Website and Design reveal for 3 Phase Global

Another website reveal coming your way! I'm slowly working my way through the buildup of website reveals I want to share with you, and I'm pumped to share this project with you and give you a look at the design process for this website redesign I did recently. Not only is it fun to show off my work and highlight my clients, these features are also a great way to show you what goes into a website project, a "behind the scenes" look at my process, and all the thought and strategy that goes into each design decision.

Today I'm going to walk you through the website redesign for 3 Phase Global, which is a full service lighting production company based out of Las Vegas. The new 3 Phase Global website would centre around photo and video content that showcases their work and our goal was to introduce people to the company and point them to the contact page. This was a neat project because they had an existing website but it wasn't serving their business, so we got to do a complete facelift in the areas of design, content and layout. I was able to get strategic and guide the project in a really intentional way and I'm thrilled with the final result.

In this blog post, I'm going to walk you through the website redesign process from start to finish, tell you about our goals for the project, and also explain the different features we chose to use and why.

Let's dive right in!

3 PHASE GLOBAL - Website Reveal and Video Walkthrough

Project Background

3 Phase Global came to me because their website was in major need of a facelift! Business was booming and they were travelling all over North America on the concert and festival circuit but simply did not have the time or resources to update their website in-house. Their existing website hadn't been touched in years and was very dated. There was minimal content on the website, it wasn't laid out very well, and the overall look and feel of the site did not support the brand or show off the high-level work that 3 Phase Global was known for. This was a prime example of a company who's online presence did not match their reputation in the industry - a digital disconnect, if you will. It was clear that the time had come for a website redesign and 3 Phase Global were ready to jump right in.

We kicked off the project with a scoping meeting and the client questionnaire to get a full understanding of the company and their goals. We covered branding, website design & development, and also discussed how important the contact page was for their line of work and how they wanted to showcase past projects. From the start we knew we would put an emphasis on clean design that let all the visuals (photos and video) shine, but that doesn't mean we ignored other key areas of website success such as SEO and a clean navigation! I'll explain how we approached this below.

Project Goals and Objectives

3 Phase Global needed a new website but they wanted to keep elements of their existing branding, notably colours and logo.

Some goals of the new website were to:

Redesign and brand the website with a modern look and an intuitive layout
Highlight past work through photos and videos
Improve SEO
Direct visitors to the contact page

As mentioned above, we knew we needed to redesign the website and 3 Phase Global favoured a sleek and minimalist design that would show off the visuals.

The old website had basic content but as we built the new site, we reformatted how it was going to be presented and laid out on the site. We reviewed the content, specifically the photos and videos, to see how the best incorporate them in the site while always directing visitors to the contact page. We clearly laid out what services were offered and got strategic with how we would design the site with user journeys and calls-to-action (CTAs) in mind.

3 Phase Global had a wonderful collection of high-quality images and videos that we could leverage on the site, and I had a blast playing around with different visual layouts. While the previous website had included quite a few photos, they were all much smaller and weren't always easy to see. With the new site, we had space to show off full-width photos and videos and also made use of gallery blocks. We also added photos of staff for a human element of the business.

Digital marketing wasn't a major focus of the 3 Phase Global website since most of their work comes from industry connections and word of mouth. As such, we did not integrate social media channels or add an email newsletter field to the new site.

It goes without saying that a big consideration was search engine optimization (SEO) since we wanted to make it easier for people to find out about 3 Phase Global online. If you haven't already, be sure to check out my Squarespace SEO Series for lots more blog posts and video tutorials!

Creative Strategy

From the moment we met for our first project kickoff meeting, we knew we would transfer over from their previous website platform to a new Squarespace website. This means that 3 Phase Global kept their domain but we switched it over to Squarespace as their hosting & website platform, and ultimately went with the Alex & Sonny template. I loved that we went with this particular template because at first glance it seems like "just a wedding" template but when you actually look at functionality and design features, we knew it was the right template choice for us. From there, we customized the template to meet our design ideas.

