Care in the (e)community

So when it came time to revamp the old and frankly quite tired looking Action House website, I started by looking at all the different areas and genres that I had covered when producing videos for business over the past 14 years or so.

I was shocked when I worked it out that I could divide them up into around 15 or so distinct genres, AND that I hadn't even noticed that they were so varied. I simply viewed the variety of work and clients as being 'Something that kept me VERY creatively interested', which as anyone in business for themselves will tell you, is a major motivating factor.

When putting together the showreels for the website, I was also shocked at the huge volume of work for such a varied range of clients that has been produced by The Action House in that period. A lot of creative work and fun! Mind you, looking at the 66 3TB hard drives I have currently as my backup system, I shouldn't have been surprised.

Looking at the situation, it made sense for me to design a website (Oh, yes, forgot to mention, before The Action House, my profession was as a graphic designer for 25 years or more) that was firstly VERY easy to use, requiring as few clicks from the user as possible and as little to read as possible. The simple premise is that people are busy - usually REALLY busy, and if they have a requirement for a video, they need to get it going as soon as possible, so messing about on an overly complicated and non intuitive website is going to be a turnoff from the very start.

So, using the simple dark rich colours and logo of our corporate branding, I divided the screen into 15 sections, each with an attractive picture window, which when clicked becomes the main video window, that by the way, automatically closes after playing so that the visitor can see the clean webpage interface again without anything being obscured. Then, with that is the large, bold, bright white genre heading, and a simple sentence of introduction. And that's it. Simple, intuitive, quick to use and each of the videos for each of the sections, is a sort showreel lasting no more than one minute merely to give a flavour of the quality of work being produced here month by month.

I'm indebted to Chris of Lightbulb Web Design for his accuracy and skill in translating my design artworks to actual websites, I couldn't have done it without him. But I cant help but wonder how many people in business who approach web developers for their own new websites actually THINK about how their website is used by visitors and consider all the ways that they can make their interface not only more attractive, but easier to use, facilitating an experience that can result in more contacts, more conversions, more, in fact, BUSINESS.