I have to apologize to you here on Your WordPress Friend site as I have been neglecting you a bit lately. But I have been very very busy lately with a long string of big assignments and interesting activities and opportunities.
One of the assignments that I have been working on was that of a completely new Brand look including new website etc for a publicly traded company called Brownie’s Marine Group. The website alone is more than 200 pages and along it it has more than 150 blog posts and numerous images and videos. Work is not completed yet and like it goes for any other website and business work will never be all completed as things evolve and as you actually will want to keep the website alive and up to date on a continuous basis. Doing so not only keeps your content up to date, but might actually also help you with your Search Engine Ranking and thus with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Here’s an image of the front page of the new website of Brownie’s Marine Group.
And here is the front of the Blog section of the website for same company (all part of the same website):
The entire site is also (of course) built with WordPress, so it’s very much along the topics that we cover here on this website and thus I would suggest that you visit the website to check it out. See what you like about the site and for that matter make a note of what you don’t like.
Oftentimes when we make websites you will be coming across decisions to be made and sometimes you have to make compromises. Building this website had a lot of the same also.
But ultimately, I really like it myself (if I may say so). It is a huge step up from what it used to be (I shall try to find a screenshot of what it used to look like so you get an idea – come back again later or sign up for our newsletter to be notified about it being posted). And the feedback, not just from the company, but also from its users, customers and not least investors has been phenomenal.
And traffic is going up too. The entire site is web-optimized and also not least mobile optimized. In other words the site is using a responsive theme that ensures that it works well on several different mobile platforms such as on your smart phone, iPad, laptop and desktop.
I will probably be referencing this site numerous times in future as it makes a great example of pinpointing several choices and solutions. Also there were many specific choices made when building this site that actually convey the latest mindset and potentially what will become more of a trend in future websites.
Notice for instance the much larger use of images. Image size, website width and similar is much greater than what most sites previously seemed to have been. This goes along with what you also have seen to some extend on other very important platforms not least the newer Google+ platform where profile cover images have gone BIG – along with a similar move carried through the entire Google platform, so as to include your Youtube profile etc..
Even Facebook updated their look (actually a little sooner than Google+) and made way for new look with cover image etc.
Now this conscious move is in contrast to certain things that I and others have been proponents of previously. You see, it is critical that what is “above the fold” will be used really. really well. “Above the fold” is a term used to describe the area of a website that you will see when you open it up in your browser and before you start scrolling. The term relates to the newspapers which usually always are folded, so that you would only see part of the front page of the newspaper.
Now, since newspapers are folded (and kind of likewise with websites), it becomes even more critical that the “real estate” visible is really very well utilized and will lure the potential customer to buy the paper. In other words, the top half of the newspaper really need to show some interesting headlines that will draw in and attract customers to buy the paper in order to be able to read the content.
Same goes for a website. The top part of the website needs to be interesting enough for people to wish to venture further into the site instead of them clicking onwards for something else off of your site.
Now I’m still very much encouraging the real estate above the fold to carry out the same most basic function as has always been the case (most importantly to retain potential customers, so you can communicate further with them and hopefully turn them into paying customers). I still believe this site for Brownie’s Marine Group does that, but it now relies even more heavily on one image and one feeling that this image gives the visitor.
Brownie’s Marine Group is the world leader in innovating, designing and manufacturing surface supplied air diving systems along with fully marinized compressor systems and also provider of submarine solutions and many other things related to activities on and in the water. Your choices for your website may reflect different end results in your decisions depending on the topics that you are selling or the message you wish to convey. But in the end all websites need to go through these motions and thoughts in order to make the website the most efficient and well functioning for its purpose.
In contrast to what I have done for the new website for Brownie’s Marine Group, I might have chosen a much smaller main image or header image if you like. This would have left much more room for other things to be shown. In fact on many of the platforms, probably all the mobile ones, you won’t be able to see further than the image without scrolling, and this would almost even be the case for smaller laptop screens too. Ordinarily this would be a little bit of a no-no.
But I think it works here. For reason that we will come back to in future posts.
Now, please go and check out the website and let me have your comments and feedback and questions. There are many interesting discussion points here to explore and I think I should make video that will dissect it a bit further. But before spending my time doing so I would like to receive some feedback so I can gauge whether in fact there is a decent interest for this. Thus, please have a look at the website and pose your questions to me.
Again the please visit Brownie’s Marine Group’s website.
