I
had a long break, while I was doing some other work, but I was also thinking about the restructuring/new-orientation of my work and cocoate.com.
I went several times through the cocoate.com homepage (built with Drupal 6), followed all links and got lost some times. When that happened to me, it might happen also to our visitors. The site has been developed over the last three years and we added everything what seems to be valuable and interesting, and tried to keep the red thread.
The name cocoate is a composition of consulting, coaching and teaching. We structured our homepage according to these three areas, in three languages because our clients are from different countries.
This “classic” structure comes from the “old” times, where companies explained on their website with lots of words what they are doing. So did we. What we have written and explained under each link is true.
We consult and coach all kind of companies about their organisation and IT structure, guide them to develop and implement necessary changes. We always include the client in an active way in the process to increase understanding and use of the technology and its potential. We offer trainings for clients and users, coach users and clients with different cultural backgrounds.
The working process is transparent and explained clearly so that “non-specialists” can follow and play an active role.
We work like this, but we often do all together. While consulting a client, we coach him in a sense and teach them to be seriously able to take the best decision for his company. If we do trainings and workshops, consulting and coaching are included. With this holistic approach, does it make sense anymore to divide the website in these three categories? I don’t think so!
What we haven’t explained on our website is, that we create websites! It’s often a product of our consulting, coaching and teaching: we plan, develop and make Websites for European educational projects as well as “normal” and community websites for all types of companies.
By using google analytics I went a bit deeper and analyzed each single page about visits, bounce rate, returning/new visitors, etc. The result is as expected. Visitors are attracted by the online books, the weblog and looking for workshop offers.
My conclusion:
- remove all the long descriptions and “dead” spaces
- put the weblogs in the center, categorize all blog entries (as we already started), list all categories,
- list all books (incl. order form),
- list all DVDs (incl. order form),
- list seminar/workshops offers (incl. booking & payment),
- list projects,
- link presentations and activities,
- make it easier for our clients to stay informed about our work (newsletter subscription, tweeting, network connections)
- embed everything in a very modern layout.
Another decision we already discussed is the inclusion of eduate.eu at the end of this year. This is a consequent development, the same staff which is engaged for cocoate.com is carrying out the work for eduate.eu and the activities are often overlapping.