Making a company website
A look at goals, tech, design, and content for the new ABE landing page
So far, most of what I’ve been saying about Aggie Branczyk Enterprises has been from the angle of what the company means for me and how it can help me achieve my dream lifestyle. That angle makes sense for this Substack. But it doesn’t really make sense for the company website.
Goals
When designing a company website, it’s important to think about who it’s for and what you want it to do. Often, your main audience is potential customers or clients and the goal is to turn them into actual ones. If you’re an early stage startup, your audience might be investors, and the main goal is to show them you know what you're doing so they’ll fund you. Getting a website to do either of these things requires skill and it’s probably better to get a professional to help.
Fortunately, my present goals are not so lofty because I’m not yet actively looking for customers or clients1. My basic goals are just to establish an online presence, provide information about what the company does, direct people to other places (like this Substack and AITW) and give them a way to contact me.
I expect my goals to evolve over time.
Tech
I used to build my websites using Jekyll and hosted them on GitHub pages2. This was pretty good, and I still use it for my personal page and blog. But it became too cumbersome when I was building the AITW page and needed to iterate quickly as my ideas evolved (you can see the old page here…but shield your eyes!).
A friend then introduced me to Carrd, which I just love. It’s extremely delightful to use. I used it to build the new AITW page as well as the ABE page. I have the paid version because I wanted to be able to do forwards.
For domain purchase and management, I use Hover. Mainly because it’s also super user-friendly3 and the customer service has been quite good so far. They also have an option to get an email address and mailbox with your domain.
For stock images, I use Freepik. I have the paid version, which lets you use the images without attribution.
Btw, I’m not sponsored by any of these companies. I just like their products.
I’m using the domain aggiebranczyk.enterprises. Granted, no one knows how to spell my name, so it’s not like anyone is going to be typing it in. But I don’t think people use website addresses that way these days anyway. There is another much simpler domain that I really want, but it costs $4K USD per year, and I just don’t know how to justify that expense right now.
Design and content
I wanted something simple, that let me provide some basic info about the four ABE divisions, and some links. The template that I chose also had a little heading and some space for a tagline. It took me a while to figure out what to write, because it’s hard to find a unifying theme for ABE from the external perspective. I’m going with this for now:
The page is a simple landing page. The bottom three buttons are external links. The top four buttons open up little cards that give more info.
I’m not sure how I feel about the little cards. These days, I find it annoying having to click (and click back) and prefer to just scroll. I also think the vibe of the site is a bit stuffy.
But it serves my present intended purposes, and it’s the best that I can do on my own without dedicating way too much time to it.
At some stage, I will probably hire a professional to help me design a page when my needs change.
You can see the page for yourself here.
Edit: The original version said I use Hover for hosting. I use Hover to purchase an manage my domain. Carrd does the hosting. This has been updated.
But funny enough, I’ve already brought on a couple of ABE Quantum Solutions clients and booked several ABE Careers workshops just by being out there. It seems things just happen when people see you out there doing stuff. That said, I’m not quite ready to take on much more at the moment while I’m still ironing out my internal processes.
Ok, before that, I used to code directly in HTML, so that’s showing my age.
My only complaint is that it’s too easy to buy domain names. I buy domain names like people buy exercise equipment….full of ambition, but then they sit there gathering dust 😅