Granite and Tile Outlet came to us wanting to have their site redesigned. They stated that they were not receiving any results from their web presence and didn’t like the current look. Our local web design staff took a look at their site and drew up the following assessment:
| 1. Maps Not Integrated Into the Site | 5. Text is Cut Off and 6. Position is Incorrect for Locations |
|---|---|
| There have been vast improvements on the part of Google maps to allow full integration into a website. These links not only take you off of the site (although they do open in a new window instead of replacing the current one), one of the links is misspelled, which causes Yahoo! Maps to throw an error. | Site was originally viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Upon viewing in Internet Explorer, the site renders as it should. However, when designing a website, one should always design so it renders correctly in ALL browsers. |
| 2. Width of Middle Section is Larger Than Top and Bottom | 7. Site Copyright is No Longer in Effect |
| The width of the center section is just slightly larger than the top and bottom. This is already pronounced due to the granite borders, but then the eye is given an uncomfortable feeling, since it always tries to match up lines and in this case, it cannot. | This site says copyright 2007. To the casual web visitor, this tells them "Hey, I haven’t updated this site since 2007, so all of this information is probably old, and I may not even be in business any longer." It doesn’t assure them. If the company can’t keep their website fresh and updated, what does that say about the company as a whole? |
| 3. Middle Section Created in Flash | 8. Torn Effect on "Granite" Looks Fake and Unprofessional |
| When designing in web 1.0, you lose accessibility. The main content is here, so there needs to be a way for Search Engines to tag and catalog this information. Also, the logo of is repeated in such a close proximity to the logo at the top, causing the page to become unbalanced and uncomfortable to look at. | This design element has the granite all cut up and jagged. It looks inferior and also goes against the professionalism the company provides to many happy clients! |
| 4. CC Logos Are Too Large | 9. Logo is Unappealing and Unprofessional |
| Most companies on the web today accept credit cards. The credit card logos are too large and draw attention from the other aspects of the site. In the case of this site, just mentioning in text that all credit cards are accepted would be sufficient | There is nothing memorable about this logo and it looks to have been put together at the last minute. In keeping with the "initials" theme, there should be a period after the "O". This logo, like the torn effect, goes against the professional look that the company wants to convey. |
With this as a starting point, our designer started with a rough sketch of the new layout for the site:
From that point, it was simply a matter of fleshing out the rough sketch in Photoshop and then applying the design to our Content Management System to achieve the final result:
In addition to the design layout of the site, we also assisted Granite and Tile Outlet with their Search Engine Optimization efforts.
