’ ? what do you think ?
Everyone starts with home page but to go straight in with gallery indicates images and not what the product or the company is actually about, I would therefore suggest About and then have the list underneath as follows, this list is not exhaustive:
This page would be great if clear and concise – if you supply the text you think is needed in the page I can get it created quickly and put live
What is it? Obvious to us but not to any else (this is on the front page but agree that we could include more detail on this page) I think in this section we must say we offer the following:
Low cost
No maintenance
Eco friendly
Easily installed
Made in Britain
No hidden charges what you see is what you get
How Does it work? again might be simple but we need to make it simple
Why I need one? What are the Reasons to buy
Installation Full guide to installation plus print out of instruction if required
FAQs All part of the information and about us
Markets I would suggest with this is that we have a separate page with pointers for each of our key markets, some of the information will be similar but if a buyer believes we have facts with them in mind they will be far more convinced, so this list is also not exhaustive and we can add-on as we target a specific area:
[Website Designers] I like this and think we can do something like we have done on the faq page whereby a click reveals the extra info that you suggest, hope you see what im trying to say here (see faq page for functionality)
The next button is news and this section is huge and can give us authority in our field as well as promoting ourselves, I think what we do with Twitter and Facebook at the bottom of the page is great however it’s information can be a little hidden and you have to go looking for it, also some people are not social media fans so we must not rely on this method to let people know news, it therefore needs to be up there in lights at the top of the page. For example we currently have a really good news video but not to be seen anywhere else.
I also think this would be a great place to have the managers blog which he can keep us updated with news from the world of health and medicine which we can source for him.
I have changed Gallery to Video as I think people will use this more than any other to understand the product, we have a lot of images and videos that can support our sales story and more to come, I think they need to be available to users within a couple of clicks and therefore by offering direction immediately at the top of the page is a good option
Contact is simply what it says it is though I do think our contact page is very large and the verification section I think might be incorrect at the moment as it says Verification. Please input the result of 3+3=?
I can see how this could confuse so have changed
I think we should have in the contact information page something simple as follows and then the boxes to fill in as there is nothing that annoys me more than having to trawl through a site looking for who to contact. This is the top of our page
This is the next section and we still haven’t got to a telephone number
At the moment we have email boxes to fill in, then a map and then the address/ phone number and I think this is upside down and that the map is too big, very few people will come to our premises to purchase and while it is good to show a UK location I think it could be brought down in size. I think it could be a good idea to have opening times and outside of these times can we offer an answer phone or divert to another phone?
[Website Designers] Have updated this page – tell me what you think
So that completes the menu which as the main navigational tool for the site needs to be organised and easily breaks down information about the business so people can find what they want within a couple of clicks and in very quick time.
Next comes the BUY button and the telephone number for those people who like to pick up the telephone straightaway
It sounds a lot to fit into a header but this is not an unusual amount, the next point for discussion is the colour scheme, I know that we are limited with the corporate colours, however I am not keen on the black, it’s a personal thing and you can shout me down but I do not think that anything to do with health and hygiene should lead with black, also I’ve been to many seminars that tell me not to use reverse block white on black as people over the age of 40 suffer with diminished eye sight and cannot read the small print. If you search health products many providers go with blue which I think is an obvious choice as it relates you to water, being clean and healthy and it is also the colours of NHS, however I don’t think this will work so well with the green and red. It might be worth looking at green as the base colour as this is associated with a natural environment and is also considered eco-friendly and therefore healthy; I have attached below some information and reason why to use the colour green.
[Website Designers] We had already looked at changing this when it was first designed and we changed it to grey / white / green previously and it all looked ‘horrible’ or wrong. Happy to do some more experiments, the actual main background is a repeating graphic (light grey) and the top banner colour can be changed quickly and easily but as I say we have tried this previously and think the small amount of black in the header / footer and menu bar works well.
If you want to select a specific colour and then give us the specific colour # reference and we will show you what it looks like
Once the colour of the site has been agreed I would like to discuss the home page itself and the information it gives or doesn’t give!
