Site Redesign At Solecismic

[Ben E Lou]

www.solecismic.com

[Maple Leafs]

Not bad. It's not there yet, but it's getting there.

[Senator]

Is it really?

[vex]

What's new other than the top?

[GoSeahawks]

It looks pretty much identical to the old one.

[Raiders Army]

#1: Jim updated his Company Information

Hey, he didn't link FOFC to the FOF2004 Community!

[Raiders Army]

Dola,

I was hoping for a little more than adding FOF 2004, and saying that "new challenges beckon".

I was happy to hear that he would maintain the football games.

Also, it was nice to put his son on there.

[hukarez]

Are there any leagues going on? I was kind of surprised to see no links in the 'Community' portion of the website.

[jeff061]

Hehe, wierd man. I went to the high school his wife is standing in front of in one of the company info pics. At least i believe thats Souhegan.

Liberal(not talking politics) and overrated. Hated that school .

[Dutch]

I suspected I wouldn't see some ubergraphical bonaza festival of color and lights when I clicked on the link.

What can you say? It's classic Jim. However, the mauve highlight on the alternate banner logo is a nice touch. Sort of.

[Maple Leafs]

I have to say it... given Jim's stated preference for avoiding the fancy and keeping it simple, is anyone surprised that he's still using the yellow background, along with the "light blue on black" side nav with the annoying red javascript highlights?

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by hukarez

Are there any leagues going on? I was kind of surprised to see no links in the 'Community' portion of the website.

Well, I think Jim knows of at least one

[druez]

I saw this post from skydog and thought maybe Jim was finally getting it. I still see he isn't getting it. Until he does Front Office Football will never be the Championship Manager of American Football. No matter how good his stat engine is, no matter how much he loves spreadsheets this game will never be mass market.

Jim needs to go take a marketing 101 class and get with the times. If he doesn't change the way he does his marketing, website or overall "flash" of his game he will be stuck catering to the same 5k of people at this website.

This isn't a flame, but he needs to realize that there are a large group of people out here that would love this style of game, "jim's game" if he just took a step into the 2000's.....

[tucker342]

Classic Jim

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by druez

I saw this post from skydog and thought maybe Jim was finally getting it. I still see he isn't getting it. Until he does Front Office Football will never be the Championship Manager of American Football. No matter how good his stat engine is, no matter how much he loves spreadsheets this game will never be mass market.

Jim needs to go take a marketing 101 class and get with the times. If he doesn't change the way he does his marketing, website or overall "flash" of his game he will be stuck catering to the same 5k of people at this website.

This isn't a flame, but he needs to realize that there are a large group of people out here that would love this style of game, "jim's game" if he just took a step into the 2000's.....

And what makes you think Jim wants to deal with a huge customer base and have to deal with 100,000 variations of you?

[Dutch]

BURN!!!

[RedKingGold]

Druez,

Why don't you make the "Championship Manager" of Football, and then we lovely members of the FOFC will critque it for you?

Let's see what great football sim you can create! (Insert sarcasm here)

[RedKingGold]

Dola,

In my Marketing 101 class,...I don't remember receiving any lecture on "how to design a website"

Damn, I bet Coca-Cola better re-design their "classic" idea. After all, it is only the largest selling soft drink in America.

While we're at it,....why don't we change the color of those stupid yellow post-it notes from 3M. They are so not with the 2000's.

And lastly, I happen to be one of those "5k" people who are still stuck with dial-up modems and regular cable TV.

I hope I'm not obsolete

[Schmidty]

Originally Posted by jeff061

Liberal(not talking politics) and overrated.

Jim (but talking politics)?

[McSweeny]

Originally Posted by druez

I saw this post from skydog and thought maybe Jim was finally getting it. I still see he isn't getting it. Until he does Front Office Football will never be the Championship Manager of American Football. No matter how good his stat engine is, no matter how much he loves spreadsheets this game will never be mass market.

