Well, Its Diaz Sign Art’s 28th anniversary this week and we are celebrating by launching our new and improved website (or websites).
When I first came to work here, I approached my parents with the idea of doing web design for their customers. They thought it sounded like a good idea. Little did we all know that 2 years later I would be doing websites and logos pretty much the majority of the time. Now that my brother Ben is working here too, I’ve got some more help with putting these sites together.
We tried something different with our new site. We’ve received criticism in the past about our full flash sites and about how we don’t offer search engine optimization. So, we’ve done our homework and were testing it out on our site first. We haven’t forgotten about our flash work though. In fact our ability to do flash design has really helped us out.
Our new web campaign is a two-part-er that will hopefully please everyone:
www.diazsignart.com is the new basic, mostly html site. It loads on the fly and is very content driven. It has lots of text and photos which will be critical to search engine placement. It may be too busy for some people but it needs to be very wordy for the search engines. Which leads me to the less busy sister site:
www.diazsignart.net is the flash counterpart. We had received a lot of positive feedback on our old site so rather than scrapping it, we improved upon it, with more content and better graphics. I added a little bit of texture to every page so that it doesn’t look so flat and I believe that for a flash site it loads fairly fast. I’m aware that on older computers it might run a little choppy, but it’s time to look towards the future. I know we can’t expect to please everyone. Hopefully the basic site will be enough.
Each site has links to the other one so that if people land on the basic site they can check out the flash site. Or, if the flash site is loading too slowly for people on dialup they can easily visit the basic site.
We have a little more work to do. We have to finish up our client login section where clients can login in to view sketches and pay bills. Also I’m going to play around a little more with the opening page on the flash site… I’m going to put some animated pinstripe accents in there. But for the time being its ready to go.
Let us know what you think.
Posted by mike meyer (Member # 542) on :
Looks great joe!!!! I like it ALOT!
Posted by Joey Madden (Member # 1192) on :
I think you are extremely talented but I loved the music on you're other site. You certainly got it together.
The only thing that bothers me was the gallery photos which were small unless of course I didn't push the correct button.
Oh well, live and learn
Posted by KARYN BUSH (Member # 1948) on :
very nice joe!
Posted by Jerry VanHorn (Member # 4704) on :
Looks great
I haven't forgot, I will be getting with you about jazz'n ours up.
Posted by Ben Diaz (Member # 7319) on :
Shake N' Bake!!! and I helped. Let us know if anyone sees any errors small or large, like picture doesn't load or something. The html site especially has alot of content and eventhough we proofread it, it is more than a little possible that we missed a typo or something along the way. Thanx all.
[ March 07, 2007, 05:35 PM: Message edited by: Ben Diaz ]
Posted by Dave Sherby (Member # 698) on :
Nice... very nice. Saw a glitch on the basic sight. I'm using Firefox. Launching the vehicles tab, the heading for pickup trucks is laying on top of the first line of text.
Cool job.
Posted by Joseph Diaz (Member # 5913) on :
thanks for the get Dave... I fixed it.
Posted by mike meyer (Member # 542) on :
no link to the Bears...COME ON!
Posted by Steve Racz (Member # 4376) on :
Joseph, Both sites and the work you guys turn out are terrific.
I did notice that when paging through the full size pictures in Firefox, each picture opened a new tab. (OOPS - user error sorry!)
[ March 07, 2007, 07:29 PM: Message edited by: Steve Racz ]
Posted by Kurt Gaber (Member # 256) on :
Wow, fantastic flash site! Very impressive.
Posted by Mike Pipes (Member # 1573) on :
Gosh Joe, the reflections and texture of the buttons looks like a Mac UI. Nice stuff!
Posted by Mark Matyjakowski (Member # 294) on :
Daaaaannnnnnggggg Posted by Dave Utter (Member # 634) on :
amazing, how many hours ya got in it? That'd take me the rest of my life to finish, after I learned how............ great job.
Posted by Dan Antonelli (Member # 86) on :
Joe -
Its always a tough balance of SEO and aesthetics.
You guys do some great logo work - I liked how you could see the in action also. The close window was not working on Safari -- (just an FYI)
I've got a tip for you on your interior pages that list the clients -- list them with their town and states as well. Helps bigtime with SEO.
You probably know where big disjointed gallery fans, so needing to go through all the separate pages on the logo comps felt a little cumbersome - but how you might integrate the 'in use' additional photos might not work with such a disjoint interface.
Was surprised to see you not push her to 1024. I feel like you're losing a lot of real estate on top before content shows--
The flash site is cool - but like you said, will hamstring you on SEO.
You could stand to beef up your page titling and meta also -- and your home page content should reinforce geography much more -- I see in the 'find us on google' (which had me smiling, by the way!) but pop more region specific terminology in your body area also.
Looks great - and it's always fun to launch that new baby. Our new site has resulted in a huge spike in leads - almost too much. We're averaging about 30 leads per week.... can't keep up.
Again, very impressive logo work. Bookmarked already!
Best -
Dan
Posted by Jon Jantz (Member # 6137) on :
Joe, I love it. Your sites just keep on getting better...
