The New Face of Sitelab.com
June 30th, 2010by Mike ZeMans
SiteLab.com will be launching anew in a few short weeks. This is the first in a series of posts aimed to educate and inform you of what we are doing and why. As you may know, choosing to redesign your Web site is no trivial affair, but represents a significant undertaking for any organization—a decision that can radically affect one’s 
online presence and their direct relationship with one’s online audience. Potential risks of a redesign include introducing a different experience to users (who have inherent resistance to change), compromising one’s hard-earned search equity, and the very perception of your brand itself.
In fact, SiteLab has often advised our own clients not to engage in a full site redesign, but rather to consistently evolve and enhance key sections and user experiences over time done so within the same basic graphical and navigational framework of their site. Such an approach can prove to be less disruptive to users, and possibly more cost effective to accomplish. However, there are situations when a full redesign is the right strategy, as was the case for SiteLab’s own Web site this year. There were several growing factors that pressed us to finally take action on a full redesign.
It began almost 2 ½ years ago when we launched an “interim” site. As such, the content was very light, which didn’t adequately communicate our wealth of online services and history of client successes. Unfortunately, just as the successful cobbler’s children often go without shoes, we constantly directed our attention to our clients’ sites and needs, sadly neglecting interim site month after month. Last year SiteLab acquired the full client list and numerous staff from Interactivate, another local agency, bolstering our talent level and service offerings. We are immensely proud of both our staff and services but we realize neither was reflected on our existing site. With this and other internal factors we committed ourselves to tackle the full redesign.
To start, we soon assembled several strategic goals that have since guided our redesign efforts:
- Communicate effectively about the SiteLab brand to break the outdated perception of SiteLab.
- Educate visitors on our full line of services with highlights on emerging offerings such as mobile marketing and social media.
- Showcase our talent and “soul” of our organization by offering visitors a personal connection to our staff and the SiteLab brand.
- Be creative, you will find some flair and unexpected surprises to highlight our creativity and enrich the user experience.
We also practice what we preach to our clients. We have created a fresh, appealing design while still adhering to established Web conventions for the navigational framework maximizing the instant “comfort level” of arriving users. As search marketing professionals we’ve taken great care to retain and expand upon the SEO foundation of the existing site, avoiding the dangerous pitfalls that often threaten a company’s years of search equity when embarking on a site redesign.
After many long hours and fantastic work by our whole team, we’re nearing the finish line, only a few weeks from launching the new site live. We’re terribly excited to share it with the world, and sincerely hope you will enjoy our new and improved site. We will be announcing the launch with Twitter and Facebook, please join us by friending and following to stay up to date.
