Been to electricbricks.net lately? If you have, you may have noticed that it looks quite a bit different. It’s been over 2 years since I updated the theme on the site and it was overdue! The old layout, while good for it’s time, had started looking a bit dated. The content layout had grown cluttered, the brick motif wasn’t working for me anymore, and the navigation was minimal, at best. After spending a good deal of time planning, I decide to practice what I preach to all my clients, and make some significant changes.
Bricks. Right. We Get It.
Let me guess. Bricks. Yawn!
The first think that needed to change was the background. In the past, I had always tried to make some sort of reference to bricks. I liked the grunge look of old brick and always tried to work them into the design. That was the first thing to go! I decided I didn’t need to hit everyone over the head with the whole brick analogy any more. Instead, I opted for a simpler, sleeker background that takes advantage of pretty cool CSS3 radial gradients. I chose to keep the background dark (I like the sophistication of darker colors) with slightly subtler colors for the text and headlines. I wanted the whole thing to have a very modern, slightly futuristic feel to it.
What’s On My Menu?
The next thing that needed a lot of attention was the navigation. On the previous site it was pretty uninspiring. Just a simple top nav with links. Not even any dropdowns. This time around I implemented a “mega-menu” – a dropdown navigation system that allows all sorts of rich content to be in the menus.
Make stuff easier to find. And lose the clutter.
The thinking here was to give site visitors as much information as possible before they even clicked on a link. Answer questions fast and make interacting with the site painless. In the top nav you’ll now find things like portfolio examples, links to recent blog articles, and clear explanations of EB services. You can even fill out a contact form right from the contact menu!
Get to the Point!
Another challenge was to simplify the layout of the content. There was just too much “stuff” on all the pages. This was much easier to do since I had started using the mega-menu. A lot of what was cluttering the pages could now be neatly tucked into a dropdown where it wouldn’t be in the way. So that left the pages cleaner and more open. Fewer widgets were needed and the ones I did use were much more context-specific.
Looking Good – Everywhere
The last item on the redesign list was to make the site responsive. The previous design was created right before website mobile-friendliness was on everyone’s mind. But nowadays it’s a given. If a site doesn’t look good on an iPhone (especially a web designer’s site!) it’s gonna be a problem. Especially now that the next generation of consumers – you know, the ones that were born with phones in their hands – are taking over.
The smartphone and tablet versions of the site use streamlined navigation, get rid of some extraneous stuff that just chews up bandwidth, and scales all the images and text to fit nicely on a small screen while staying readable. On a phone its gotta be easy to find what you’re looking for fast. No one has the patience to click around on a handheld device.
In addition to all that I also redesigned the homepage slider, added better art throughout, and re-read and edited the text of every page (a good idea for every site owner). I gave a lot of thought to the fonts, as well. Overall, I’m very pleased with the end result. The site is fast, clean, and fresh. All the things I strive for with my clients. Feel free to poke around. If you see something you’d like to implement on your site, or if you think it’s time for a redesign, let me know. As always, I’d be happy to talk!