Makeover

Internet & Broadband Advisor: Issue 71 features No Mean Company with our very own professional makeover.

It has been quite a change but we definitely think it was for the better. While we loved the old design (warts and all) we have to admit our new sleek image looks a lot more grown up. What better way to celebrate our 18th Anniversary year?

The feature outlined the changes in a before and after format making it easy to see how and why Craig Grannell (website builder extraordinaire) opted for this new design. Obviously the guys at I&BA are in the business of selling magazines so the old site came in for a bit of a bashing. Admittedly it was much deserved and to be fair we have a much better site now as a direct result. But despite it's faults the old site was not without merit and when it worked it left our visitors in no doubt that No Mean Co were (and are) in the business of providing entertainment.

The result is we do still have a number people asking us why we changed the site. Hopefully this page will help to answer some of your questions.

Our reply

Theatre Feel: We were a little concerned that the loss of our curtain graphics would leave the site looking bland and uninteresting. We know as well as anyone just how many Amateur Drama groups there are out there and as time moves on more and more of those groups are developing a web presence. The webstage left no-one in any doubt what the site was about and more than a few people were sorry to see them go.

In the end we had to admit that the frames that held the graphics were problematic and slow to load. In fact some browsers didn't even load them properly leaving the site looking a little disjointed. By replacing the graphics with a new masthead complete with integrated logo and production images Craig managed to maintain the immediacy of our theatrical identity.

Flash in the pac-man: OK, maybe pac-man was a bit superfluous but hey, we're just learning. The flash file that previously introduced the site was a little heavy (understatement) and not entirely relevant so it definitely had to go. But that said we are still not convinced that all flash is bad. However, we have learned a valuable lesson here. Keep it simple and keep it relevant. We promise, future use of flash files will be limited by these rules and designed with a view to keeping the file sizes to a graceful minimum. What can we say, we got overexcited with the bells and whistles on our new software toy. We'll be good in future.

Bolt ons no more: We gazed in horror at the screen shot used for the 'before' image. The bolt ons that we believed were lurking quietly in a lower corner of the page had miraculously floated upwards and were horribly conspicuous. In our defence this wasn't how the site displayed on our browser, but it does highlight the need to design your site with cross browser compatibility in mind.

Information: There is nothing worse than going in search of information online to find yourself faced with reams of text on the first page that bombards and confuses the eye leaving you wondering why you bothered. Let's face it, when you meet someone new for the first time you find out the basics first (name, job, interests) and then with a few polite questions you find out more detail. If the new person suddenly launches into a long diatribe detailing their life history before you've even had time to draw breath you are more than likely to 'exit quickly stage left'.

We tried to apply the same principles to our home page. Admittedly we left it somewhat barren before but now that we have the coloured colums and bulleted headings to split the information, it's much easier to include images and bite-size pieces of information to help our visitors decide what they'd like to know more about without assaulting you with more information than you can reasonably handle at one glance.

This isn't meant to be patronising. We want you to stay on our site and overwhelming you with too much information at once is probably not going to make you feel welcome. The fact that you've stuck around long enough to read this far encourages us to think that this has been a successful change.

A quick word: When approached by the press and asked for 'a quick word', footballer Gordon Strachan's famous instant reply was 'velocity'. With that he departed leaving the stunned reporter doing goldfish impressions. The speed of Gordon's delivery was part of what makes this such a wonderful moment not to mention his ability to quickly think of an appropriate response.

Time is of the essence in web pages too. And this is where our new site leaves us doing 'stunned reporter' impressions. With the use of CSS coding the site loads so much more quickly than before and while it's taken us a little time to get to grips with this new technology (well it's new to us) we were quickly impressed. Now even the slowest connections should be able to view the site with ease and no more waiting for 15 frames to load before the content starts to put in an appearance. Everything appears on screen within a matter of seconds and by sharing the same basic images with all areas of the site subsequent pages appear faster still.

Final Verdict

As an amateur theatre group, our aim at No Mean Company has always been to put on the most professional performances that we can - something our audiences have often commented on. Now, thanks to the work of Internet & Broadband Advisor, this has carried through on to our webstage as well.

No Mean Company was really fond of the previous website as it was instantly recognisable as being theatrical, but we were very aware that it was slow to load and not compatible with all browsers. In addition, the frames made it awkward to navigate, because they didn't always appear properly.

Now we have a website that is much more streamlined, and with the clever use of images in the masthead it is still immediately clear that No Mean Company is a theatre company.

What a great way to help us celebrate our 18th Anniversary!