Coming into this latest redesign we had lots of ideas. Some of them good, some potentially bad and some that just never made the cut. We also had quite a few ideas that we haven’t been able to implement yet. I figured it might be interesting to talk about what we cut, and why, and some of what we’ve got in the works.
Ideas that didn’t make the cut
We started out with a pretty grandiose idea of what blueflavor.com could be. We thought long and hard about doing something very “web app-like”, something that would guide potential clients into the sales process and help us acquire and convert all those great clients we know are out there. To a certain degree, however, we were solutioneering (a made-up word that describes what happens when you put a solution before you really understand the problem you’re trying to solve or the goals behind what you’re doing), which is something we don’t like to do.
In the end we wanted something bold yet simple. So much of the more “advanced” ideas got shelved. These included:
- A “Cover Flow” style portfolio browser. This was a pretty cool idea, but I thought it was kind of over-kill and could potentially “dazzle” people, distracting them from the actual content.
- A project estimating/RFP-building tool. This is a great idea, one that I’m pretty sure Brian is still working on. It’s also something I’ve heard tale of other folks working on and something we’d love to add to the site at some point. For now we’ll muddle by with old-school means of contact. Like our forms, e-mail and…(gasp) the phone.
- A tumblelog. Our Django-based CMS (Savoy) has all sorts of cool functionality built in, and it would be fairly easy to implement a tumblelog, but we decided that was a bit much. Bold, different and simple being the goal.
A few things in the works
You’ll notice these “features” relate more to content than anything technical. There’s a reason for that.
- A screenshot gallery. Along the same lines as the “testimonials page”, it would be just a simple, image-based gallery of screens and samples. This is #1 on my priority list. With the additions of posters for the primary graphical representation of some of our projects on the site, I felt there might be some confusion or backlash. That’s fully understandable and to mitigate that confusion I want to leverage Django’s flexibility and power to create a gallery of all our screenshots. This will also allow us to showcase work we’ve never shown before. On the old site we only posted shots of those projects we’d had time to do a case study for. I think this could be a great, easy and straight-forward way to show potential clients our work.
- A speaker’s page. I’d like to create a page/section of the site dedicated to speaking (and or writing) so that we can showcase all the great work we do outside of traditional client work. As well, I’d love to provide a way to give people better access to the presentations and articles we’ve got.
- A mobile version. Has to be done, but it’s lower priority since much of our content isn’t all that relevant in a mobile context. On the other hand, a mobile version of the screenshots page could be a great marketing/sales tool for when we’re on the road.
I have to admit that prior to the release of the revamping I was really expecting something more over the top in terms of design and I say this as nothing negative but as an acknowledgement that I’m use to seeing a certain style and execution as it pertains to the the whole Web 2.0 out there. With that being said, I was quite elated in seeing that you guys veered from that and chose a new bold approach, specifically how you now showcase clients.
The Coverflow feature is indeed cool but overrated if you ask me and just touching more of the developmental aspect of the website, Django seems to be all the rave at the moment so I can imagine the beast underneath the hood, so as you mentioned, I’m really looking forward to upcoming features on the site. Great job thus far.
@Jorge - thanks! Yeah, Django is pretty awesome. There is a bit of a curve, but because it’s a framework that we’ve built a CMS on, the possibilities are pretty wide open. AND it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to develop great content-centric features for it.
Do the coverflow… or we’re going to steal. I think you know how I feel about the redesign. Our team was talking about the new site though today. I really love the fact that you add a picture and information about yourself on every blog post as well as reference posts in your team pages, it is a touch we will be implementing in the next iteration of our site.
Hey y’all. The new site is absolutely beautiful! Great work!