I can’t remember if I’ve already mentioned it, but we’re doing somewhat of an overhaul of our marketing strategy here at Westbury, and at some point in the not too distant future we’ll be making some changes to the look and feel of our website.

So I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at other people’s websites and trying to figure out what makes for good design. How do you tread the line between style and substance? Usability and aesthetics?

I thought I’d use the blog to share some of the sites that I’ve been most impressed with, and I’m hoping you’ll chip in with some comments and new suggestions.

General sites

thebestdesigns.com is a great site all about great sites. Not only does it look great, but it’s functional and brings together examples of the best in web design currently out there.

I like the chocolate / blue color scheme for obvious reasons, but I also like the simplicity of their nav and the three column layout.

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thepostfamily.com is the website for some sort of creative agency (unsurprisingly, most of the sites listed on thebestdesigns.com belong to web design companies) and demonstrates two hot trends in web design right now; magazine layout and use of white space.

Some colleagues I polled hated the magazine layout, mainly – I think – because it seemed inappropriate for a B2B website to want to look like a magazine. So what about the best looking, but still very B2B sites?

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B2B Sites

fourfather.com is a pleasure to look at. Clean, straightforward, uncluttered, pretty. Fourfather is a digital marketing agency, and this site is the perfect advertisement for their abilities.

But Westbury isn’t an agency, so we should probably be trying to achieve something different with our website. What about other companies operating in similar areas to Westbury? What do their sites look like?

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ITSM Sites

numarasoftware.com is nice to look at, but has some interesting functionality going on, all revolving around the flash-esque central panel which displays different pieces of information based on either what you say you’re interested in, or what you say your role is.

Unlike a lot of the other sites I’ve mentioned, Numara uses a lot of darker colors – and stands out as a result.

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So the question remains, which – if any – of these websites should be the inspiration for a future westbury-it.com makeover?

Tom