A lot has changed since our first site went live back in 2007. First, the site hosted my personal-turned-professional-turned-company blog. Then, after recruiting our first employee, we wanted something online as soon as possible, so we put together a site using a mixture of quotes. It was terrible. We subsequently created another site offering more information about clients and our team.
In every phase, – it was a tough, long process, with endless meetings and reviews. It took us so much effort back then, that I have to admit that at some stage I almost gave up on changing the site to support our services.
The Internet has undergone dramatic changes since those early years. When we started, real-time web was a geeky term, and Twitter was used only by a small group of online media enthusiasts. Now it fuels revolutions. The amount of content available online is growing at an exponential rate, along with its discoverability. The number of platforms individuals are using today to communicate is also increasing; forcing companies to have a presence in multiple sites and networks. A company’s site, once the most important point of contact with actual and prospective clients, has suddenly become only one of many channels for interacting with target audiences.
Both we and our clients found ourselves in a challenging situation, managing multiple touch points. We needed to be able to respond quickly and to evolve in response to changes both in market demands and in a company’s products and services. Suddenly, the six-month-website-planning-until-launch process didn’t make sense to us. We couldn’t afford it. We needed to become lightweight in order to respond quickly to market needs and to be able to refine our offering based on market feedback in minimum time.
There’s a fashionable term for that: lean.
As our company has evolved, we have begun focusing on our B2B clients. While we still have services that provide value to B2C clients, we see the B2B digital marketing landscape as a major growth area for us. It is compatible with our background in B2B sales and marketing, our affinity to technology, and our constant focus on providing clients with tangible ROI from our services. B2B clients seek one thing and one thing only: value. The rest is noise. When we approach these clients, we need to ensure that they can quickly and easily understand the value they are getting.
These tectonic shifts in the industry and in our company have led to the creation of the site you see today. It has been built along the following guidelines:
- Simple: Focused, value-based offering is presented on the homepage, accompanied by simple navigation;
- Expandable: Our design supports the addition or removal of pages and services without the necessity of rethinking its structure;
- Trackable: Our site offers more than just Google Analytics. Because we want to know what appeals to our site visitors, we have created a simple structure that enables us to gauge their interests based on their engagement with the site. This feature will be expanded in the coming months.
- Flexible and dynamic: We wanted to avoid long design and approval procedures every time we test something new. And if you have worked with us, you know that we are always testing something new. Therefore, we have chosen the simplest path for achieving this goal, employing an easy to use content management system.
We also decided to retire original logo. I have to admit that it wasn’t an easy decision. I love our original logo, created in 2006. But it was clear that we needed a more modern, simple and clean logo that could take us forward.
So there you have it: our new website. A lot of thought and effort was put into it, and it will continue to evolve based on our needs. Indeed, supporting a company’s needs is the role of a website.
One last, but important point. One person really pushed this process since her first day in the company: Natasha. She came to my office one month after she started working here, with that “we need to talk” look in her eyes (that usually means trouble…) and told me we must change our site. I wanted to test her seriousness and told her that she could lead the project in addition to her other duties. But it didn’t help deter her! She was determined to make this happen.
I certainly didn’t make it easy for her. She worked long hours and weekends to get this site going, on top of all her other work. I am delighted with the result, and would like to thank her for being so stubborn.
Kfir Pravda
CEO, Pravda Media Group
The Ever Changing Role of a Company Website
January 31, 2013
Kfir Pravda
A lot has changed since our first site went live back in 2007. First, the site hosted my personal-turned-professional-turned-company blog. Then, after recruiting our first employee, we wanted something online as soon as possible, so we put together a site using a mixture of quotes. It was terrible. We subsequently created another site offering more information about clients and our team.
In every phase, – it was a tough, long process, with endless meetings and reviews. It took us so much effort back then, that I have to admit that at some stage I almost gave up on changing the site to support our services.
The Internet has undergone dramatic changes since those early years. When we started, real-time web was a geeky term, and Twitter was used only by a small group of online media enthusiasts. Now it fuels revolutions. The amount of content available online is growing at an exponential rate, along with its discoverability. The number of platforms individuals are using today to communicate is also increasing; forcing companies to have a presence in multiple sites and networks. A company’s site, once the most important point of contact with actual and prospective clients, has suddenly become only one of many channels for interacting with target audiences.
Both we and our clients found ourselves in a challenging situation, managing multiple touch points. We needed to be able to respond quickly and to evolve in response to changes both in market demands and in a company’s products and services. Suddenly, the six-month-website-planning-until-launch process didn’t make sense to us. We couldn’t afford it. We needed to become lightweight in order to respond quickly to market needs and to be able to refine our offering based on market feedback in minimum time.
There’s a fashionable term for that: lean.
As our company has evolved, we have begun focusing on our B2B clients. While we still have services that provide value to B2C clients, we see the B2B digital marketing landscape as a major growth area for us. It is compatible with our background in B2B sales and marketing, our affinity to technology, and our constant focus on providing clients with tangible ROI from our services. B2B clients seek one thing and one thing only: value. The rest is noise. When we approach these clients, we need to ensure that they can quickly and easily understand the value they are getting.
These tectonic shifts in the industry and in our company have led to the creation of the site you see today. It has been built along the following guidelines:
We also decided to retire original logo. I have to admit that it wasn’t an easy decision. I love our original logo, created in 2006. But it was clear that we needed a more modern, simple and clean logo that could take us forward.
So there you have it: our new website. A lot of thought and effort was put into it, and it will continue to evolve based on our needs. Indeed, supporting a company’s needs is the role of a website.
One last, but important point. One person really pushed this process since her first day in the company: Natasha. She came to my office one month after she started working here, with that “we need to talk” look in her eyes (that usually means trouble…) and told me we must change our site. I wanted to test her seriousness and told her that she could lead the project in addition to her other duties. But it didn’t help deter her! She was determined to make this happen.
I certainly didn’t make it easy for her. She worked long hours and weekends to get this site going, on top of all her other work. I am delighted with the result, and would like to thank her for being so stubborn.
Kfir Pravda
CEO, Pravda Media Group