Last week, we launched a new website design for Data Driven Labs. Our team was very excited about this new design and I wanted to talk with you about what went into creating this new design.
The Why
It is a joke amongst web development agencies that the worst site they manage is always their own. This mindset is based on the fact that most web agencies are inundated with creating great websites for their clients, they often are unable to find the time to work on their own. At Data Driven Labs, this was true for our first 2 years of business. We had a site that had a decent homepage, however, it lacked everything else.
As we offered new services, we found it difficult to showcase them with the structure of our old site. We initially started planning out new subpages that we could add to our existing design, only to realize we need to do much more. We didn’t have any easy way to showcase our product line, nor did we have a blog. It was at this point, we decided we needed something better.
This is when my wife and I decided that in our evening hours, we could build a new website while rewatching all the seasons of “The Office” on Netflix. We figure we could finish everything in 3-4 evenings no problem. We quickly realized what we wanted would require more evenings, and more seasons of “The Office”. All in all, the project took a total of 6 evenings and 1 full Saturday to complete. We launched on August 8th, a Tuesday morning around 1AM.
The Design
Homepage
Our goal was to keep a similar look to our original home page. We updated our CTA text in the hero and added some slight animation, however, we kept the same hero image we used before, a Florida beach. We chose to keep this image as it really showcases the mindset we want our clients to have when working with Data Driven Labs. We want you to feel stress-free as if you’re sitting on a quiet beach when working with us.
Beyond the hero section, we made major changes to the rest of the site. We focused on our core areas of service and even showcased our Affordable Website Packages for small businesses to help visitors quickly find out what we do. Beyond those items, we then have a section that better explains who we are at Data Driven Labs and then we brought back our testimonials from those who have worked with us.
Site Structure
In our previous site, we have very simple navigation. This was 2 links, services and contact. We realized after user testing that many were unable to easily navigate our site and find what we offer. With our new site, we expanded our navigation offering quicker access to the more important sections and created a better grouping of our services.
We also created a larger site footer that again focused on quick access to our services, social media, and contact information. Overall, we wanted to make things easier to find.
Subpages and Flow
We then focused on making it easy to flow into each of our services. We did this by focusing on four main service categories on our home page and within our services menu. From these items, you are taken to a services category page which shows you the services related to the original item you picked. From here, we then dive into our services information pages.
Services Pages
With each service, we wanted to make it clear what we offered. We accomplished this by focusing on six main features of each service and then a call out of one larger item we want to feature. From here we dive into pricing tables, a contact form which opens up in a modal and testimonials related to that particular product. These pages are built with simplicity in mind and are set to focus on each service individually to help clients better understand which of our offerings they may be interested in.
Showcasing Our Work
One of the biggest pitfalls with our previous site was the lack of a portfolio. At Data Driven Labs, we get to work with some amazing clients and we love to brag about our past projects. With this new design, we wanted to focus on what we have done for others with a section for our work, but, we wanted to take it a step further.
We find that simply showing a photo of a project we worked on does not explain what went into that project. We wanted to show more by creating case studies for each project. Clicking on a case study will tell you a little about the client, provide a link to their website, explain the challenges and our solution to that challenge. In addition, we added an image slider that showcases key elements of each project.
A Blog Finally
We are speakers, teachers, bloggers, and love to share with everyone. Our old site did not have a blog setup, and we had no way to share valuable information with our clients or with our visitors. With this new site, we have created a blog with expansion in mind, which we will explain below. We can finally share information that will help small businesses succeed through tips, how-tos, and articles.
This section will continue to evolve as our company grows, and we are excited to build it out. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn to be notified when we post new articles.
The Future
We want to focus on creating content for small businesses. Our goal is to create new content weekly utilizing our blog section to help small business owners build their business online. We are working to build out how-to articles & videos that will walk you through WordPress related items, Google Analytics, and digital marketing tasks. We will be creating quick tip articles that will be short but informative. In addition, we will create deep dive articles that focus on an important topic and teaches you everything you would ever need to know. We are excited where this new site will take us.
This site will never be done. We will continue to use data to help us create the best agency site we can.
What Would You Like To See?
This site is not for just us, this site is for you. Please comment down below and let us know what you would like to see.
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