Some More Random
Thoughts
If
you have been visiting virtualdreamer.com over the last few
weeks you may have noticed the site going through some design
changes. First I put up this background:
This
is a 'dream like' scene I had photoshopped together for my
twitter
background. People seemed to like it. I initially made this the
background for my Sleep Thoughts page... then tried to make it
site wide. I let it sit for about a week then pulled it. Why? It
wasn't working for me. I think it just might have
overwhelmed the site ... distracting visitors from the message.
So, I
moved on:
This
little guy was part of the second site-wide redesign. He was up
there on the left where you now see the Harvest Moon.
Although I liked the smiling moon it seemed to trivialize the
site just a bit. The design I ended up with is what you see
now... and how it will stay for the foreseeable future.
There will be 'tweeks' now and again but it is what it is.
Starting out with 'Sounds... Just Like Being There' the
catch-phrase evolved over the last few weeks to 'The World's
Most Unique Sleep Sounds'. While it's true we have the most
unique sleep sounds in the world the new catch-phrase did not do
it for me. So, I tried 'Where Can We Take You Tonight?'. I let
that sit out on the web for a few days. Nope. That did not do it
for me, either. Finally, 'Sounds... Just Like Being There' made
a remarkable return as it really does describe what we are
trying to do here.
On
the initial
product page I
interconnected all the pages with next and previous arrows. This
simply allows people to breeze through all our sleep sounds
(except for the
Specialty Vault
) without having to go
back to the main page.
You
may have noticed I stopped calling these ramblings of mine a
'blog' page. This was a marketing decision as some search
engines don't index 'blogs'. Ergo, 'Sleep Thoughts', a play on the
phrase 'Deep Thoughts'. These days I try to get the word 'sleep'
in almost everything done on the site. Again, marketing.
I
have done away with my ratings system for the simple reason that
it was hard to maintain. It also made the front page visually a
bit 'too much' and increased the initial homepage download time.
My feeling these days is that most people have a visceral
feeling about what might work for them. I doubt if anyone needs
a rating system to help them decide.
Anyhoo, that's what has
been going on at the Virtual Dreamer hacienda. I am
looking forward to a time when marketing and site design finally
take a backseat to the actual work I love: Recording relaxing sleep
scenarios.
Return
to Sleep
Thoughts
