I’ve never designed and made a website for anything before, I’ve made websites but I’ve never had to design it. It turned out that designing it was just as hard as the making part. Designing, then coding, then changing, then trouble shooting, then changing more really refined my skills with websites. Knowing what tools to use for certain situations, going through and finding easier and easier ways to do things is what I got out of this. The only thing I wish I had done better is refined the actual content for the site. I’d been meaning to sit down and write some stuff at work or talk to my boss about what content would go on the site. To fill in for that I’ve copied the text from our old website and it’s both outdated and not well written.

I also should have tried making something similar, maybe just as a prototype, on a wordpress style site. So that instead of focusing on the making I could have focused more on the design, and spent less time typing code out. Although it doesn’t seem like after typing it all out myself wordpress would have been hard to learn, but I was a bit apprehensive about not making things by hand and possibly not being able to grasp how to use it. I stayed on the possibly safer ground of what I was used to, which possibly made the project harder for me.

So this is the last post for web design and I thought I’d talk about what I’ve gotten out of this course. A reflection statement of the course I guess. The first is that I taught myself how to make websites back when I was 14. Which was great for just having some fun, but as I found out when I made my portfolio site at the start of the year it really isn’t good for anything serious. It took me a lot of time to make the portfolio site and took a lot of help from my house mate to get things working.

But after making a website and then completely starting again from scratch, having access to all these resources Bill’s given us and having some of the gaps in my education filled during the workshops I can see myself being able to make a website for anyone, given a little of time to learn some additional skills if required. But it put me back into that state of mind you have to be in to make websites, to know how to test things even if you don’t quite understand what you’re doing. To get the instincts to know where to poke to get things to work.

It was also good to get a list of good places to make websites. Because I taught myself and I’m just getting back into it the excitement of hand coding things still hasn’t worn off. I use Adobe Dreamweaver, but only for the nice fill ins they give you while you write things out. I didn’t use the design view at all. Because of that I think I could go to one of these other sites where you can spend an hour rather than a day making a simple site for someone, and still be able to go into the code and tweek things to your own wants for design.

This blogging thing is also a great part of it. I’ve always had problems with the paper journals that are required by the studios but I’ve always had a problem maintaining a blog. Like, I don’t really want to just write about my day or ideas I’ve had. But now I’ve seen it as more, I’m entirely committed now to using the blog for my photography, to put things up I wouldn’t want as portfolio, for critique, but just nifty little photos ideas I’ve played with.

I was going to do one after I wrote that compare and contrast thing and this, but it’s 2:20 so I’m gonna go to bed instead.

Goodnight Web Design. It was fun.

EDIT:

So I customised the blog a lot but theres still some wrinkles. I grabbed one of the free themes then changed it a bunch, but the CSS was so wackey that I might have broken something. Hopefully not though

Although I’ve compared and contrasted some websites in the research I’ve done and posted I read the assignment part of that and realised I should do a post just doing that, focused on the assignment. So I’m going to go back to some stuff I did about the news website and contrast News.com.au with abc.net.au/news/. They are the main news sources for me, although news.com is more for a laugh than for credible journalism.

The purpose of both sites is to report the news. News.com.au, is owned by News Limited who also own most of Australia’s printed media. ABC.net.au are owned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation who in turn are owned by the Government. From here on in they’re going to be referred to as News LTD and ABC.

News LTD’s site is very busy, has a lot of advertising and is incredibly faithful to the newspapers they produce in format. They try and cram in as many headlines in as they can on every single page with a heavy focus on videos or images accompanying the headlines so that if the name isn’t recognisable then hopefully the image would get you to read what it’s about.

ABC is more of an information site than a news site, most of the content on the website is focused on information about the various radio and TV stations they run, what people and programs appear on them. From there however sprung a news section reporting the same news they do on the TV and radio stations. Because of this, they’re not trying to stay faithful to the newspaper format.

Their layouts are both very similar but its the differences that make ABC a better site. Rather than a full browser of blaring white as News LTD has, ABC have a blue black textured background that gets you more focused on the content in the middle. As it’s a Government website the ABC doesn’t have any flashing ads which is also easier on the eyes, but they also don’t cram so many headlines into one space. ABC uses more width for the articles with a small column on the right of navigation style tools whilst News LTD cram headlines, ads and facebook gadgets into their right hand column that distracts your eye.

