What Updating Your Site Means

When you generally like the look of your website, but it’s not doing its job for you, you may need to update the design — not to go with a completely new design, but to transform the look you have into something fresh, new, and effective.

That’s what we’re doing for Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters, a local sporting goods and Army Surplus store. Their current website, which you can see in the screenshot below, had a lot of the characteristics they wanted: nature photos, a natural color scheme, their Uncle Sam logo, social media connections, and a simple navigation that showed the basic categories of products they carry.

Unfortunately, other companies with the same name come up first when people search for Uncle Sam’s. Their site doesn’t show up at all when people search for the kinds of products they sell. They don’t use web analytics, so they don’t know whether the current website brings customers into the store, but they know that they want it to do so. They also want to be able to update the site with new product information, blog posts, announcements about sales and events, and videos showing the fine points of their products.

We’re working with designer Paul Fraley of Fresh Eyes Design on this project. Paul kept the original color scheme and used nature photos, but his redesign is a hardworking one: our content is incorporated for better communication with the search engines, major selling points are highlighted with graphic elements, and the all-important message about the products carried is incorporated in a way that adds to the site without detracting from the look of the photos.

This is a WordPress site, so it’ll be easy to add new information regularly, the key to getting plenty of repeat visits. That should also help Uncle Sam’s get the search rankings they deserve, as the oldest sporting goods store in the region and the only military surplus store. With a dynamic, professional looking website to send people to, their social media — which includes plenty of amazing photos on Facebook — will be more effective in sending them customers.