Our new website is now LIVE!
Story of a website redesign.
Keeping your website up-to-date is important to let your audience know your business is relevant and trustworthy. This is particularly important for a software and web design company like ours.
If you’re like us, time flies and what was a new site in 2012 is suddenly sadly outdated in 2018.
As the VP of Communications, it is my job to ensure our business is sending you, our audience, the right message about our brand from all channels. That means our website needs to let you know clearly who we are, what we do, and why we do it.
I felt very strongly our business was not properly represented by our outdated, and frankly, less-than-relevant website. A few of our products had changed, and we’ve really solidified our goals and direction as a business.
Over the past few months, I’ve stolen the time of our Creative Director Andrew Frey when he had some to spare, and some of our very busy engineers to get the collaborative vision of Joe, Dwight, and myself from the drawing board to the screen. And we had some valuable input from Chris Jackson, CEO of our company Auto Search Technologies, and some logistics help from the invaluable Kevin Cunningham.
Basically, our site was a “design-by-committee” project, which is always the biggest challenge because you have to take several visions and combine them into one awesome website. It’s a good thing we have one of the best designers in the industry, because many would have thrown in the towel after this process.
What’s up with the Space theme?
We’ve always liked the idea of space as a company, a place big enough to dream, and a symbol of the future and all the potential not able to be contained within our world. “Apogee” means “the highest point” or “culmination”, but it is also a term in astronomy meaning the point in an object’s orbit where it is furthest from the planet it is orbiting.
The idea of space ties to our name and also our vision for our company. Traveling to space represents fulfilling a dream, reaching a goal; a vast accomplishment. We pride ourselves on being able to take any concept, any vision, and turning it into a reachable goal – a reality – for our clients.
What’s new besides the design?
Our latest website version is built on Bootstrap 4. This is the most recent framework for developing modern, mobile-first websites. Not only is the “skin” updated, everything under the hood is new, too.
Like most software, we are rolling it out in several phases. Our blog, which has some updated CSS, is still waiting for the latest version of blog software to be implemented. You may notice some of our interior pages are still getting a facelift and content may be shifting around slightly.
If you’re one of our clients, you know engineering web software is not a turn it on and leave it deal. We are now in the testing and fixing phase on the live site, which can take a few weeks to complete and make sure we have a finished, perfect site.
Where are the product pages?
We decided with the newest iteration of our site to focus on our corporate identity; who we are at the core of our business. Our values, our goals, and WHY we are in business. Each of our products is properly highlighted on individual product websites, which are also getting some facelifts as I type this.
ApogeeINVENT is primarily a custom design and engineering company that has created products and businesses for multiple industries. Our previous website talked about our products, but we wanted to shift the focus to the amazing things our developers and designers are doing every day that create the end results our clients see.
I hope you’ll take a minute to poke around our new site. Be sure to alert us to any issues! But I’d love to hear your opinion about the update. Love it or hate it, we want to know what you think.
