Unless you’ve visited this site for the first time in the last month or so, you’d have noticed some big changes… like the way the entire site looks and feels!
I recently switched over from a WordPress theme based site to the Rainmaker Platform, which is the latest offering and now the main focal point for the Copyblogger Media team – and wanted to show you the reasons behind WHY we made the changes we did.
In a nutshell, Rainmaker is a one-stop online publishing and business building platform – and it rocks!
I’ll publish another walkthrough post in the near future showing you all the bells and whistles that Rainmaker provides online business peeps like us, but for this post I wanted to answer a whole load of questions that have come in via email and Twitter, asking for details and insights on how we went about the redesign process. So, here ya go!
Out with the Old, in with the New!
The old site had been in the same design form since 2012 and had served me very, very well indeed, helping me grow my mailing list to over 35,000 subscribers, attracting and serving an ever-growing online audience and generally just being my ‘home’ online – a home I was very proud of.
But, if you looked at the site on a mobile device, although responsive, it wasn’t all that great.
Also, the design elements themselves, like the fonts, colors, etc., were out of date, as you can no doubt imagine.
Along comes Brian Clark and his team at Rainmaker and everything changes… As you can see, a LOT of work went into the redesign of the site and I am over the moon with the way it ended up.
Design DOES Matter!
It drives me crazy when I hear people say that design doesn’t matter – that’s complete BS.
Design most certainly does matter.
When someone visits your site for the first time, you have 4-5 seconds to convince them to stay. That’s it. If your design is crappy, they’ll leave. If it’s awesome, they won’t. It really is that simple.
Obviously, following ‘good looks’, what really does matter is how you’re helping them by being on the site – but, that first impressions does count and you only get one chance to make it, so you have to make sure it’s a good one.
What did you think of the redesign of ChrisDucker.com – like, dislike? I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a Tweet and let me know, and if you have blogger and entrepreneur friends that are active online, or thinking of upping their online game soon, please share this with them on Facebook – I’m sure it’ll help them out a little.