You Are Your Website's Appearance

Ever been to an old or confusing looking website and felt excited about the company or product? The first five seconds a visitor spends at your site are extremely critical. An opinion of not only your website, but your business, is formed within these few seconds. What kind of vibe is your homepage giving off?

An attractively packaged product at the store, a beautiful house, a shiny new car - appearance drives the customer and is very important! Your homepage is the most important page on your website. A homepage that's ugly, old, or cluttered can immediately destroy the goals your website is there to achieve.

Just a few important qualities in a homepage include:

• Simplicity - There so many busy, cluttered websites out there. You've seen them. Most news and sports teams sites are guilty of this. It's bothersome to hunt all around the homepage, searching for what you're looking for. Information is great, but keep it simple enough not to confuse your visitors. Your homepage should have a clean design, and a clear, concise message.


• Attractiveness - Colors that don't go together, text that's hard to read, too many logos or icons...homepages that look unattractive can give off an unprofessional and unorganized feeling to the potential customer. Homepages that where designed back in 1996 look like they were designed back in 1996 and when a visitor feels like you haven't updated your website in years they're not likely to stick around.


• Follow some basic web standards - Out-of-the-box homepages that are unique and crazy are great, but it's also important to follow some basic web standards so the visitor doesn't get lost or intimidated, and move on. Remember, it only takes your visitor a click to leave!

Of course, we make a business out of great homepages! Check out our website portfolio to see a sample of our recent homepage designs.

Save the USS Iowa

Blue Compass and DWebware have just launched the Save the USS Iowa website! Created to help people unite to preserve this national treasure, savetheiowa.com features a look into the ship's rich history, provides a way for you to share your memories of the USS Iowa with others, and allows you to donate to this worthy cause.

Called the "greatest ship ever launched by the American nation," the USS Iowa is a symbol of American strength, service, and determination. The battleship has served the nation with distinction for over five decades in every major deployment of the armed services. Today, however, this historic landmark is in danger of demolition.

Having served our nation for decades, the USS Iowa has impacted the lives of thousands of Americans. So many people have experienced the rich history of the battleship, and at Save the USS Iowa, those stories are ready to be heard. This is your chance to share your memories with others. If you or a loved one has served on the USS Iowa, please tell us your story, let us share it with the world, and hopefully touch the life of someone else in our campaign to preserve the USS Iowa.

Help us preserve and transform the USS Iowa into a permanent, living museum that will serve as a remembrance to those who served and died, both in war and in peace. Experience the history, share your USS Iowa story, and donate to help us save the USS Iowa.

Blue Compass Launches the Kum & Go Website!

As a leading gas and convenience store chain, Kum & Go wanted to update their web presence to match their superior quality, customer service, and fun attitude. Celebrating 50 years of business, Kum & Go needed an effective, high-end website. Teaming with Dwebware, Blue Compass has created a fresh, new website that compliments Kum & Go's many unique qualities.

Unlike most clients who simply need a new design for the site, Kum & Go actually needed two homepage designs, one for their new site and one to showcase their 50th anniversary. The catch was that both designs needed to be able to tie into one overall interior design. To make two homepage designs work within one overall layout design for the site, Blue Compass brainstormed a unique Flash concept that would merge two designs into one through Flash animation. Moving forward with this concept, Blue Compass created a 1959 and 2009 versions of a Kum & Go store and made the two interchangeable through navigation on the Kum & Go sign located in the foreground. The scene can even be changed from day to night.

Other unique aspects to the Kum & Go site are the store locator and the animated homepage callouts. The store locator is custom application which allows a visitor to find a Kum & Go by the store's unique attributes, such as diesel fuel, a restaurant, or Red Box movie rentals, or even by searching for a store that has multiple unique attributes. Once the results appear, icons appear letting the visitor know all unique attributes associated with each Kum & Go store. Visitors are also able to retrieve a map to the store, as well as see all Kum & Go stores within a 25 mile radius of the chosen store.

