Need help with my website content

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  • WEB DESIGN
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Hi All

Just wanted to get some help around here regarding some content decisions I am struggling to make for a web design project I am currently working on.

Now I know I have posted a huge post but please don't be scared off by that, it's just that I wanted to give as much detail as possible on my thoughts about the project and the reasons behind my sticking points.

The client is only fictional but that's not important, the point is I am using it as a brief that I can eventually use to showcase in my online portfolio.

So in terms of what the actual project is about, it revolves around a website redesign for a fictional web development and design agency.

Here is a snippet taken from the brief that lays out what the task is:

"You work for a design agency whose portfolio does not reflect the caliber of work it can do. As a result, the agency keeps landing projects that don't especially intrest them, much less help them move to the next level.

The agency wants to attract better clients with a marketing campaign that includes a website redesign.

My job : Design responsive, portfolio-centric website that inspires potential clients to call your agency."


For me personally, my natural starting point was to take a ride into "googlesphere" and bookmark a ton of cool looking modern and current looking web agencies that are real and already in business.

It made sense to make that my first step because I have never worked on redesigning a web agency website before, so by gathering inspiration from other web design agencies meant that I could get more familiar with the types of content these types of websites were presenting to potential clients, after looking at a ton of them you naturally start to see familiar patterns. For instance on the home page you often see the agencies portfolio of work as one of the first and highest stacked sections of their home page ( this makes sense because in order to attract more clients, they want to let there work do the talking and for a potential client looking for an agency to work with, he/she too is arguably going to be most interested in the standard of that agency portfolio more so than any other of the marketing babble on their website. My point is I can clearly see why the portfolio section is almost always one of the highest stacking pieces of content across any design agency website.

The stage I am at now with the project is deciding on what content sections to include for the agency site I am working on. After I have bookmarked a high number of website inspiration, and which are similar in terms of the industry I am designing for (otherwise known as the competition) The next step I like to take is to always start with a content first approach starting at a macro high level, as in "types of content" what will those content blocks consist of in a general sense etc, and then moving slowly into the micro level of each of those content blocks as in deciding on what the actual content is going to be for each of those content blocks in the stack, text, images etc, once that is all down in black and white only then am I happy to move onto the actual "look and feel/branding" of the site, once all the content arrangement and actual content has been decided upon.

Where I am starting to get really stuck with this is that when I was scanning over the many agency websites that I have already bookmarked, I come across so many arrangements and inclusions of similar content sections that all looked great and "correct" so to speak but I still could not decide what would be right for my project. A project lets not forget who in the real world would have the same business goals as all these other websites.

That was my first dilemma, when so many arrangements seem right, how do you begin to narrow down the stacking order of content in terms of priority?

So starting with my macro level stack from top to bottom, here was my first idea that I come up with.

Top Container - this would contain my logo on the right and navigation on the left. The navigation would be displayed as a list of inline links on a desktop anf then as the viewport begins to shrink, this would collapse into a hamburger icon for tablet and mobile views. When this icon is pressed on a mobile device, the menu would display as a full screen modal overlay.

Hero/ Jumbotron - this would contain a slideshow of images of the agency staff at work, with a heading like "Hello we are Kaleidoscope" followed by a paragraph saying something like "we specialise in building online brands and engaging experiences for tech start ups" I thought this wording was well suited to this brief, because it did state in the brief that the agencies ideal client would be start up companies looking for MVP work. Again I know these are micro level details but I just wanted to get your professional opinion on my content messaging?

Core Services
I was thinking of having 6 core umbrella services in total but only have 3 of them displayed on the home page, with a link to "view all services" below, which would link the user off to a dedicated services page.

My labelling for these core services would be:

Branding Identity
Web App Development
Digital Marketing
Content Strategy
Ecommerce
Design and User Experience

Portfolio 8-12 thumbnails of the agencies work for other clients

Client Testimonials - Here I was thinking it would be a good idea to include a few client testimonials on the home page, but underneath each quote would be a link, saying "view result" which would link the viewer off to the dedicated case study page for that particular project/client. Thats where they could learn more about the original problem, and how it was solved, the services used to solve the idea could also be listed, they too could also be linked back to the services page. At least that was my idea of interconnecting the client testimonials, portfolio and services page so that the user flow from one to the other felt more natural.

List of clients - A gallery of client logos that the agency has previously done work for.

Call to Action - I wanted to include a nice, clear and clean call to action near the bottom of the home page that would make it easy for potential prospects to contact the agency.
After all, that is the primary business goal of the website, so placing this element as the last block in the stack seemed to make the most business sense.

I wanted to make it easy for prospective clients to contact the agency either with a button like "lets talk" that would link off a separate contact page , where the user would ether fill out a projects planner form with details about there project or they would call or email the agency direct if they preferred that method. The point is that by having that clear call to action at the bottom of the home page is what would funnel the user onto this page in the first place.

Footer - not worked out yet exactly what the micro content of this element would be.

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My second content stack idea would be similar to above but with a few alternative inclusions.

Top Container

Hero/Jumbotorn
Attachment 22506
Company Blurb/intro

Portfolio of work

Who we work for - I was thinking this would be a great opportunity to differentiate themselves in the marketplace and from the pack of other design agencies by letting prospective clients know that their whole business model revolves around helping small start ups and entrepreneurs get up and running with specialist marketing and web design skills geared towards that target market.

Meet the Team or About us - Do you think it is necessary to have a call out section or window into the about us page on the home page?

Client Testimonials

Blog Articles - The only reason I was thinking of including this element, especially on the home page is I thought by doing so would enhance the reputation of an agency that is trying to raise there profile in the industry, by including a few choice articles on the home page, say a speaking event they were hosting, an award, or a major client pitch they had just scooped up, surly that is something you would want visitors to know about rather than "tuck away" would it not?
Doing so would only enhance the reputation of the agency and using a blog as platform to announce this kind of news could be a determining factor in winning or losing that site visitor.
I also thought this would be a good inclusion to benefit google rankings by having up to date and fresh content on the home page would give the site a higher ranking would it not?
However, my thoughts for not including it would be that it could potentially derail the attention away from the business goal of the website which is to get clients/site visitors to contact the agency, in other words I have a feeling that bloating out the bottom with blog articles would detract them away from the call to action at the bottom of the website.

Shop - What about including a section that advertises the shop merchandise products on the home page, do you think that is necessary? or is this something that can be tucked away like the blog articles?

Call to action

Footer

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So what's your thoughts and opinions on these two content stack ideas, am I thinking along the right lines, how could they be improved?

I have also attached how I envisage my overall site map to look which ties into the idea above, I guess the site map also determines what my navigation hierarchy would be.

I look forward to your replys.

Kind Regards
Consecca
#content #website

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