MacVaugh & Co – Customer Brief

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MacVaughCoCompetitive Analysis

 

Project name:
MacVaugh & Co.

Big picture:
MacVaugh & Co. is a commerical real estate company located in the San Gabriel Vallley. The company focuses on the following areas of commercial real estate:

  • Leasing/Subleasing – uses a proprietary database of current, unpublished listings
  • Re-development – seeks potential retailers for projects
  • Retail – works with local and national retailers that want to expand or move
  • Tenant Representation – represents tenants in lease negotiations and site location
  • Sale/Purchase – represents buyers and sellers of land, office, industrial and retail for commercial purposes.

The company is revamping a Website to include more content on web pages. Much of the sites information is currently located on flyers and PDF files that inhibit easy SEO searching and force different types of clients to hunt through documents to find specific information. MacVaugh launched the website quickly and relied on a relative to create the past website. Also, much of the content was only accessible to the family relative, making frequent updates difficult. To maintain its competive edge, MacVaugh desires to have a simple, but effective website to communicate with clients, engage potential buyers and seller and provide added value to its customers. With its powerful databases, the company desires to integrate them into a seamless experience that will reduce confusion with users. Finally, he client desires to update their branding and Web site to a more modern, contemporary look while maintaining their conservative, traditional philosophy.

Project summary
MacVaugh & Co. desires an updated, professional, and focused Web redesign to engage their leasing, re-development, retail, tenant, and sale/purchase business. A competitve and time-sensiive industy, the company desires to have more control over updating content as well as linking databases more seamlessly into the website.

Business objectives/goals

  • Engage more clients
  • Integrate print, database information, and current website more tightly to bring all company content into the website
  • Update/modernize website, while honoring company’s conservative tradition

Preferred date for launch by client:
May 31, 2012

Target audience

  • Commercial Real Estate Brokers
  • Retailers
  • City Planners
  • Real Estate Developers
  • Investors

Perception strategy
Current perception

  • Complicated
  • Old-fashioned
  • Overwhelming

Desired perception

  • Successful
  • Contemporary
  • Succinct

Strategy

  • Determine top ten needs of clients
  • Reorganize site architecture to ease accessing important information
  • Creating content that drives users and customers back to the site

Message strategy
MacVaugh & Co. will show customers who the most effective real estate brokers in the San Gabriel Valley are by providing useful tools to users and excellent customer service.
The new site will focus on listing available properties in the proprietary database, sharing technical know-how with customers, and showing solutions to problems through its many case studies.

Competitive advantages
With more almost 20 years in the San Gabriel Valley, the staff at MacVaugh knows its market intimately. Larger competitors might have access to larger properties, but MacVaugh uses its local edge to gather information from contacts in the community and provide superior value to customers.

Sites from CW 02

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http://www.championboxingfitness.com/

Mobile and regular CSS integrated into the design

http://www.thefwa.com/

http://bestwebgallery.com/

http://jasonsantamaria.com/

Excited to Start the Semester

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This is my blog for GR DES 66 and hopefully the rest of my design studies. Currently, I’m taking classes towards the Graphic Design Certificate here at Santa Monica College and also work as a Graphic Designer mainly in motion and interactive design.

I’m especially excited to learn things like jQuery and more about HTML 5 and CSS 3.

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I like how Saul Bass manages to integrate the entire branding process and strategy, answer questions of naysayers, and intrigue me while still conveying how changing the Bell System logo will help the company appear more spirited and technology forward.

Having had to pitch to clients and classmates before, you never know quite what to tell them when you’re showing your work and your process. With lots of clients, I say one design jargon word like “serif” or “motion tracking” and lose my connection with them. In class, sometimes I feel like I’m stating the obvious and appearing pretentious. Then there are times when you just finish a job or assignment and just want to say, “this is it.”

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

Week 6 Critique

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Overall the site for Dr. James Formaker DDS uses a template provided by a web design vendor that caters to dentists and other health care professionals.

  • The Grid – the site uses a simple grid. From page to page, the main content is aligned with the header and footer. The images appear to be inline content and do not consistently appear in the same places on the page. Inserting columns on specific grid points could present the site more clearly and make the dense content easier to read. 
  • Color Palette – the site uses a palette with full blue palette from dark blue to light blue, beiges, and black text. I feel that overall the palette is pleasant and “beachy” though not necessarily evoking a dentist office.
  • Navigation – the site has consistent navigation in the header. If anything, I feel that I could streamline some of the navigation: topics like Our Practice and Our Technology could be included under the About Us category. The Links category doesn’t really relate to the practice specifically and seems to be able to be incorporated more into the FAQs section and into the overall web page. I feel that some of the content on the site is embedded a couple of layers down in a lot of unnecessary and hard to read text.
  • Design Principles – the site could have a more asymmetrical grid. The Flash in the site header seems to be busy. You could use gallery images of actual patients perhaps. Some elements, again beaches don’t make me think of dentists. Perhaps this is to reduce anxiety potential clients might have about dentists? I have a hard time determining a hierarchy sometimes. 
  • Typography – the site uses primarily a Times or Serif type font. While readable, adding headings with a Sans-Serif font would break up the dense content and make it easier to read.

Competitive Analysis

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Competitive analysis of the dental industry shows me that many template sites are already out there for dentists. However, updated designs do not always appear to be the most important part of these designs.

1. Arthur Weiss, DDS
This site looks like it was thought out in terms of SEO, design, and information architecture.

The Header with its rotating images, seems friendly and inviting to me. I also like the color scheme. However, these colors remind me more of a living room than a dentist’s office. I imagine this might be intentional because of the fears that many have about dentists. My biggest criticism, is that there are so many categories in the navigation. Also, there is a lot of content below the fold. I wonder how much of this information a prospective patient might read.

2. Toluca Dental Arts uses a two-column website. I like that they link their reviews and testimonials at the top, but the non-site buttons seem garish against the more sedate tan and brown color scheme. The Navigation is clear. I would advise against the use of script fonts and would try to incorporate the color scheme in the Dental Arts Toluca Lake Logo more. This is a nice logo and color scheme. I feel like there’s a missed opportunity to include that overall theme in their website.

3. Moorpark Family Medicine seems to use template designed on a two column grid. The green color scheme seems to convey corporate more than medical/dental. I feel like their content is the most concise and web-friendly of the three sites. I feel like the overall design isn’t really adding much to the site. I might either go with a more minimalistic theme or have a more inviting color scheme for potential patients.