Jim needs to go take a marketing 101 class and get with the times. If he doesn't change the way he does his marketing, website or overall "flash" of his game he will be stuck catering to the same 5k of people at this website.

This isn't a flame, but he needs to realize that there are a large group of people out here that would love this style of game, "jim's game" if he just took a step into the 2000's.....

we all don't want to conquer the world. Many of us are happy with they way that Jim and Solecismic do things. Most importantly Jim is very happy with the way things are and that's all that's important. You can go conquer the world, we'll be happy enjoying things here. Be sure to let us know how it goes

[Solecismic]

Druez, this isn't a flame, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I've taken graduate level courses in media, and I'm doing what I need to do. If I had an infinite amount of money and time, I'd do a lot more with the site. If I wanted to risk the future of the company by hiring employees, I'd do a lot more with both the game and the site.

All flash is going to do is fool some people into thinking they're getting a different product. Integrity is very important to me. I wish you had told me about your relationship with the competition before you reviewed my product - your post as well as the behavior that got you banned from this site make me believe you still have an agenda here.

Maple Leafs, that isn't Javascript, that's a style sheet.

Jeff, yes, that's Souhegan. We no longer vote at the Wilkins school, which is a shame because it's much closer to home.

There aren't any links on the community page yet because no one's asked (at least as of the last mail forwarding this afternoon). Tell me about your leagues. VPI, if you want that one listed, let me know. I'll even list FOFC if SkyDog stops unbanning those who so richly deserved it in the first place.

[corbes]

If you consider the game as art, instead of as a flashy consumer product designed to sell as many copies as possible, suddenly, it all makes sense.

I, for one, am incredibly pleased to have found such a game/atmosphere.

I appreciate how quickly the website loads on my browser, and gets me to the right information. That's just as aesthetic as can be.

[Hurst2112]

Funny things about websites....

Until very recently, I worked for a music studio. All of the studios around seem to have the same style of website: Flash....(wait for page to load) bullshit. At first, I thought our site, which was built with front page, looked liked crap and we were, in turn, losing business. With the help of other engineers around the country, i realized that our website was actually the norm for most studios. As a company, you don't want to have to invest in a site that isn't going to bring a return. It didn't matter for our business that we didn't have the botique site, we still got hits galore...and everybody could open our site. We made a shit load of money from clients who saw our site on the web. Profits are proof.

[sovereignstar]

druez you are a dictator sometimes.

[Peregrine]

Druez, this isn't a flame, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I've taken graduate level courses in media, and I'm doing what I need to do. If I had an infinite amount of money and time, I'd do a lot more with the site. If I wanted to risk the future of the company by hiring employees, I'd do a lot more with both the game and the site.

Great post Jim, even though I don't think you need to defend your company or its website from the random comments of trolls.

[yabanci]

I personally like this kind of website. When I go to a website for a product I don't know much about, I like to see it clearly and succinctly stated right up front what the company does and what it has to offer. I don't care so much how the website is configured or how it looks, as long as it is relatively easy to poke around and find relevant information. The Solecismic site looks well organized and just about everything you would want to know is included there, even though it doesn't look like MTV's site.

[FBPro]

Jim,

Nice update, thanks for telling what needs to be told. Also good job of investing time where it needs to be "in the game"!!

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Great post Jim, even though I don't think you need to defend your company or its website from the random comments of trolls.

I was all set to write a post to comment on Jim's comments ... and then discovered you'd covered a big part of my territory.

Thanks Peregrine

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Looks like Jim's been busy! My one complaint would be having to scroll left and right to actually read. Kinda like looking at a player in the game...

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by druez

I saw this post from skydog and thought maybe Jim was finally getting it. I still see he isn't getting it.

Originally Posted by Jim Gindin, at Solecismic web site

As we enter 2004, the future remains uncertain. As I've reached six years "unemployed", I hope to continue to make Solecismic Software my career. Angela and I had a baby boy, Gregory, in March of 2003, and we're fortunate that the company has been successful enough to allow her to spend all of her time raising him.