The homepage is the main starting point for for any website and we chose several full-width photos and videos that we combined with clear and simple call-to-action (CTA) sections to make the visitor's journey as simple and strategic as possible.

Note: As per the style of other website reveal blog posts, I tried to take a screen capture of the home page to include here but because of the video content, it just wouldn't work properly. Sorry about that! To see the homepage in action, be sure to visit the 3 Phase Global website.

We also broke up the homepage's content with visual blocks and buttons. To do this, we identified the workflow we wanted visitors to take on the website and pushed clients to get in touch with the company as the primary CTA. The Alex & Sonny template has a parallax scrolling option and that added a really fun design element but still allowed the site to stay clean and easy to use.

As you can see, we kept the menu and navigation super straightforward and uncluttered. You'll notice that presently there is no blog on the 3 Phase Global website, but that might be something that gets added in the futures. Fingers crossed because blogs are great for SEO and I always encourage any website to have one!

The creative strategy for this website was to play up the visuals as much as possible and point people towards the contact page. Digital marketing wouldn't play a huge role in this site, simply because of the industry and the way that their business works, but 3 Phase Global made sure to revamp their online presence and align their brand with their website in a modern way.

Branding and Design

Once the heavy lifting of web design & development was taken care of, it was time to turn our attention to branding!

Logo: Since we chose the Alex & Sonny template, we went with text for the site title and opted not to use their existing logo on the website. That being said, we did keep the logo for marketing materials (e.g., email signature, documents, etc.)

Colours: Thanks to all the photos and videos, there were going to be SO many colours on the website. Because of this, we went with a monochromatic black and white colour scheme with blue accents (that matched the existing 3 Phase Global logo).

Related: How to master colour psychology for your brand and website

Fonts: We used Railway for the titles/headers and Open Sans for the body text.

Related: My secrets to beautiful Squarespace typography (bonus font guide included)

Images and graphics: Are you tired of hearing me talk about how awesome all the photos and videos 3 Phase Global provided are yet? Well, let me mention it again here! This website was focused on visual content and there was no shortage of items we could use and different ways we could present them. As such, we did not use any stock photography or icons. We ended up going with a simple favicon that matched the monochromatic colour palette.

SUCCESS METRICS AND RESULTS

Keeping in mind the goals mentioned above, let's take a look at the results after the website redesign process.

Redesign website and incorporate branding: We did this through a colour palette, font pairing, visual content selection, and a new Squarespace website with a customized template. Content was entirely updated and reformatted with intention.

Improve SEO: We spent a lot of time setting up SEO for the new 3 Phase Global website and it has already paid off in higher site traffic. Read more about Squarespace SEO here.

Highlight past work through visual content: We made use of the photos and videos all across the new 3 Phase Global website and branched out into different formats including full-width images, parallax scrolling, video backgrounds, embedded videos, gallery blocks, etc.

Point visitors to contact page: Not only did we set the first (primary) call-to-action (CTA) button on the homepage to the contact page, we also simplified the navigation and put the contact page link in the top clicked spot in the menu.

Final Thoughts

This was SUCH a fun website to work on and the team at 3 Phase Global were wonderful to work with! They came to me with an ideal website in mind and trusted me to take the lead with various design and layout formats. We were strategic with the content and how it was presented on the site, and made use of all the beautiful visual content across the site in unique ways. I enjoyed customizing a template that at first glance might not be the most obvious choice (given our industry and type of business) because it's fun to show people not to judge a book (read: template) by it's cover (read: content!). The branding was paired down and lends itself to showing off the content in a whole new way and it serves our goal of simplifying and modernizing the company's online presence.

Now it's your turn to tell me, what do you think of the new 3 Phase Global website? Are there any features that jumped out at you? Do you have any questions about the design process or the choices we made? Any thoughts on the layout? I'd love to know so leave me a note in the comments!