Are you considering a new website design?  Are you overwhelmed by your expectation of a difficult process, coupled with the challenge of getting company-wide buy in on one design?  Are you agonizing over the idea of rallying your team around one particular design that is fresh, innovative and inspiring, a design that will set your site apart from your competitors?  Are you worried that you won’t get the best work for your money?  Are you worried that your creative team will fall flat and not provide enough relevant design options from which to choose?  Is that you?  Are those your concerns?

We have heard it all at Storyhat, and strive and succeed in rising above the competition to provide our clients with a unique and proven process that is personalized and painless, and unparalleled in helping our clients approach the daunting task of going through a website redesign.  Case in point….the team at Brand.net approached storyhat with an rfp for their website redesign.  When talking to the marketing exec on the Brand.net side, I was cautioned that the team has very disparate views on design, are very opinionated, and when working with them, it might be a challenging process.  We assured the team that if they worked with Storyhat, and  followed our process, we would present them with a good number of design directions that were very well thought out, addressed their unique requirements and would challenge any preconceived ideas they had of what their new website could look like.

Brand.net chose Storyhat!  We had a tight timeline based on their relaunch schedule (6 weeks) and through the December and January Holidays, and we assured them that if their content was done in time, the site would be launched in time as well.  They anticipated a lengthy process, but in our first design review we honed in on a design direction, refined the photography story and flash, and within 6 working  weeks we launched their new gorgeous site, much to their satisfaction.  Check them out and request a reference from them through us if you are considering working with storyhat and if you can relate to the challenges outlined in this post!

More and more, our clients are wanting interactivity on their websites, wanting to engage the visitor and spice up their homepages. But when is too much movement on a page too much? Flash is definitely a great tool to help bring a page to life, drive attention and your eye to a block of copy, or help tell a story through imagery or illustration. While flash has this sexy side, be cautioned, it has a dark side too…. Using flash in more than one area of a website homepage “can” result in an experience of busy and clutter, pulling your eye from one area of the page to another NOT through the intended information hierarchy, or flow of content that the site visitor should pay attention to in a particular order. Not to mention that flash is a long-standing nemesis of SEO, and copy that is integrated in flash is challenged by being picked up by search engines. So, our philosophy is to use flash wisely, “try” not to use it in too many places but if you must have animation in more than one spot on the homepage, be careful with the run times, and make sure you have additional copy on the homepage to be picked up by search engines if SEO is part of your game plan. As a side note, you might want to turn to our friend “java” for interactivity!