The functionality of both sites is almost exactly the same, there are different sections such as world, national, sports, entertainment with navigation or sub navigation up at the top of the page. There’s a home page of latest and important stories. Articles are tagged so that you can search for more articles using that tag or choose from a list of suggested relevant articles.

So when it comes down to it, the two differences between the sites is the layout and the content. The content is something not entirely relevant and something that I spoke about quite a lot with the Blue Skies project. So while News LTD is tethered by this newspaper which background information saturated way of reading things ABC has freedom of different origins. Because of this they can use the design of their news shows, designs made to please the eye whilst watching TV. Because of this their website is better to browse, there’s less clutter and it seems to be over all darker. The actual article space is larger than the ad/navigation/headline space and it’s a much more comfortable site to browse.

So to sum up, it seems that web design that isn’t trying to translate from printed media works. Or maybe not works, it’s just easier. You’re translating design for a TV screen and putting it on a computer screen, it’s designed for someone to be able to view it for hours and it works. If news papers were back lit they would have changed design years ago, but that’s something News LTD haven’t realised.

So in looking through all the designs of those investigation websites I didn’t really agree on any of the strategies, guys looking sneaky, cameras, that whole thing. What I’d prefer is a lawyer type, a respectable, dependable firm you can trust. And Tasmanian too. So what I’m looking through now is the sites of some of Hobarts Lawyers.

Dobson Mitchell & Allport

A colour scheme of grey, grey, white and orange works well I think. A sort of modern professional look. The flash at the start is a bit hokey, I’m wondering though if it’s better to have a description in the main section or leaving it to the links. Possibly something like “Tasmania’s leading Private Investigation firm” or similar. Keep it simple without repeating yourself. Or I could possibly take some stuff out of the ‘About Me’ section and put it on the main page.

Looking through the rest of the site though they seem to have gone from grey grey orange white to just orange and white, which really really hurts your eyes. Possibly could stick with the blue we use on the letter heads/business cards. Won’t know until I try it out I guess. But yeah, a bright orange type colour is a huge no no.

Another thing they feature is a bunch of photos. at least one or two very low resolution images per page, either of the building interior or exterior or of books, one of the photos even gets repeated in two sections. I really do like the idea of photos to make things a bit more interesting but it’s kind of hard to have them on an investigation website without them being cliche or dumb.

For example, we can’t have photos of our building, we can’t have photos of any of our investigators or investigators vehicles as a safety thing. We don’t want people to know where we are or who we are. We could possibly have photos of the court house, but it would only work on a few of the pages. We could have images of Tasmania, but risk looking more like a tourism site than an investigation site. It’s definitely going to be a thing I’ll have to consider though.

Wallace Wilkinson & Webster

I really really like this website. It has some bugs but from the very first look, I just really really like it. The front page is so simplistic, just a long section with a header above it and a line dissecting it. Again, grey with a secondary colour, this time being gold, or goldish. From being in their office and seeing their letterheads, it’s definitely meant to be a gold.

Before I keep going the big big issue I’d like to say is that as soon as you click any of the links suddenly the site goes from this small minimalist thing to taking up the entire page. And it really doesn’t need too. No page features enough text to justify why it suddenly got so big.

That being said, I’m actually considering a whole new design for the site. The format they’ve put their site is perfect. I’m not sure how I’ll do it without, you know, just stealing the idea. but I’ll come up with something.

I think I’m going to stop there so I can upload screenshots or a semi functional website of what I’ve got now so that I can completely scrap it and start afresh.

So over yesterday and today I’ve been playing around with mock ups and researching private investigation websites to get a feel of what I should be doing. Heres the first thing I came up with.

Putting the most important thing first, the service. I showed this to a mate, and he politely informed me that landing pages we’re quite 90’s. I also hadn’t done that much research up to this point and found most websites use right hand corner horizontal and left hand navigation bars. Although I like it, I think it makes it a bit complicated using both so I decided on a central website that’s similar to my own.

It’s a mock up at mare minimal, just something to wrap my head around whilst I try constructing it. I’m taking the create then decorate approach. My plan is to have the main page, three ‘support’ pages and then the six ‘services’ pages on their separate bars, you don’t have to look at different parts of the screen but it separates those looking into our services to those who are trying to contact us straight away.

