Over the past few weeks, the entire Roundpeg team has been working on a redesign of the website for “Paul Poteet’s Gotta Eat.” As most people know, Paul is a popular and well-known public figure here in Indiana, so much so that he’s known unofficially as “Indiana’s weatherman.”
The redesign was fun and challenging as we worked toward a finished project which would effectively display all of the content in a manner which did not overwhelm the visitor. Finding the right theme was the toughest part of the redesign. There were so many elements, and few themes are constructed to present that much content on the home page. We finally found the Araras theme which gave us everything we wanted.
The next challenge was to decide how to organize all the information. Part of Paul’s value package is the offer to each restaurant that their video will be hosted on the front page for a year. As he continues to expand this program, the site will need to accomodate a growing number of videos. In addition to the videos on the site, there are photo galleries, new event announcements, restaurant and sponsor logos, and a Twitter feed which each needed a unique place on the homepage. After some trial and error, we were able to effectively display the cornucopia of content the site has to offer.
With the organization of the information under control, we began to look at ways to customize the template. Matt Wallpe of Wallpe Design was already working with Paul to redo his logo and overall branding. We loved the color and style of the new logo and used that for a foundation to develop a color scheme for the site. It is always fun to incorporate the foundation of other talented local designers.
To incorporate the color scheme, as well as establish a standard for all the video thumbnails I turned to the “big guns” at Roundpeg – our Vice President, Taylor Brough. His suggestion to add a subtle map of Indianapolis in the background to contrast the white forefront creates the ideal canvas on which to present all of the graphics for Paul.
The addition of text to the home page will improve the SEO functionality of the new site, improving the chances the content will be featured on a variety of search engines. This was an element, Lorraine Ball,was most focused on. Trusting Taylor and I to work on the design and function, she worked with Allison to add descriptive text to the videos and pictures. Using the All-in-One SEO plug in to organize the content for search engines, the new site is already scoring well in search, and scoring above 80% on Website Grader measures.
The PPGE site gave us an opportunity to work on a site chock-full of multimedia. More complex then most of the sites we build it allowed us to put many of the skills we have developed together into one project. We are were incredibly happy with the results. Check out the entire site when you get a chance!
Better yet, check out one of the events and truly experience Paul Poteet’s Gotta Eat