Many of you have asked me about how we came up with our new website design, so I have decided to write a post about it.
The website redesign was in our TO DO List since the beginning of last year, and it was very important for me that we were able to check this off our list.
As some of you know, I like to paint and illustrate in my free time, yes, your heard right, I said free time, you might be thinking who has free time?. Since this is something that I truly enjoy doing, I make a point of allocating special time for it.
I decided to give this project a twist by starting it the old fashioned way, and by this I mean the very old fashioned way! With a pencil and paper.
I was happy with our current logo and we knew we did not want to change it, so choosing the Space theme was straight forward.
Sketches
After the first round of sketches I came up with the following drawing. We knew it had several graphic elements that could be used in different parts of the website.
Digital Illustration
After completing the sketch, I knew I was ready to make a digital version and work on the colors on the computer. After a few tweaks here and there, this is what we came up with.
Header Design
We were happy with the illustration design but it was really not the right proportion for us to use on the website header. By working with the illustration in Photoshop we created the following header design.
At this point, we where happy with how the website was starting to look. We decided to pause our design efforts to work on the technical and marketing aspects of the website.
As you all know this is our day to do work, but it’s very different to work on a client’s website then it’s to work on your own business website.
Below are some questions that we needed to be answered:
- How do we want to present our information to our visitors and how do we want to organize this information ?
- How many website pages do we need?
- Which are the minimum required pages for us to launch our website?
- How do can we add to the website Spanish, how should integrate it to the website?
- Which keyword phrases should we use for both English and Spanish?
We worked on answering these questions and we came up with a plan and requirements for launching the website.
While going through this process it was important to be able to define which was a required need and which was a desired need.
Once we had gone over this process we where ready to continue to work on completing website design process.
Website Content
Once we knew how we wanted to organize the information on our website, we knew exactly for which pages we needed to create content.
It was necessary to work our Keyword Research and choose the best phrases to market those pages.
Creating a WordPress Website
Our step by step process and making sure we answered all the questions before continuing to the next phase made easier the actual process of building the website.
Since we started the website design project We knew that we wanted to work with wordpress.
At this point the goal was to put together all the pieces of the puzzle, which is precisely what we are good at.
New Year Card
After we completed the website! I thought the project would not be completed without a hand painted version of the illustration which many of you received, we hoped you enjoyed it.
Lessons we Learned
- It’s difficult to work on your own website when you are very busy taking care of your business.
- You need be able to separate your basic website needs and your desired website wish list. In other words it’s important to break up the project in smaller projects, this will help you to accomplish your goals as you go.
- It’s also important to plan each phase and make sure you do not move to the next phase until you are ready.
- Sometimes we need to take small breaks when we are moving between stages of the project. This allows us to have a better view of the entire project, helps us make changes and also assures us that we are on the right track.
