My Realign Version of GasPedal
Current Version of GasPedal
Realign of GasPedal.com
Best practice in Web design today encourages designers to stay away from redesign and think more about realign. Realignment focuses on incremental changes to a site to improve it instead of doing a drastic redesign.
As I took a look at http://gaspedal.com, I liked the overall personality of the site with the illustrated/cartoon character who introduces you to the site. I began to investigate what the site was trying to communicate and then determine what were the most important elements of your communication.
Creating Emphasis
I noticed that you were highlighted three things that you do in order to accomplish your mission; conferences, communities, consulting. Content that was already on the page supported these three things.
My idea was to make these 3 things stand out more and consolidate other items on the page underneath those groupings. I created three content boxes to highlight conferences, communities, and consulting.
Simplifying Navigation
It seemed to me that the navigation bar at the top of the page was a bit cramped and crowded. It is occured to me that it was combining two different types of information. The links that were smaller in size seemed to be company information whereas the other links really focused on the services that GasPedal offers.
I decided to break up the two groups of navigation and place the navigation about your services underneath your tagline. It seemed a more appropriate place to highlight your offerings.
I also decided to rename two elements. First, instead of WOM, I chose to write out the words. This states it plain and simple and the user does not have to think about what WOM means. Second, for consistency, I changed “events” to “conferences and events.”
Blogs and Downloads
To create a little more interest, I chose to go to a two column layout to highlight content from the blogs and the downloads. It also creates a row of content that you are “giving away.”
Using Twitter for the Word of Mouth Tip
Because GasPedal is about helping others use social media, I think it would be a great idea for GasPedal to use Twitter to put out Word of Mouth tips. I have integrated my Twitter content into my personal blog/Web site. There are many different WordPress plug-ins that will do this. I suggest using the cartoon in the footer area to display the latest Word of Mouth tip tweet and have a link to the Twitter account so that people can follow.
In Conclusion
I developed this concept very quickly after doing a visual evaluation of your current site. It was also developed without the benefit of your input.
My goals were to simplify and apply visual organization to help enhance the effectivenees of your communication.
I hope these suggestions give you a glimpse of the problem solving skills that I could bring to your team.
