Star Heat heats up the web with a brand new website!

August 23, 2018

In the long ago…

The year was 2012, The Avengers was huge at the box office, and America was grooving to “Call Me Maybe” when local heating and air conditioning company — Star Heat — asked us to build them a new website. They already had a home on the web but needed something far less… antiquated. It doesn’t take a “Before and After” to see that we were able to take them leaps and bounds beyond what they were using prior, but we provided one anyway:

So, it came as no surprise when six years later, they again came back to us for their next upgrade. Star Heat realized their site, while all the rage in 2012, had a less-than-modern look in 2018. What they wanted was a more upscale design with improved mobile adaptiveness, as well as a clear division between their HVAC and Fireplace divisions. We made their website shine once before, so Star Heat knew from experience we could do it again….

What started as one guy with a vision…

Star Heating & Air Conditioning is a locally owned and operated HVAC company that’s been proudly serving the residents in and around Columbia, Missouri over the last 30+ years.

While the look of their website has changed throughout the years (for the better!), the traditions they keep and their commitment to the community has remained the same. Started by Lee Thompson in back in 1984, the company was built on quality, integrity, and service and quickly became well known for these attributes. Under the operation of Lee’s son, David, the same philosophies and business culture continues to exist today.

Establishing a More Streamlined Online Flow

Starting Simple

In case you hadn’t noticed, the brownish box thing they had going on in their original website was… wood-paneling-in-your-grandmother’s-musty-basement-creepy—and while some people are into that kinda thing, many think it’s…well, that it’s real bad… And while the site we designed and built in 2012 was a vast improvement, it still had a “boxed in” feel with the tab-style design and navigation. Star Heat wasn’t really feeling the whole “boxy” vibe anymore, so we opened up their new design with a sectioned layout and some slanted design elements for added interest.

The Old Old Website:

The Old New Website (2012):

The New New Website (2018):

The same went for the icons used in their sub navigation on each page—Star Heat was ready to do away with them altogether. So we reverted the sub navigation back to the more traditional row-style layout with the main pages shown at the top with secondary pages featured in a row underneath. It’s all in the details…

Clearing Things Up

Star Heat established The Fireplace Shop in 1990 to cater to those in the area who needed fireplace installation and repair. Given that these services are entirely separate from HVAC service and repair, Star Heat wanted a more clear divide online between the two divisions. The first site we built them didn’t really encompass this kind of clarity — no matter where on the site visitors clicked, the Star Heat logo was always displayed, and this was confusing to visitors.

To remedy this on the new site, we created a home page displaying separate clickable logos for each division that lead to their respective main pages. Each main page has its own division logo and sub navigation specific to its respective services:

Star HVAC Main Page

The Fireplace Shop Main Page

Visitors clicking over to Star Heating & Air Conditioning will see the Star Heat logo at the top, a blue color scheme and sub navigation related to Star’s HVAC services. While guests who click over to the Fireplace Shop will see the Fireplace Shop logo, an orange color scheme, and sub navigation options related to fireplace installation, repair and maintenance. It’s simple, elegant and it works.

Reevaluating Priorities

Star Heat understood the importance of having a mobile-friendly website (do you know anyone who doesn’t? If you do, feel free to send them to our blog for a rude awakening…), so with this updated site, they invited us to implement mobile adaptability into the design in order to help them adapt to the mobile age. Something we know a thing or two (or 100), about…

Now, their new website plays really nice with mobile users, and with Google, which is double awesome.

Star Heat’s new website features include:

• Mobile Friendly Design – Adaptive Template

Websites that are mobile-friendly with adaptive templates will be served more often on search engines to people using their mobile devices.

• Custom WordPress Theme

With Custom WordPress Themes, the website design is unique and the structure is flexible, scalable, and easily manageable. Let’s just say websites with custom WordPress themes aren’t forced to reside inside the box.

• Updates & Ongoing Maintenance

It’s imperative to keep content fresh with regular updates to keep clients and prospects interested. With their website completed, we help Star Heat stay on top of their game by performing requested updates and changes to the website as requested.

• Content Editing

Star Heat specializes in heating, cooling and fireplace installation and repair, which typically doesn’t take mad writing skills, so they relied on us to punch up their content by streamlining and formatting it for the web.

Are you looking for a website?

Does your site lack clear brand division, or do you just need a site in general? To paraphrase the great Carly Rae Jepsen: Call us, maybe? In other words,contact the team at MayeCreate Design. We believe websites work well when great design meets solid functionality. Our web designs always aim for ease of use and clear communication. Check out our portfolio for a look at our other projects and to get your pride on…today.