((Small misspell: in your box near the top of the HTML site that scrolls through a few different pics... on the National Guard sign pic, you have 'Careful Planing' which I suspect should have been 'Planning'))
Edited to add: I noticed another couple misspells... not trying to be the spelling nazi here, but you asked us to point them out, right? These are the main page of the HTML site...
"With our award winning designs you can be confident that your image well be a beacon for your business for years to come."
"We want our products to last as long as possible or as long as needed, and we will help you decide whether you business needs a sign that can lasts outdoors for 10 years"
Lose the 's'...
[ March 07, 2007, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Jon Jantz ]
Posted by Sam Staffan (Member # 4552) on :
Loved the work.
Check out your spelling of "planing" on the homepage when showing the National Guard sign.
Looks Great!
Posted by Jon Jantz (Member # 6137) on :
Joe, your personal site is kick-a$$ as well...
Posted by Joseph Diaz (Member # 5913) on :
Ha ha that’s hilarious; we actually caught that earlier and had a big laugh about it… The fact that I misspelled a word in the section thats about careful planning. I thought I had that fixed… Oh well, you got have a sense a humor about theses things. I’ll have to fix it first thing when I get to work tomorrow.
Thanks for spell check you guys, and keep them coming. I love, and sometimes dread, posting work on here. The folks here on Letterville are the best critics and I listen closely to every comment made. It has really helped me improve over the past couple of years.
Dan, thanks for the words of advice. My brother Ben and I are new to the SEO thing, but we’ve come to realize that it is a necessity to learn along with developing e-commerce sites which we are also trying out. In fact Ben seems to have more of a knack for that stuff. We make a pretty good team. I’m doing most of the planning and layouts and all of the flash work, and he is in charge of the html coding, and backend work. He’s way smarter than me with that stuff.
As for the 1024, it seems like every time I push past 766 px I get complaints from people that still have their monitors set for 800X600. It’s hard to win. You want to keep pushing the envelope, add more effects to flash, making graphics bigger, trying new things, but in the back of my head I’m always thinking of these people that are still running these ancient machines who have every right to be able to view these websites too. I guess that’s just the way it goes. But your right wider is nice.
One of the main reasons we chose to set up our galleries this way was A, so that we could add the “see these logos in action” on the logo pages and most importantly B, because we wanted to be able to develop a setup that would also work with the flash site. That way would have a lot less work to do when we add new artwork. Plus I like the idea of having a clean page with nothing on it but the artwork… Kind of like the clean walls of an art gallery. You don’t have to worry about the style and layout of the rest of the site interfering with the style of the artwork in question.
I still need to dust off my Mac though, and troubleshoot this site on Safari.
[ March 07, 2007, 11:38 PM: Message edited by: Joseph Diaz ]
Posted by Nancie W. Phillips (Member # 3484) on :
Wow, guys! All that SEO stuff is so over my head... All I know is that your work is impressive. If something doesn't happen with my site soon I may be consulting with y'all too...
Posted by Don Hulsey (Member # 128) on :
Hey Joe,
Oooops. The first line in your welcome "Our goal is to produce only the finest artwork for for our customers." I think one "for" would be enough.
Other than that I love the site.
Posted by Tom & Kathy Durham (Member # 776) on :
Joe, you guys Rock! Some of the best artwork and web design I've seen. Keep it up.
Posted by Jane Diaz (Member # 595) on :
Thanks, everyone for helping us "proofread". We are having a great week, celebrating our anniversary. Tomorrow, everyone has to dress up and we are all going to the country club for lunch...I bet you can guess the two boys are thrilled!! hehehehehe
[ March 08, 2007, 05:30 PM: Message edited by: Jane Diaz ]
Posted by mark zilliox (Member # 3873) on :
Diaz Delivers !.....joe, "young-blood" -remember that D-Delivers.........the locals already know it. I just hadn't time to upload pics,yet. .....sir.! nice,professional, creative website for your "family" business. wow.not bad for a C-Bears fan.
But, i have a sign "testimony", that you may find humorous & rewarding.
i checked this BB last night,while my charming wife was in the living room,myself @ the helm of our family computer "station" adjacent ( the DSL Den ). After pulling up this post,and checking out your website's link under your new site...... i shouted "Holy .BEEEEEEEEEEEP" ( road apples ! )the boy's got MY SITE on the Diaz SITE-i'm freakin famous !!!!!!! look out signs-by-lunchtime ! i'm headhuntin' now baby! bullyaaah.
Ms.Z then says.....i haven't seen you grin like that in a long time mark ! JD-thanks for the pickup !
i had my website redone as a "reward" to myself/business not because of MY 30th anniversary last fall....but for one year plus of sobriety.........and still going ! amen to me- blessings to you D's. it's true..... DIAZ-DELIVERZ !.
and by the is SOE, search optimizmo' optimizmo'? oh yeah...... is that like some doctors have a Phd-Preperation-H-Dealer ? baffle=gab.......ain't it kuhl.
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Nice stuff!
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