The photo, taken straight from google image, is one I’d hope to replace with one taken myself, perhaps from West Hobart. Instead of going on quality, on sneakyness, I’d like the website’s first impression to be: Tasmanian. Why hire a Victorian company to do surveillance in a place they don’t know? We are a Tasmanian firm with investigators all over the state who will do urgent work at the drop of a hat. And we’ll do it good.

Perhaps I can achieve this too.

I’ve been looking around the web for inspiration with what my company’s website should look like and heres a few that don’t seem too bad.

Annex Investigation Services

First thing that popped out was that they are fully licensed in 5 states of Australia. And that they are indeed investigators, as a guy is looking out of his car with binoculars and another guy is peeking through a hole at the top of a building or something. On the very top banner they have a video company affirming that they use current technology, then interestingly a small slide show playing on the side screen of the camera. It’s obviously stills from investigations they’ve done, or a bunch of stock photos, but either option seems incredibly dodgy. It’s still a breach of privacy if you’re showing everyone photos of someone in the act of doing something bad, even if their faces are blurred.

From experience, neither of those things any investigator would be caught dead doing. Because they would be caught. And it’s just dumb.

The main body on their front page is a blurb about how awesome and accredited they are, and statements as to the quality of their work. I like the right side of the screen, except that I feel ‘services’ shouldn’t be a click able link, and neither should ‘contact us’. Services is obvious, they’ve nicely split up their services into three separate links where you choose what you think fits you. For example, a missing persons would be private, an insurance firm would choose insurance and a company would choose company, really no need for a ‘services’ section on its own. The contact us thing is obvious, all the contact details are right underneath. Except they’re not. Only half are. I think it should be an either/or thing.

The individual services pages are nice, company and personal both answer the most likely issues someone would have. Insurance is less impressive, but perhaps they don’t actually do much insurance work and just have that their in case someone actually gets interested in them. On the flip side my company does almost all insurance work with a little private work on the side and almost no company work.

JFA Brisbane

Honestly not sure what JFA stands for, hopefully last name initials like law firms, but who knows.

First thing I noticed is that their page is crazy busy. Where Annex had the main areas of concern on the left JFA has everything possible on the top of the page and then a ‘quick links’ section on the left hand side running down the page, similar to the services Annex had except with every link right there. They even have FAQ linked twice, a useful links section, a blog (twice), tip of the day (twice) that’s actually displayed on the top right hand corner of the page (why do you need to link to that?). They really went to the school of everything on the front page or nothing on the front page.

In contrast the current Network Investigations site doesn’t look so bad.

Spouse Busters

So far this is the only website I’ve found which is good. It’s very aesthetic and incredibly accessible. Actually the only downside I can see is the content. They’re very specialised investigators in an area which I find pretty awful and something my company try to avoid, due to the fact that most people can’t actually afford to pay the costs associated with surveillance and stuff. However this site I’ve found to be the best.

Maurice J. Kerrigan & Associates

These guys don’t read as an investigations service, they read as a business. They set out their links logically, perhaps not needing the training/employment as separate pages. The main page contains all it needs to. Unfortunately they seem to repeat themselves by then having an ‘About Us’ page that could be done on the first page, perhaps at the bottom. But then they again repeat themselves on the services page, where instead of having the different services they just have separate links on the side and another talk about themselves that’s quite similar to the first.

I also feel a bit strange about seeing them constantly refer to themselves in the third person in each service category. The selling themselves part also seems a bit odd, instead of talking about the services they offer and explaining each one properly they talk about the high standards they hold themselves too. Which true, is a problem in the industry. There are a lot of dodgy individuals who love to rip people off with shoddy work. But I’m not sure just focusing on quality is the best way to sell yourself.

So what I’ve seemed to get out of all this is:

1.Less links the better.

2.Don’t give people too much content.

3.Don’t over sell the quality of your work.

4.Don’t feature photos of jobs you’ve done, it’s just wrong.

5.Don’t repeat yourself.

For my final 50% website I decided to re make the website for the company I work for, Network Investigations. It hasn’t been updated for 9 years, there are way too many pages, it’s just a lot of bright white light. Heres screenshots.