If you’ve seen my recent post you’ll know that I’ve recently won awards for “Best Web Design & Development Agency – Home Counties” and the other for “Best New Website Project (UK): The Den Agency.” In this post, I will go into detail about how I designed the award winning website for The Den Agency.
The brief
The Den Agency books comedy performers for club shows and festivals. They also put on shows in Luton, Harpenden and London starring incredible, well-known comedians. Being a massive fan of stand up comedy this was a project that I couldn’t wait to get started on. However, in order to deliver the best results, I knew that there was work that needed to be done before I sunk my teeth into building them their website. Prior to starting the design and build I met with Tom and Adam from The Den Agency to find out exactly what their business did, what their aims were and what they needed out of their website.
Being a newly formed agency they had no web presence and therefore needed a slick website up as quickly as possible. They needed to offer reassurance to potential customers that they were a legitimate business with experience in the industry.
What I did
Armed with this information and having received the content very quickly (thanks guys!) I was ready to get started. The most pressing issue was the fact that they as a business had no website at all and therefore lacked credibility when compared to their competitors. The Den Agency was already active and therefore needed something online to show that they were, in fact, an active business. Therefore, I got a holding page up as soon as possible which outlined who they were, what they did and how to get in contact with them. This was important so that they at least had something to show they were for real while I was busy designing the new site.
As The Den Agency are in the comedy industry the website had to be visually interesting while at the same time reflecting them as a professional outfit. I, therefore, decided to use blocks of different bold colours that were eye-catching while keeping the text and imagery quite simple but with some subtle animations to make it more interesting. This enabled the website to have a striking look that didn’t distract from the actual content on the page.
Another challenge was that, as a new company, they didn’t have a great deal of content to upload to the website. For that reason, I decided to make it a one-page website. I wanted to avoid a situation where each section was its own self-contained page as this would potentially make the site feel lightweight and by implication make them as a company look the same. With all of the information in its own section on the same page it never feels like there is anything missing and it clearly lays out exactly what it is The Den Agency does.
The end result
Due to the work put in to understand the goals of Tom and Adam prior to starting the design and build of the website. I was able to create an award winning website with a short turnaround, that clearly communicated to the visitor what it is they do, offers simple calls to action to get people to get in touch. This is all achieved with a simple, clean and responsive design; that walks the tightrope of not being too boring or too quirky and therefore properly represents them and their brand.
What they said
The Den Agency were really pleased with their website in terms of design and the speed of delivery. Tom Hopewell gave the following review:
“First class web design services. We had a very specific brief and the site quality was of paramount importance. Mike not only delivered a beautiful site for us, but on time and within budget. We will be referring him to our clients and will hopefully work with him much more in future.”
To find out more about the services I offer, click here.
