Web Design
Back in the early 1990s, nearly everyone with opposable thumbs claimed they were web designers. And from these folks came some of the most horrible, poorly designed communications ever produced, all for outrageous sums of money.
My how things have changed. The web is still here but thankfully most of the fly-by-night companies run by techno-geeks with big dreams of making it rich are long gone. Now all you have to watch out for are the charlatans who will try to convince you to spend $35,000 on a $3,500 site done in WordPress.
Web design isn’t rocket science. The tools these days are pretty straightforward. Still, it’s something of an art to get your site to stand out from the others and to tell a memorable story about who you are and what you offer. No matter what whizbang gimmicks a company comes up with, if your site can’t tell your story, you’ve wasted your time and money.
Sure, we know the technology that makes all the magic work. We’ve built more than 300 web sites since 1995. We have specialists who dream in code and can put together a mind-blowing WordPress site in their sleep with an e-commerce capability that will have you rolling in dough (if that’s your thing).
But what we really excel at is creating sites and Internet branding that furthers your organization’s communication, marketing and branding goals through riveting storytelling, sterling design and a solid, seamless use of technology.
The hallmarks our designs
The building blocks of design.
Like the foundation and walls of a well-designed building, a site needs a sustainable structure and form. Users don’t want to guess where the information they need is located. And they don’t want to run into dead ends, dead links or content that won’t load correctly on different systems, platforms or browsers, especially mobile. An effective site needs a good architecture. It is the foundation from which all other design comes from and our sites are known for their solid architecture that enhances the user’s experience.
Anybody got a map?
A lot of sites online are a jumble of senseless navigation, filled with odd entry points, generic button names and links that lead you away from the very thing you’re trying to accomplish. At CommuniCreations, we take great pains to ensure that the navigation on a site is clear and consistent, intuitively marked and effectively arranged. No one needs to relearn how to move through one of our client’s sites or question where they are in the architecture.
Dont’s be content with bad content.
We’ve been saying it all along and now others have jumped on the bandwagon – content is king. It’s all about the message and how it’s presented. Yes, we’re talking about the ancient craft of the written word supported by contemporary visual design.
Our advice to clients: if you have two dollars to spend on technology and two on content, save two bucks and invest in stellar content. That’s one of the differences you’ll find at CommuniCreations. We put a premium on the art of effective storytelling. We are more than happy to write the copy as part of the project – in fact, we have one of the premier web writers in the country on our staff. Clients have often told us that visitors to their sites have written them to say they read the entire website from front to back, if such a thing is possible, just because they enjoyed the story and the way we delivered it.
Be the brand… be the brand…
There was a time when designers would go wild with their imaginations. The result: a site that had little to do with an organization’s other marketing, social media and communication strategies. Our sites are tightly integrated with your existing or developing brand. Everything has the same look and feel, colors and typography are consistent, and if we write the content, so is the voice and tone. Sure, we like to put a creative spin on it all, but we stay within the boundaries of your marketing and communication goals and objectives. To do anything else would be a waste of your money and our time.
Think of it as a long-term lease.
Once you have a website, don’t let it collect dust on the shelf. We want you to continually improve the site, add features, refine the copy so that it really hits the mark, add new products or services or refresh the images. We are more than happy to do this for you, of course. But you can also do it yourself, thanks to content management systems like WordPress. We build all of our sites in WordPress these days and it runs about 30% of all websites. There’s no need to come back to see us for any little change you want to make. WordPress allows you to have complete control over your website, from adding new photos or copy to adding things like e-commerce or a gallery down the road. And don’t worry. If you get stuck we’re always here to help.
We’ve come a long way, baby…
Want to see our hall of fame of early CommuniCreations site designs back in the days of everything flush left and gray backgrounds? Keep in mind that not everything works anymore. They’re just archival versions and may be incomplete.