• December 7th, 2007

While I have been busy working on websites and graphic design projects, I haven’t taken time to post announcements about new sites or other projects. This project though, I wanted to be sure to post about. Why?

Well, this particular website project was a redesign of an existing site and I wanted to give an example of the impact a redesign can make. The site is BriarwoodBranson.com. You guessed it, it is for Briarwood Condominiums, a new condo development on Lake Taneycomo.

Briarwood Website Before
First lets look at the before. To the right you’ll see a screenshot of the site before the redesign. There is nothing “wrong” with the site but here are some points I thought I would like to bring out.

This design is nice and simple. The logo is centered at the top, the background color is bright blue and the main area has a white background. The images you see just to the right of the text form a slideshow that repeats cycling through various photos chosen to be displayed. At the bottom of the page you’ll notice buttons indicating the different areas of the site. There are three. 1) Photos, 2) Floor Plans, and 3) Contact. The photos page consisted of a simple list of around 8-10 images presented in two columns. The visitor could browse them by scrolling the page and looking through the images. Floor plans page had images of the floor plans with the amenities and features listed in the lower left hand corner of the page. The contact page was some centered text representing the contact information for the property.

That is the summary of what the site featured before the redesign. I am not going to elaborate on what I felt could be improved or the reasons because I want to keep this post relatively brief. I’ll save the details for the case studies section of my site. With that description of the before site, we are now ready to delve into the features of the remodeled, or redesigned site.

Condo Site After the Redesign
Now for the part of the post I particularly enjoy. The features of the redesigned website.
To the right you’ll notice a “screenshot” or a “screengrab” of the new Branson Condominiums website. The background is no longer a bright blue. I chaged it to a beige color. I changed the shade of blue to a deeper color and used it for the content backing.
As you can see, the site now has more content as indicated by the larger navigation menu. I did not write any of the content. Rather, it was provided by the realty firm handling the condos. They know how better to write the content since they specialize in Branson lake homes and vacation condos whereas I do not. This added content also called for restructuring the content.
Anyway, I added a contact form to the contact page so visitors can now send an email right from the contact page without the use of a mail client installed on their computer.
Another adjustment I made to the site took place on the photos page. The gallery is now a simple yet effective way to browse over forty images in a smaller area than before. Again, I won’t go into details on the why or how it was done.

In summary, the client is happy with the redesign of the website and so am I. I enjoy doing redesigns when it benefits the client and the site visitors. If you are looking for someone to spruce up your simple site design, drop me a note and I’ll take a look at the possibilities.