Over at the day job, we finally got around to revising our website. We’d had the previous design for a couple of years, but our focus has changed and the messaging was out of date. Here’s what the old design looked like and here’s the new one.
There’s still a few bugs to squash and some SEO to finish (page titles, for example, aren’t done). In my experience, if you wait for a site to be absolutely 100% complete, it never gets launched.
Our goals with the redesign were:
- Express that we’re a (gulp) Web 2.0 marketing company while not intimidating our potential clients, most of whom are still in a Web 1.0 world.
- Feature ourselves prominently throughout the site. I’m a big subscriber to the theory espoused in One-Minute Site: “Decide who the Ambassador of your company will be, take a photo of him or her, and put it on the front page of your site to welcome each new visitor personally.”
- Emphasize that we now work more or less exclusively with software companies.
- Reduce our services offering to the work which we want to do and are good at.
- Take a few more risks with the site’s attitude.
I think we more or less achieved those aims. The lovely and talented Mark Yuasa designed the site, using Kris Krug’s excellent photographs (as you’ll see, we went with the second-most popular choice for the front page portrait). We’re extremely happy with the result. And, yes, it’s a Bryght site.
If you want to keep track of the goings-on at Capulet, you can of course subscribe to our blog feed. If you prefer your information in SMTP-sized chunks, you can always sign up for our newsletter:
There is something really weird going on with the DNS. If you enter only http://capulet.com (no www) into your browser, you’re likely to get this weird framed version of http://www.darrenbarefoot.com with a Google search bar. I have no explanation for this, but we’re working on it. If anybody has any theories, I’m all ears.
UPDATE: We’ve got a theory (that it’s a demon?), and we’re modifying some settings to see if that helps.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Darren: New site looks good and Kris’ photographs are “awesome”!
One suggestion: when you’re in a section of the site (Services, Samples, Clients, etc.), it would be nice if the appropriate top tab were highlighted, especially since some of the pages don’t match the tab title (Portfolio for Samples, for instance). Otherwise, very nice!
It looks very… CMSey 🙂
Hi Darren
Congrats on the new site. Looks good. But be careful about talking about “Web 2.0” – apparently Tim O’Reilly is sending out his lawyers to punish anyone who uses the “Web 2.0” phrase. Some silly thing about “copyright” (my ass…)
Link: http://www.tomrafteryit.net/oreilly-trademarks-web-20-and-sets-lawyers-on-itcork/
Found via the Spatially Adjusted blog….
Cheers
Carlos
Yeah, I read about that. Poor Tom, and in the middle of having a kid, too. Regardless, I think as long as I don’t put on a ‘Web 2.0 Conference’, I should be safe.
Congrats on the new site, Darren…looking good.
And, erm, .. Northern Voice, a Web 2.0 Open Forum?
I think *everyone* should add Web 2.0 to their conference name!