Sounds like Jim gets it to me, BIG-time. That paragraph alone says enough for me about how he runs the company, and how it is doing.

[Subby]

Corporate web site and message boards suck. I am glad Jim concentrates on what is important instead of devoting resources to something that is fairly meaningless.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Maple Leafs, that isn't Javascript, that's a style sheet.

Correct of course. My bad for assuming.

Still not sure what value it adds to the overall design, but css is a much better option than script.

[BigJohn&TheLions]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Sounds like Jim gets it to me, BIG-time. That paragraph alone says enough for me about how he runs the company, and how it is doing.

Agreed. Looks like people who need glossy sites over family don't get it...

[WSUCougar]

This thread could be a great representative sample of...something. But I already blew my over/under bet on when somebody would chime in with a "fanboy" accusation.

[SirFozzie]

So.. just checking.. are we in concert in agreeing that druez is a quote, "f***ing elitist"?

Congrats Jason, you hit the big time!

(note: Content is intended to be humorous)

[HornedFrog Purple]

I like it... but I always did.

[Maple Leafs]

It's not about flash. At least I hope it's not. If anything, if I was redesigning the site I'd go even simpler.

I think you have to look at the site from the perspective of a first-time visitor who has little or no idea what FOF is but has found the link through a search engine or web site. You have a very short time (seconds, not minutes) to convert that person into a potential customer.

On that front, the site is better than it was before because it tells you right away what the company is and what it does. (By the way, is the part about "dedicated to producing cutting-edge career football simulations" new? If so, isn't that a pretty strong hint about future games?)

You don't need to hire a designer and overhaul a site to improve its performance. You'd be amazed how very small changes can result in big improvements. There seems to be this idea out there, even today, that web design is some sort of mysterious art that can only be practiced by people with goatees and black turtlenecks. It's not. About 90% of it is very simple stuff. I think the site is on the right track. There's room for improvement, just like there is on every other site in the world.

(Of course, this all assumes that Jim wants to convert new customers and increase his market share, which as others have pointed out may not actually be a valid assumption. Not everyone wants to be EA, for good reason.)

[AgPete]

Originally Posted by corbes

If you consider the game as art, instead of as a flashy consumer product designed to sell as many copies as possible, suddenly, it all makes sense.

I, for one, am incredibly pleased to have found such a game/atmosphere.

I appreciate how quickly the website loads on my browser, and gets me to the right information. That's just as aesthetic as can be.

I agree. Flash is the most overrated product in the web design business. Most people could care less about spiffy flash sites. They just waste bandwidth and waste my time. Just give me a basic well organized layout.

[Solecismic]

Thanks for understanding.

One of my pet peeves when on a web site is not being able to navigate. I turn off Javascript for security reasons. I don't use Flash.

And often, especially on major corporate web sites, I can't get to much of the site. When I was buying my new PC the other day, there was one company site I visited - VooDoo PC - that has great ratings. I wanted to price out a PC there. But for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get to the sales page. So VooDoo never made it to the short list (I ended up buying from Envision).

My goal with the web site is to present the information customers want as clearly as possible. So, with the redesign (and it was a small one as redesigns go), I did the following:

1) Replaced the big screenshot at the top of most pages with the banner. Newspapers and newspaper web sites do it this way, and I like it because it tells you where you are and what the company is about, and shows off a little bit (even if you don't like mauve). The big screenshot was distracting in that you have to scroll down a bit just to see the main point of every page.

2) Cleaned up the navigation bar. The style sheet wasn't working on all browsers, so I fixed that up. I changed the all-caps look and moved the logo to the bottom.

3) Implemented php throughout the site. Php is just used to create web pages on the fly, and it is supported by my ISP's server, so there's no risk that people can't read it. It saves me a lot of time on future organizational changes to the site.

4) Combined the support and faq sections for each game into one page. Those had become very repetitive. I also did a minor rewrite on the About Solecismic page.

