Thinking, Process and Philosophy behind the new Digicorp website
by Abhishek
I am really excited to break this news to you all.
We launched a new Digicorp website on last Saturday!!! No wait…don't go and check it out yet.
I wanted to say something before you check it out. I wanted to explain thinking, process, philosophy behind it.
I did some brainstorming about what we are as a company and where we are heading. Following are some points I came up with. They are in no particular order, so just go ahead and read them. Also not all of them are implemented in the website but still it is worth going through once.
Don't worry if it does not make any sense so far…it will from here on! So now what was the need of creating a new website?
Recently we are going through lot of changes, the way we think, we operate, we work. We are becoming mature and we are all the more motivated (At least I think so! ;))
Well, our existing website was not conveying our new way of doing things. It was really good, but it was just like any other IT service company website, which we don't want to be. We were throwing lot of jargon around which our customers really don't care and even we don't care. So there was a disconnect and I wanted to remove that. Plus we just became 7 years old! and I wanted to do something on that occasion. Now it has content you would like to read. It has opinion. It has meaning. It wants you to read it. (Yes now you can go and check our new website and read this post side by side) Some general comments: As you can see navigation is almost not there! I did not want to have traditional navigation system and thus long pages but with less contents and something you would like to read till end. I want user to focus on what he/she is seeing and not to unnecessary elements such as navigation, some news scroll or some fancy image on the page. User should read all the contents and go till bottom for further navigation or exit the website. We have a website which says something, if you like it, continue else you are free to close it.
I have not included any technology / platform pages or any other such inscrutable content pages. We show what we do and what we have done. The real work. And that is why a dedicated page for each interesting project we have done. This way we will keep adding project pages in our website and it will keep getting bigger and better. We won't have to give separate presentation of our work from now on. Our work page should say it all! All pages are plain HTML pages, minimal scripts, minimal vulnerabilities and faster loading time.
Homepage content selection: Thinking behind sections of homepage. What do we do? Should be clearly told and that is why the first section. It says we develop web-based software, products and smartphone applications. Essentially this is what we do. Equal importance should be given to our experience and our clients, so that we don't look naive and new player in the market. Thus second section on homepage. Philosophy is something which will separate us from rest of the players and thus the third section. Our products, though they are not the core focus right now but they are unique and generates lot of "wow!" when we let our customers know about them. So one section dedicated to that.
Nothing is worthwhile till people see our actual work. Thus dedicated section to show our recent/major/interesting work. This will keep changing as and when we finish interesting projects.
People should easily reach us, and that is why contact form on each and every page of website. We are just an email away!
Footer also says something. "Now that you have reached here, you know almost everything about us. But there is more to us." So that's about the homepage. Rest of the pages are self explanatory and thinking is same. Also I don't want to write a post longer than this!!
Awaiting eagerly to hear your feedback, thoughts, praise, and criticism
- Objective of the website is to provide clarity in complex world of Software.
- We build Simple and Elegant software for our client. (Or at least we would like to from now on…!)
- Our development philosophy is to "Get Real" and build "Less Software" (Not all of us are following, but that will happen eventually and we have to start somewhere)
- Most clients do not understand technical jargon and they don't care which platform to use.
- Most clients do not know exactly what they would like to build.
- Our job is giving clarity to their thoughts and come up with proper definition of project.
- Mostly we decide which language, database, platform is best for the solution.
- In all projects clients do ask for pricing models.
- We work on hourly rates
- We work on dedicated developer model
- We work on fixed price project
- In smart phone application clients are interested in knowing platforms we can build on. For e.g. iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc.
What should we more focus on?
- services or
- technologies we can work on or
- both
There should be a mixture of services and technologies we work on
Services:
- develop software for web or internet based on client's requirements
- develop products / concepts of clients
- we develop smart phone applications
Don't worry if it does not make any sense so far…it will from here on! So now what was the need of creating a new website?
Recently we are going through lot of changes, the way we think, we operate, we work. We are becoming mature and we are all the more motivated (At least I think so! ;))
Well, our existing website was not conveying our new way of doing things. It was really good, but it was just like any other IT service company website, which we don't want to be. We were throwing lot of jargon around which our customers really don't care and even we don't care. So there was a disconnect and I wanted to remove that. Plus we just became 7 years old! and I wanted to do something on that occasion. Now it has content you would like to read. It has opinion. It has meaning. It wants you to read it. (Yes now you can go and check our new website and read this post side by side) Some general comments: As you can see navigation is almost not there! I did not want to have traditional navigation system and thus long pages but with less contents and something you would like to read till end. I want user to focus on what he/she is seeing and not to unnecessary elements such as navigation, some news scroll or some fancy image on the page. User should read all the contents and go till bottom for further navigation or exit the website. We have a website which says something, if you like it, continue else you are free to close it.
