How to update your website?

So summer is starting to bloom in finland and with this new time we decided to renew our look starting with our website. With the energizing sunlight and the season of growth we came up with some new ideas. It has been a long time goal for us to create something that looks and sounds like us and now that our team has grown in size we finally have the resources to get into it. 

One problem we had with our website was that it’s kinda messy and it doesn’t show what our company is actually doing. If you didn’t know (and we don’t blame you) we offer publishing and mentoring services as well as game development courses. Not just game development. So we wanted to bring that to the face of our website. 

But what are websites for? Or may I ask, why are there any websites at all? This was a question that made us really start thinking. Why are we even renewing our website? Is it so it will look prettier or maybe we want people to come and read about us. These aren’t inherently wrong answers, but why would people even be interested in our website? What are we looking to gain from this update?

After few days of thinking we came to the conclusion that we want our website to work as a portal between the clients and whatever we are doing. What I mean is that our website would have clear functions. Like if someone has come for publishing we make it very clear from the first sight that we offer publishing services and they get some information and then they can actually send us their game idea and contact us. If someone has come for our games we offer clear way to find our games and make it easy for them to find their way to our Steam page.

But that’s only the first part of creating websites. After that we had to plan and find a new look and a completely new system for the things we have discussed. The new system has to “flow like water” (sorry for the Hanzo reference) and be as simple as it can be. Because the quicker the client finds what they need the better. It takes some time but in my opinion this is the most crucial part of renewing or creating a website. We wanted to make it absolutely clear from the first sight that we do all kinds of stuff, so we put 3 clickable pictures with descriptions of Games, Education and Mentoring & Publishing to the Home page. That way it's easy to find what they might be looking for. Maybe they came for games but also saw that we offer game development courses and picked that up as well.

The next big thing are the visuals and colour scheme! And that’s the fun part if you ask me. Colours can make or break the overall look and feel of your website. Picking the colours that represent your website should be considered well, since that is the thing that brings it all together.  We wanted to freshen up our look so we are going with clean and fun colours of mint green and and purple as well as a new banner. The banner had many different variations from straight up, bold Jestercraft written in the middle of it to 3D render of our logo symbol little Jester with all kinds of props.

Some ideas were good some were...umm… not so much. Finally after 1,5 weeks of iteration and trying we came up with an idea that embodies us and our games! 

 So now we have renewed our website and we are ready to face the next challenges! 

We hope you enjoyed reading this and come back for more of our blog posts!

We hope you stay safe and enjoy the summer!