5) Reorganized the main page. This was probably the most important change. Information was a bit disorganized there, so I wanted to clean it up by using major headlines and rewriting the text to clarify the main areas of the web site. Maple Leafs - that statement was always there, so it's a testimony to the redesign that it helped you find it.

There's still one limitation, and I'll have to think about changing it - the site scrolls off to the right if your screen resolution is below 1024 in width. Since FOF 2004 now does the same thing, I felt it was okay, but I'll have to see how that plays out in the longer term.

[Vegas Vic]

He doesn't have a flashy site, and my PlayStation 2 controller isn't compatibile with any of his games. Why do I waste my time with his stuff?

[wig]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Druez, this isn't a flame, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

I wish you had told me about your relationship with the competition before you reviewed my product - your post as well as the behavior that got you banned from this site make me believe you still have an agenda here.

I'll even list FOFC if SkyDog stops unbanning those who so richly deserved it in the first place.

Jim went all hard-core on us.

Hell yeah!

[wig]

What did the five fingers say to the face?

SLAP!

[Solecismic]

I wouldn't read much into it, Wig. No need to fan flames that don't really exist.

[Fritz]

DING!

[cuervo72]

I'm very tempted to have a go at reworking that banner.....

[druez]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

Druez, this isn't a flame, but you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I've taken graduate level courses in media, and I'm doing what I need to do. If I had an infinite amount of money and time, I'd do a lot more with the site. If I wanted to risk the future of the company by hiring employees, I'd do a lot more with both the game and the site.

All flash is going to do is fool some people into thinking they're getting a different product. Integrity is very important to me. I wish you had told me about your relationship with the competition before you reviewed my product - your post as well as the behavior that got you banned from this site make me believe you still have an agenda here.

Maple Leafs, that isn't Javascript, that's a style sheet.

Jeff, yes, that's Souhegan. We no longer vote at the Wilkins school, which is a shame because it's much closer to home.

There aren't any links on the community page yet because no one's asked (at least as of the last mail forwarding this afternoon). Tell me about your leagues. VPI, if you want that one listed, let me know. I'll even list FOFC if SkyDog stops unbanning those who so richly deserved it in the first place.

Jim I still have the email response that I gave you. I told you I was beta testing their product. So your claims are a bit unfounded. I also gave you a good review. In fact I gave you a higher review then gamespot did. I got banned from this forum for arguing with skydog. I have no agenda here other then I would like you to make your product more mainstream. .400 doesn't pay me, they don't give me things and in fact they dislike how I act more then you guys do.

Its a simple fact that your website hardly changed at all. It appeals to the people on this forum and if that is all you want to impress then great job. I use this example, I've tried to get numerious friends of mine to play FOF in the past, but one look and they were turned off. Going to your website, they chuckled and said are you serious? Perception is a great part of marketing.

I close with this. Jim you make a great product but the presentation of your product leaves alot to be desired.

Done on this topic.

[RedKingGold]

Good, now we can get back to more important things, like "Why is "Around the Horn" still on ESPN and not cancelled"?

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

5) Reorganized the main page. This was probably the most important change. Information was a bit disorganized there, so I wanted to clean it up by using major headlines and rewriting the text to clarify the main areas of the web site. Maple Leafs - that statement was always there, so it's a testimony to the redesign that it helped you find it.

Good work there. Orgazining your information is far more important than any graphic changes you could spend time on. Sounds like you get that.

I'd still work in some selective bolding to highlight key points, add a bullet list of features for each of the flagship products, and yes, move to an easier-to-read white background. Right now the page has good information, but it's set up more for a reader than a scanner.

I'd also put a link to each demo right at the top, immediately after "We invite you to try out the free demonstration versions of both games." Yes, the links are just a few scrolls down the page, but if your visitors are anything like mine, they love the idea of free demos. Not sure how much traffic-measurement you're doing, but my guess is those links would get a ton of clicks.

And of course, as always, be wary of unsolicited web advice.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

Blah...blah...blah...
And of course, as always, be wary of unsolicited web advice.

[Fritz]

jim more flash less pan please thank you