My website has had a major optical makeover

I launched my new website around six months ago. Even though I was really satisfied with the result, I wanted to take it to the next level, making it more beautiful and usable for my clients and for readers of my blog. Today I‘m rolling out all the changes I‘ve made over the last month. Say hello to the theme that I‘ve called White Aurora 2.5 and explore all the new details!

In previous months, I have had a lot of feedback for my previous site design; I have received a lot of tributes as well as a few very interesting ideas on how to improve my own web presentation. The most criticised part was the home page, where I had presented my latest articles and work in a way that a lot of people found kind of strange – only big teaser images glued together without any text or descriptions of what to expect behind the linked image. While this was a big help to me (especially because I found this way super intuitive when I launched the previous version of this website), I‘ve also discovered a few other usability problems myself. It took me around one month to eliminate these problems and come up with a sweet-looking and even more functional design.

So, what‘s new here?

The biggest thing is firstly that I‘ve completely redesigned the home page. I‘ve reduced the size of images – I‘m still using big teasers, but the graphics have been reduced to the important parts, whereby showing the key visuals of my work and fine graphics for blog posts. In addition, I‘ve added excerpts for each post to provide the visitor with a better idea of what he is looking at.

– the brand new home page, better check it out live.

I‘ve also improved the work section itself; there are no more endless lists of posts presented in a boring way; the new work section on my site features a filterable list of my recent work. I want to thank Alexander Trefz here, who helped me to get everything right on this page.

– the portfolio section.

The content pages, like this post or even the about and contact pages, received a new sidebar with some useful side information and important links that the visitor should check out.

An exclusive page for Internet Explorer users

I hate IE. A positive thing is that only around 2% of my visitors are visiting my site in an Internet Explorer version below 9. My site breaks on a few points and cool stuff, like animations or gradients (yeah, that‘s basic), will look strange or will not display when viewed in IE. This is why I‘ve closed this site for IE6, IE7 and even IE8 users. They now see this page and can decide to switch to a great browser or just turn around and leave this site.

– this landing page is shown to all visitors using IE8 or older.

I posted this image on Forrst a few weeks ago and it became the most popular post of the week in a short amount of time; however, as expected, an epic discussion started on why I‘m “censoring“ the web for IE users – if you‘re interested in my motives, I suggest you read and join the discussion on Forrst (you need to be logged in to view comments). Maybe I will also write a blog post about why we (as designers and developers) should drop support for antiquated browsers better early than too late.

The brand new client area

Since I‘m working with more and more clients now, I thought it might be a very cool addition to my site to provide those great people who pay my bills with their very own area. At this place, all my existing and new clients can access their final design files, testing areas for sites in development, estimations, contracts and invoices of all their projects. They can just view documents on the website or download a generated PDF file for printing and storing in the books.

The new client area is great for both sides of cooperation: clients can access all their files anytime and anywhere, while I don‘t have to deliver and redeliver documents the manual way.

All the small details…

…are important. Here are the small things that you might miss on a first view, but which are essential for a great impression to the visitor:

• A new Archive page. The only page that comes with an “old“ touch. The reason behind this is that you will find everything I‘ve ever published on the Web, no matter how old this stuff is.
  
• Live Search. Something I find really useful when you are searching for something. Why redirect the visitor to another page when you can show the results of his search directly without any interruptions?
  
• Curriculum Vitae: I‘m not a big fan of CV‘s or formal applications; however, it happened some times when potential clients were asking me about my CV. Now they can download it if they want.
• A workload indicator. Depending on my current workload, I will update this little traffic light on my contact page to show clients if I have time for their new projects.

Final words

I want to thank everyone who led me in the right direction for this update – special thanks goes to Alexander Haase, who found the most crucial points that I should revise directly after my last website launch.

I would love to know what you think about the latest changes and I’m always curious about what others are thinking about my designs; please let me know if you have found something which you think could be done in a better/other way. In addition, please drop me an email if you find any bugs.