We just finished building a new website for The Walter Smith Co. Check it out at www.waltersmith.ca.
As I have explained before on this blog, there are three main types of website: the directory/line card, which is the internet equivalent of being listed in the phone book, the technical resource site, which includes many pages of technical data, and attracts customers because of its usefulness as a reference source, and the transactional site, where customers can come to buy from you on-line.
The Walter Smith Co’s site is a good example of a directory/line card. I worked closely with Don Graziano, the President of The Walter Smith Co, to pick out the key elements that differentiated his company form his competitors, and to determine what products and services he wanted to highlight to his prospective customers.
Don agreed with the web site philosophy that I have been preaching for some time. Keep it clean, simple and easy to use. Avoid the use of fancy graphics and animations that distract from the message. Make the site load fast to load and easy to navigate. I think we delivered on these goals with this site.
One advantage of keeping the site lean and tight is that it also works well on a host of mobile devices. We completely avoided the use of Flash animation since Flash will not work on many popular new mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.
We also recently did a retrofit to our own site, which also closely follows the same philosophy of website design. Check it our at www.borealtech.ca.
Do you need an effective web site, or can we help redesign your current site to be more effective and usable? Give us a call to set up a free, no obligation consultation.