It’s done. My website is now right up-to-date. Here it is. Time to celebrate.
What? It doesn’t look all that different to what it was before?
That’s true. You’re right. It doesn’t look totally new but it is very much changed. Those in the know tell me it looks much better than before. Sleeker, cleaner, and, above all, it is much leaner. The latter is due to what happened under the hood. It is not so much a website relaunch than a website transformation.
Let me show you what I did.
Design
It needed to look better, which it definitely does. After a couple of disastrous outsourcing experiences and with budget constraints in mind, I cleaned it up to bring it up-to-date without going overboard. I decided not to push it right to the cutting edge. My concern is that this most likely would have made it look pretty dated in a couple of years’ time. So I stuck with ‘classic.’
Under the hood is WordPress with the Thesis theme. I used the Classic skin with its minimalist design and Golden Ratio Typography. I think it does the job. What do you think?
Engine
I first started using the Thesis theme in 2009 because it was one of the first themes with built in SEO optimisation. Since then, I had used it on virtually all my sites. I must have built about 40 or 50 sites over the years.
That went well until about 3 years ago when Thesis morphed into v. 2.0 and introduced a totally different engine and methodology. As I was unable to apply to the new version anything that I had learned for the old Thesis, they lost me. I am no coder, I am a diehard fan of drag and drop with a tiny sprinkling of HTML. Grudgingly, I built the first version of this website with the old Thesis theme. It looked it.
Fortunately, from v. 2.3 onwards (I’m currently running 2.4) Thesis became usable again for the likes of me. Now I am deliriously happy.
The theme is very fast, indeed, which today is even more important for Google than traditional SEO. It is, of course, still SEO optimised, so no need for plugins.
It is also wonderfully responsive. So much so that I almost prefer the way it looks on small screens to that on my laptop. Again, no need for plugins.
Responsive Table
The benefits of a minor visual redesign and of introducing a new engine was not really reason enough to go through with all this trouble.
I had also decided to reshape and streamline my services to include the range from All Done for You and VM Success Essentials all the way to DIY Support. After all, many companies may want to create their own videos but still prefer some form of guidance and support with the more specialist technical issues to help them ‘get it right.’
The need for a clear and easily understandable service comparison forced me to search for a comparison table for my Services page that would be useful also on small screens. Not being a coder here certainly doesn’t help either.
After testing a number of candidates, I finally settled for the Easy Pricing Tables. To my delight, I didn’t even have to buy the premium version. It worked out of the box, and I’m happy about the way it looks on smartphones and tablets.
‘Get it right’
My apologies, ‘get it right’ was a perfectly awful term to use. Not only isn’t it descriptive at all, it is actually pretty meaningless.
This shall be remedied forthwith!
I am delighted to announce that starting next week and in celebration of my redesigned website, I am about to launch my A to Z of Video for Professional Services.
Regularly every week, I shall publish a video with an article on all sorts of topics that explain what it means to ‘get your videos and your video campaign right.’ No more meaningless descriptors. All will be revealed.
In the meantime, if you wish to be kept informed of new instalments of my A to Z, simply enter your email and name in the form below. And should you want to embark on a redesign of your website, whether DIY or Done 4 U, all I can do is wish you luck, courage and success.
