Design
A new look
With 2010 only two months away it’s time for most companies to review and adjust their web strategy. We’re not any different here at trampoline and if you are a regular visitor to our site, you will definitely notice some changes. Most of them are cosmetic, but we plan to take things much further than that as we get closer to the new year. In this post, I won’t get into much of the underlying strategy, but I will definitely touch on that on a later date.
The most noticeable change has to be the dramatic colour change of the site. As our pages grew more complex, with more stories and more components, the overall composition just got too busy. We decided to remove the red background to create a much cleaner looking website that’s easier on the eye. Our articles on the homepage are laid out a bit differently as well. Clear category names above all articles, shorter excerpts and teaser images are all used to create an online magazine look and feel. How do you feel about our new look? Let us know in the comments!
Along with a new online look, we’re expanding our social media reach. We’ve designated a very clear area – the box with all the colourful icons to the right – to collect all our social media channels. You might notice we now have a Facebook fan page to creep, a Flickr account to peruse and a YouTube channel to tune into. As you can see, we really like being in touch with you, so go check them out!
And a lot more will change in the near future to address changes in user mentality, changes in how online content is being viewed and the ever changing role a modern website plays in all of this. Among those changes will be a new section to our website explaining what services we offer (and there are many). We’ll also start sharing some interesting links to other websites in our industry right on our front page just so you can not only stay up-to-date on what is going at trampoline, but also all around us.
I hope you like what you’ve seen so far and don’t forget to subscribe to the latest trampoline blog updates.
Click here for the final six categories of our Trampoline Social Media Awards 2010.
Love the new homepage layout. The teaser images for each story are a really nice addition. And the two columns works really well to. Very magazine-like. Nice. Not 100% sold on the white… but I’m kinda biased. LOL.
Thanks for the kind words David. I figured you’d be the first one to comment on this since I am essentially giving your “baby” a bit of a makeover. I am glad you like it! I feel you on the grey/white, I had to get used to it as well. It’s quite a drastic change, but it’s looking better every time I see it (give it a week or so). It also ties in nicely with changes to the overall brand – the ad we just did for the ICE awards also looks very simple and has a lot of white space.
Are there any other cool features/ideas you’ve run into on the web lately that you think would make a nice addition to our website?
It’s growing on me actually. Looks nice and clean. Great job. All the little icons and such add a nice level of detail too.
Not a suggestion for trampolinebranding… but if you want to see some very cool things being done with WordPress… checkout buddypress.org. Very cool.
Beautiful and clear website! Although of course I don’t know what it used to look like before this, nor what the company actually does. One more thing, do you do any work to improve the Google ranking of this site?
Thanks for compliment Jille, we’re always working to improve our website. Also, thanks for pointing out you’re unclear on what the company actually does. This is something that currently isn’t clearly stated anywhere on the website, but we hope to fix that soon by adding a new section to our website explaining exactly what services we offer. But for now, to answer your question in one sentence, trampoline is a multi-service agency with award-winning capabilities in brand building, strategic direction, creative concept development and production, graphic design, social media and interface design.
Whenever we create websites we always do some initial search engine optimization (SEO). Nothing too fancy, but it’s often enough to at least get you on page one for some of your less competitive keywords. We do do our own optimization for this website, but SEO is an entire industry on its own, and if you’re looking to rank as high as possible for some highly competitive keywords (I am assuming you’d be interested in keywords like “Knuffel”, “Kado”, etc.) you’re best of going with a firm that specializes in just that area. Also, the fact that your website is completely “Flash” based doesn’t make this process any easier, so a professional who knows what he’s doing is essential if you want good results!
If you’re serious about hiring someone you might want read this article. It’s from the folks at Google and it has a SEO starter guide (downloadable PDF at the top of the page) as well as a quick overview of what to be aware of when hiring someone to do SEO for you. I hope that helps and if you have any more questions just give us a shout.