This website project is a great example for demonstrating how important it is for small businesses to be authentic and unique on their websites if they’re aiming to stand out in a crowded digital landscape.
Fresh Eggs recently had the privilege of working with Mind Your Culture, a consultant who focuses on resolving culturally based business challenges.
Content
With any business, one of the challenges is always figuring out what the business does and how it’s different from other businesses.
With this one, there was an additional challenge — how to use the word “Culture.”
Mind Your Culture has three services or programs, and our client had always felt like they came across as three different – fractured – businesses rather than one cohesive one. And their clients didn’t know that they offered any programs or services beyond what they were doing.
So, we had to figure out a way to talk about Culture as a high-level ideal and then clearly distinguish how each program fit underneath that umbrella. We needed to define Culture in a way that it incorporated everything Mind Your Culture does.
On the home page, the headline establishes the importance of culture in general and why it’s important for a business to get it right. And the subhead and body copy go into more details about the variety of specific cultural issues Mind Your Culture addresses and the benefits of having employees united toward common goals.
Our next goal was to position the three programs in a way that they felt tied together. We did that with the introductory headline: “Mind your culture works with leaders and organizations to leverage the power of culture in three distinct ways:”
To be effective and capture new leads, website copy shouldn’t be so generic that you could put any business’ name on it.
Under each of the services, we included a sentence clarifying what the program is about and so that a business would understand the benefits and know how to engage Mind Your Culture.
Instead of just one long services page, we created individual pages to provide a more organized and user-friendly experience. Having separate services pages is also better for SEO because that gives the search engines more content to index than just one page would.
Photography
Stock photos come off as impersonal and can erode user trust.
So stock photography is only used on the site once. It’s on the homepage to illustrate “culture”. The rest of the site uses client provided original photography.
The stock image on the home page is a grid of people. It is purposely zoomed out so that it gets across the important point of culture. You can see the diverse cultures, genders, and ages at a glance. Culture is the key message; it’s not important that you spend time looking at the various people. So making them smaller gets that point across without the viewer getting lost.
Budget constraints prohibited a professional photoshoot. So throughout the rest of the site, client-provided snapshots are used – as opposed to the generic stock business images many small business websites end up using.
Authentic, real images create a more personable connection with the audience.
While using iPhone photos is not my preference, if handled well it can be hands above generic stock because authentic, real images create a more personable connection with the audience.
To enhance lower-quality images, color overlays were used in the client’s brand colors to maintain a consistent and visually appealing theme throughout the site, as you can see in the various service pages’ hero sections.
The “About” page is a key component to establish credibility on any website, as it’s where potential clients get to know the people behind the business. Using stock images on this page can do more harm than good because they don’t give any insight into the business.
The hero image chosen for Mind Your Culture‘s About page shows the business owner on a job site with satisfied clients. This image not only showcases their work but also creates a more relatable connection with potential clients.
Design
All 8 of the client’s logo colors are used throughout the website. Using too many colors can get busy on a website, but this works because it is another way to illustrate the culture message as well as extend the company’s branding.
One logo color is used deliberately for each service in order to draw attention and define the service wherever it appears on the website.
Linear dots, inspired by the logo, are used to underscore sections of the page repeatedly. The logo mark is used in the background of most of the pages at a large scale. These both add layers of visual interest while being consistent with the brand and overall design.
All pages have consistent elements:
- Services Lead-Ins: Every page has an section that entices people to learn more about the services.
- Call-to-Action: There is a clearn call-to-action on every page of the new site with a compelling headline and “CONTACT US.”
- Testimonials: 3 testimonials display randomly at the bottom of each page from 20 or so loaded onto the website.
Conclusion
Mind Your Culture’s website launched after three months of development.
Fresh Egg’s is not a big web design firm, but our team has spent decades working in advertising and marketing – and we bring an exceptional level of expertise to our clients.
Every website we produce truly represents our clients, captures their essence, and helps them stand out in the industry.
Lots of small — and large — web companies use generic templates and canned copy to reduce the time they spend on their client’s sites. We don’t do that. So every website we produce truly represents our clients, captures their essence, and helps them stand out in the industry.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for creating a website I love, that reflects who we are and what we are all about! Your professionalism, creativity and determination made this a very positive experience for me and I am so happy with the result. Fresh Eggs went beyond my expectation and I am so glad that I have found you.
~ Anke Jahn, Founder Mind Your Culture