To ensure a fresh and clean design, Blue Compass wanted an orderly way to display a lot of homepage callouts and information. As a creative solution, a custom application was created that would rotate callouts based on an associated hierarchy. This way the homepage design would not be consumed by several callouts and Kum & Go would be able to easily add and display an infinite amount of callouts on the homepage, which now showcases all Kum and Go promotions.

There is plenty more to see on the new Kum & Go website - Check it out at www.kumandgo.com and be sure to check out the easter-egg navigation!

7 Signs That You Need a New Website

It's easy to let your website sit unattended for weeks, months, or even years. An old website can make you look cheap and untrustworthy, rank poorly with today's search engines, and serve no real value to your visitors. While simple updates and maintenance can help, every website eventually needs to be redesigned. The following are 7 signs that your website may need a redesign. Does your website show any of these signs?

7. Your website is hard to navigate. Do people have a hard time finding what they're looking for on your website? Do you? A poorly structured website is a huge deterrent to visitors - and a sign you need a redesign.

6. Your website is very difficult to find via search engines. Many old, outdated websites are practically invisible to search engines. Built correctly, a new website that's updated often will quickly climb up Google's rankings.

5. Your website only displays correctly in Internet Explorer. While Microsoft's IE used to have a monopoly on web browsing, today there are many ways to view websites. From Mozilla Firefox to Google Chrome, there are numerous browsers and various versions of these browsers. Optimizing the visitors' experience is important no matter how they are viewing your website - and a new, well designed site takes all these internet browsers into account.

4. Your business or organization's branding or message has changed. If you've updated your logo, look, or lingo, it's important to carry this over onto your website! A business or organization that gives out two different messages is setting itself up for trouble.

3. Your website's pages are filled with huge amounts of text. These days, a page filled with paragraphs and paragraphs of copy is excessive, busy, and unprofessional. Generally 150 to 250 words per page is enough.

2. You never hear anything about or from your website. If your website isn't bringing in inquiries, comments, or simply isn't getting visited, it's not doing its job. A well designed website should create interest, provide information, and make contacting you easy.

1. You are embarrassed to give out your web address. Do you try to hide your website? Obviously, this is a sign that your website isn't representing your business or organization the way it should be. Having a website that you're proud of is truly a wonderful feeling!

Of course, at Blue Compass we have solved all these problems many times before, and we would love to do so for you. Don't hesitate to contact us and let us know about your web needs!

Show off Your Business or Organization's History!

Filled with milestones and accomplishments, your business or organization has a rich history, but how do you showcase your history in an interesting way? The answer is an Interactive Timeline! These Flash applications allow your website visitors to easily navigate through a timeline filled with facts and photos of important highlights. This serves as a great way to exhibit your business or organization's stability and achievements, and is much more engaging than paragraphs of text.

Whether your business or organization has been around for 10 years or 100, a Blue Compass Interactive Timeline is an exciting way to showcase your history and accomplishments.

Check out a couple examples of our timelines:

Ruan Transport's Timeline

Merchant Bonding Company's Timeline

Blue Compass Launches IowaDesMoinesSupply.com

With an inventory of over 750,000 products available, Iowa -Des Moines Supply Inc. has a vast inventory and a rich, 70 year history of distribution experience. Unfortunately, their aging website was neither showing off their capabilities nor reflecting their true quality as a company. IDMS came to Blue Compass looking for a new, more contemporary website with a way to display their many products and supplies.

After discussing the online opportunities with the IDMS team, we came up with a new website to reflect their quality and meet their needs. The attractive, new website has many new features, including a large database of products which visitors can add to a "Product Inquiry Box," and then submit to an IDMS sales representative.

You can check it out at iowadesmoinessupply.com!

A Fresh, New Design for Kemin.com

Kemin Industries, an international bioscience company, recently transitioned to new corporate branding for all of their print materials, but hadn't yet changed the look of their website. Kemin came to Blue Compass Interactive for fresh, new website branding and design based on their print branding.

The result is a bold and inviting website designed to capitalize on Kemin's many fields of expertise. The new homepage features intuitive navigation and the latest news releases and events, while interior pages are designed to be easily navigated and clearly display a vast amount of information.

You can see the new design at kemin.com !