Our first site, launched in late 2006, was a standard HTML website. To get it done, we retained a graphic designer for the interface design and a web designer to code the site and get us up and running on the Internet. When the site went live it was a hit; the colours and the graphic elements resonated with our target markets and the site gave us instant credibility.

The HTML site’s lifespan was very brief however. It quickly became apparent that directing a web designer to update the content was very time-consuming and expensive; we would need a different approach. Luckily, at that moment we were introduced to Your Web Department, an innovative start up with a unique ‘content management system’ that would allow us to make all the changes ourselves.

To say that YWD changed our work life is not an exaggeration. We could not have developed and marketed our company the way we did without the ability to quickly add pages, sections, copy, widgets and forms and without YWD’s built-in SEO tools to optimize the site and help us grow our web traffic. The pay-off for being in control of our site has been incalculable: not only have we saved a lot of money, but being able to test and tweak content according to response and traffic has enabled us to adapt to Internet changes and trends while learning important 21st century marketing skills.

Fresh content brought a new challenge however: as the volume increased and the way in which we used the site evolved, the graphic design and the site’s layout began to get in the way. The colours, figures and content made for a cluttered interface: instead of attracting and retaining visitors, the rich content we had spent so much time developing was having the opposite effect: people would land, become overwhelmed and leave.

It became clear we would have to redesign the site. Being ‘educated consumers’, this time around we approached the exercise in a completely different way. Instead of starting with the graphic platform, we asked Your Web Department’s CEO Paul Chato to help us create a system for organizing the content in a simpler, more intuitive manner that would allow us to ‘flatten’ the site and cut out sub-pages.