Form or Function | Content-Centric Web Site Redesign

A couple weeks ago, I posted a website redesign SOS for a small business client I'm providing marketing consulting to. The company's goals were to clean up the web site, funnel leads and provide easy-asses to educational content. Here's the quick mock up I promised.

Easy-to-manage Content-centric Design

While the Marketing Manager called this look "archaic," and she may be right, what I see here is more balanced, easy to update design that is content-centric but focuses on user-driven accessibility. (As opposed to company ramrodded content.) Do you see what I see? Let me elaborate.

Forever Changes

There were some things I would change forever about this web page for good. They should be rarely updated, as they will play apart in navigational role for first-time and repeat visitors.

Navigation and Links, Before and After | In the old version, the navigation was limited to the top navigation bar. This design honors that, but also adds key content items along the left sidebar, which (though you can't really see it in this shot), shortened the overall length of the page and thinned out the text in the body of the web page. Doing this, also freed up the visitor to determine his own path to the content he wants most instead of being overwhelmed by everything available on the original version. I do wonder if there are too many links in the left sidebar, and may in a later revision consider doing some more trimming to better control traffic from this page.

About Statement | Honestly, the body text is pretty much what it was before for graphic purposes. However, I would rewrite the first paragraph to be a bit thinner, more customer focused and keyword rich.

Blog Feed | This is a no-brainer. If the company took the time to write it, it needs to make sure people read it. Since the home page is often the most visited page on a site, and we were striving for a content-driven page in this redesign, this fits.

Make the Changes, Rinse Repeat

One of the things search engines like to see on a web page is FRESH CONTENT. People do, too. It's for this reason that I "built in" (at least) two, easily editable areas that should be updated weekly or more often. Editing these two areas should take no more than five minutes per week, provided the content is already created.

Call to Action Articles | Under the slider, there are three burgundy text paragraphs. They were there before but had never changed. In this design, these should be updated regularly with featured articles that included strong CTAs. Fresh content, of course, is ideal for these, but the company also mix in one or two recycled blog articles that performed really well for it before.

Featured Product | On the right sidebar, are three buffalo nickles that represent an area that could also be changed weekly to honor featured products or sale items. This company has Best Buys (one or more undervalued products in the current market) and Monthly Picks (monthly recommended products) programs they update pretty regularly already. Why couldn't those be featured here?

Slider Bonus | The slider is harder for this company to edit - they outsource it. But built into a solid content marketing plan, it could easily be done quarterly.

This company's challenge was not whether or not it had content, but rather how they were sharing it on its web site. Part of their challenge, as I saw it, is that there wasn't a good design that made it easy to do and supported frequent updates. What do you think of this "archaic" redesign?