Out with the old...

By duncan, posted about 2 years ago. 0 comment(s).

The screen capture above shows our old home page. Remember it?
While the old design was well received we soon realised that the web traffic to our portfolio pages were not as high as expected when compared to other pages within the site.

After a bit of poking around in Google Analytics (particularly the Entrance Paths and Navigation Summary ) it became clear that most users were only finding their way to portfolio pages that were clearly linked from the home page.
For example, in the screen capture, Eden Tree Care and Kids Matter were both getting visits as they were clearly visible on the home page and just a click away.
Other portfolio items had to be first selected in the ‘carousel’ of past projects and then finally clicked to see the details.
Quite simply, this was either too confusing for novice users or too fussy for the more web savvy.

Our new portfolio couldn’t be simpler. The home page has a featured project that grabs the visitors attention and provides a clear navigation link to the project, while the rest of the portfolio projects are all simply listed on their own page.

The lesson here shows that complicated design elements are not always better and to always take time out gathering feedback from your visitors by speaking to them and using tools such as Google Analytics to ensure your shiny new web site is performing as well as it should.

Posted in Design.