The designer, Focca, overhauled the look and feel of the gap year information site www.igapyear.com. Focca created a new color scheme, typography, and images to make the site feel brighter and more exciting. A world map on the homepage highlights top destinations. Testimonials from current travelers abroad were added to give visitors a more personal experience. The content was reorganized into clear categories to make it easier to browse. Advertising was moved to be less distracting while still generating revenue.

1. .net technique makeover
m
makeover
www.igapyear.com
The team behind this gap year information site were scratching their heads over how
to present it better. We asked Focca, from top Brazilian agency Grïngo, for advice
each category. Travellers are always interested in visitors to make their own customised homepage
The brief
maps, and I imagined they would love a visual with the information that would be most valuable
Site www.igapyear.com representation of the kind of things you could get to them. Even cooler would be to use Facebook
Site owner Mick Briggs up to in far away, exotic places. Connect, which would quickly search and
Brief Mick is happy with the technology The structure of the site, as I found it, was understand the content on their profiles and then
behind it but unhappy with the look, feel and somewhat confusing. The top-level navigation suggest itineraries. But that seemed potentially
structure of the site. mixed types of trip (such as paid work or a little bit too advanced and intense for the site’s
volunteering) with secondary information next iteration.
(including ideas and resources). The area below The site is built in HTML, and I think this is the
the fold is also a little too messy. There’s a myriad correct choice, as it will display reasonably well
of content structures that confuse the user. on mobile devices. Not that too many people
Advertising, in the form of small visuals and larger will be planning their year abroad from a mobile
blocks of text, is mixed in with a Q&A and incentive phone, but I’m all for compatibility. However, I
texts. I felt I should focus the main content on would choose to use Flash in specific areas, such
what people would really be looking for. as the homepage map, because it gives me more
freedom in how to navigate through interesting
Search functionality information and call it up more quickly. You could
The search function wasn’t working particularly use beautiful transitions and sound effects to help
well either. There were too many options through build people’s excitement about what’s to come. I’d
which to filter the information, and if you indulged therefore make the world map a cool centrepiece
in searching, chances are you’d end up at a page on the homepage.
The designer with no results. To finalise the redesign, I took the liberty of
Name Focca The way to resolve that, I reasoned, was to add changing the logo. I think we can do away with
Company Grïngo more content, group information in larger chunks, the ‘.com’, right? In the spirit of maintaining the
URL www.gringo.nu
Areas of expertise
Interactive advertising,
art direction
“Content has to be clearly organised
and categorised, making it easy for
I was very excited by the idea of working
on iGapYear’s site, because I’ve been users to browse through quickly” Focca
thinking of taking a sabbatical year
myself sometime soon. So I dug right in, and or, when arriving at a page with no results, heritage, I’ve kept some of its distinctive elements,
after some initial fiddling, it quickly became clear offer the most feasible option right away, so such as the stroked typography.
what wasn’t working. that the user has something to hold on to. I really liked the content there was on this site,
Despite having solid and effective content, After looking around at other sites with similar but it needed to be shining through, and it wasn’t.
the look and feel of the site was too indistinct. content, I decided to break up the destination This is why such a radical redesign was needed.
Plastered with Google ads, it looked like a shady offerings further. A lot of content was getting
page that was trying to sell you something. At this summarised into categories that were too high- Hierarchy
point, many visitors would simply migrate to a level. Why not give a better picture of the content, I think one of the main faults with this type of site
rival with similar content, in the hope that as well I thought, by adding clearer categories such as is that they try to show too much information in
as filling them with enthusiasm for planning their ‘trips for learning’? one go, with little hierarchical structure. There
life-changing experiences, it would be easier to I also felt that I needed to clean up the should be no problem with trying to show loads
navigate. However, I persisted. advertising area. It was in such a prominent of content at once – take CNN.com for instance. It
position – as the only large visual element at the crams lots onto the homepage, but all that content
Digging deep top of the page – that the visitor could easily get has to be clearly organised and categorised, to
I started by trying to find information on a confused and assume it was the main site feature. make it easy to browse through quickly and jump
particular destination, but after a total of five clicks Having quick links also didn’t make too much to the area the user likes most.
I arrived at a dead end. The experience gave me sense at this point. My overriding aim was to clean CNN.com’s model wouldn’t be ideal for
the idea of bringing some of this deeply-buried up the clutter. iGapYear, because the latter needs to convey
content to the surface at homepage level. This If the site was to become larger and move emotion through experience, but it seems to me
basic concept evolved into the idea of a map towards giving the user a more personalised like a good point to note when deciding how
of the world, highlighting the top 20 ideas in experience, I’d request login details and enable much to cram in up front.
98 .net january 2010
NET197.makeover 98 18/11/09 3:23:40 pm

2. .net technique makeover
5
1
2
3
4
Pimp my site!
Does your site lack lustre?
Could it benefit from a few
tweaks? To get an expert
opinion, email your URL to
netmag@futurenet.com
1 Look and feel 2 Map area 3 Who’s abroad 4 Menu 5 Advertising
All is new. The site now To me there’s no better I would be more likely to There’s no specific reason There are many
radiates bright colours, new way to showcase exciting give the site a go if I could why the menu is on the opportunities for
typography, some delicate trips to a traveller than touch upon testimonials left-hand side, but I think advertising on the site. I’d
illustration and images of by pointing them out on from travellers who are it works better for the prefer to place relevant
real people spending their a map. I wanted to bring currently abroad. Reading composition. Checking out ads alongside content on
real year abroad. To me it’s some of the content about about their experiences the content, I’ve expanded the homepage and other
got the feeling of starting popular destinations to as they lived them would it into an extra grouping: pages. However, I imagine
anew. I think this may be a the surface, so I’ve created give me an extra push learn. So now we have that a prominent ad display
Brazilian thing – we dress a few simple Top 20 lists. to investigate further four categories to choose above the fold would be of
fully in white to celebrate Clicking on a highlight and get excited. You can from: volunteering, travel use, given that advertising
the coming of the new year. would bring detailed scroll through the various (paid for out of your own is so dominant on the
For the logo, I retained content from the area, testimonials and read pocket), learning trips and current site. If that’s how
the few heritage elements together with a small more. It’s important to keep paid work. Notice that the iGapYear gets some cash,
that I trusted would keep it descriptive image. I’ve the testimonials real. We whole site uses four colours let’s help. Our banner sits
recognisable to the owners, stayed away from smiley- need three to five people to indicate each of these at the top right of the page,
such as the capitalisation people stock photos and who’ve used the site and categories, so every time where it won’t interfere
and font stroke. However, I gone with landscape and are currently experiencing you see them scattered with the content or confuse
dropped the .com bit. attraction imagery. their dreams abroad. Why around, they follow that the visitor’s eye, but is still
not also enable people colour coding system for visually prominent.
who visit the site to contact better visualisation.
these travellers if they
want to?
.net january 2010 99
NET197.makeover 99 18/11/09 3:23:41 pm