I have not included any technology / platform pages or any other such inscrutable content pages. We show what we do and what we have done. The real work. And that is why a dedicated page for each interesting project we have done. This way we will keep adding project pages in our website and it will keep getting bigger and better. We won't have to give separate presentation of our work from now on. Our work page should say it all! All pages are plain HTML pages, minimal scripts, minimal vulnerabilities and faster loading time.
Homepage content selection: Thinking behind sections of homepage. What do we do? Should be clearly told and that is why the first section. It says we develop web-based software, products and smartphone applications. Essentially this is what we do. Equal importance should be given to our experience and our clients, so that we don't look naive and new player in the market. Thus second section on homepage. Philosophy is something which will separate us from rest of the players and thus the third section. Our products, though they are not the core focus right now but they are unique and generates lot of "wow!" when we let our customers know about them. So one section dedicated to that.
Nothing is worthwhile till people see our actual work. Thus dedicated section to show our recent/major/interesting work. This will keep changing as and when we finish interesting projects.
People should easily reach us, and that is why contact form on each and every page of website. We are just an email away!
Footer also says something. "Now that you have reached here, you know almost everything about us. But there is more to us." So that's about the homepage. Rest of the pages are self explanatory and thinking is same. Also I don't want to write a post longer than this!!
Awaiting eagerly to hear your feedback, thoughts, praise, and criticism
I Love the Website Sir!!!, HATSS OFF to DESIGNERS.. PROGRAMMERSSS, ALL THE DIRECTORS and THE MOST IMPORTANT THE CONCEPT and PERSON BEHIND IT… THE SHAKER.. THE GEEK….ABHISHEK DESAI.. I AM LUCKY TO LEARN ALOT FROM DIGI… AND YES I AM THE FOLLOWER OF YOUR THOUGHTS… I WORK WITH YOUR CONCEPTS IN MIND and ALWAYS TRY TO PROPOGATE EVERYWHERE….ALL THE VERY BEST SIR….
I Love the Website Sir!!!, HATSS OFF to DESIGNERS.. PROGRAMMERSSS, ALL THE DIRECTORS and THE MOST IMPORTANT THE CONCEPT and PERSON BEHIND IT… THE SHAKER.. THE GEEK….ABHISHEK DESAI.. I AM LUCKY TO LEARN ALOT FROM DIGI… AND YES I AM THE FOLLOWER OF YOUR THOUGHTS… I WORK WITH YOUR CONCEPTS IN MIND and ALWAYS TRY TO PROPOGATE EVERYWHERE….ALL THE VERY BEST SIR….
“you are an original, that’s what you are!” – my twisted version of the cold hand luke movie dialogue.Your blog spots perfectly captures the essence of paradigm shift that you ( i think ) may be undergoing. I say this because, i have read about you embracing some of the concepts of people from 37signals – now you are actually executing them! (correct me, if i am wrong please). The way i see it – your thoughts have metamorphosed into action and it fascinating as a reader to witness this transformation.About your website, i like it a lot. just one observation – as soon as i saw your website, i thought ‘jeez, it would be interesting to see how a non tech guy reacts to it coz it’s a little different’. I asked one of non-technical friend to play with website. i noticed that his view of the website was limited to the logo and 3 image-buttons. it took him a lil time to figure out that website was suppose to scrolled down. Just thought of sharing it – i will leave the inference part for you!- Parashttp://www.parasdoshi.com
Thank you very much for the wonderful feedback Paras. Yes you are right. I have been reading a lot about 37Signals' philosophy of development and design. Now its time to execute it. I have started it from my website as I want to make it as an example for my clients. About the non technical users browsing the site, we have noticed that people are comfortable with scrolling now a days, due to iPhones and iPads, where people have to scroll to read. But yes sometimes it may take a while to figure it out. My thinking is, once user does that it should be easy navigating to other sections. He also gets most of the information from homepage only without lot of efforts (number of clicks).Well that is my thinking, I am not sure how exactly users will react to this design. So far it has been fairly positive. The next step is to measure how successful the new design is. I am working on it right now. Need to define some goals and measure them using Google Analytics.Thanks once again for taking time out to read this post and getting back to me.
yeah – people are now more aware about scrolling sites. sounds great!ATB,Paras
Hey Abhishek,I was just going through the site, I know i’m late looking at it :PBut yes, its one of a kind! I loved it. Clear and Creative, the drawing on paper effect is just in a class of its own.I do note the site design of every site I visit, this sure is one of my favorites now, the best part is that I don’t have to go too many places looking for information!! Simple and elegant you very rightly call it!Congratulations…!
Thanks for taking time to look at the website Sanket. Better late than never :). I am glad you liked it and it is one of favorites now!! There is still lot of room for improvements and we will be doing them as and when we get time from other projects. And yes one of the goals was to give as much information as possible in one go to client without over stuffing data. I am happy that we have achieved it, at least from your perspective!Thanks again.
The renovated website looks great and more importantly unique. Keep up the good work, its a pity though that we haven’t worked on a single project to date after that meeting in 2008/09? Hard to remember.. Vamsi
Thanks Vamsi. Don’t worry about that. We will when the time comes.Sent from my iPhone