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In my previous blog post, I wrote about what brought us to this new, completely revised and in some ways re-imagined CoffeeGeek website. This time around, I want to tell you about all the cool features and new things we’ve launched with this version, and also give you a preview of our next two phases!
The New CoffeeGeek
I’m so stoked to present this new website to you. We’ve set it up to be fresh, vibrant, and very relevant. We’ve brought over all the favourite components of the old CoffeeGeek website, including the How Tos section, the First Looks, the QuickShot Reviews, and all the best articles and content from our old Opinions section, and I want to talk about each of these sections more in a moment.
The New CoffeeGeek Blog
What you’re reading right now is a brand new part of our website: the CoffeeGeek Blog! And even better, we’re introducing eight new writers for the blog section, which brings our site total of writers to 12 for launch. Very soon we’ll have a complete authors page where you can find out more about these writers and the fantastic skillsets they’re bringing to this website, but for now, you’ll be discovering them through what they write.
I already talked about the Blog’s new purpose in my last blog post, so I won’t repeat it here; what I want to focus on instead is the look and feel of the blog. You may notice, as you stroll around this new website, that each major section — Opinions, Reviews, Guides, Resources, Community, Blog, and even the About Us section, all have their own distinct look and feel. We have a site overall design for CoffeeGeek, but also decided to brand each major section a bit different, to really make our website unique.
The CoffeeGeek Blog uses a hunter green colour as it’s signature colour. It’s used in titles, headings, layout enhancements, even in the borders on images and elsewhere. Even the menu bar is a hunter green when you’re in this section.
We’re also using two specific fonts for the Blog: Lora for titles and headings, and Quicksand for the body and other elements. My goal was to find two modern and easy to read fonts – a serif for titles, sans serif for body, that would further give our blog a signature look and feel.
Finally, we also made the decision to make the text columns on the CoffeeGeek Blog more narrow, at least on the desktop experience (on mobile, it fills out nicely to fill the screen, but is still spaced out for easy reading).
Reviews Section
Similarly, the entire reviews section has its own look and feel, and it’s signature colour is burnt sienna. There are three main parts to the Reviews Section: the First Looks, the QuickShot Reviews, and the Detailed Reviews (which are coming soon). First Looks and QuickShot Reviews both have the same look and feel, with enhanced functionality in the Quickshot Reviews. They are using the Roboto Slab font for titles, and Roboto most other places. Also the titles and headings are much more styled in the reviews section, with orange and white boxes.
Our Detailed Reviews are going to have a more formal look and feel, with Libre Franklin as the font choice for titles, and Spectral used for the body text and many other elements. We’re still fine tuning the look and feel for the Detailed Reviews section, but it is coming very soon!
There’s a lot going on in the First Looks and QuickShot Reviews section. I love that we can now feature giant imagery of the products, right when you land on the pages, that leave no doubt about the product being reviewed. I also love that we can show you a product’s score and rating right away in the QuickShot Reviews, right at the start of the review.
You may notice (on desktop and tablet) there’s a floating icon menu on the left side of the review pages. These are custom to each and every first look and full review, and helps you quickly jump to sections within the article. They also have pop up tooltips to show you what each icon represents, to help you navigate the article.
All our review articles have common features, like this floating navigation, clickable tags, image galleries, notable features, conclusions, super easy and visual ways to see other reviews and first looks (believe it or not, we didn’t have that function on the last site), and a uniform look and feel. Our QuickShot Reviews kick it up several notches by having a visual score, our review ratings top and bottom, a pros and cons section, and much more comprehensive media elements (all of which are new to this website design).
There’s a ton to discover and explore, especially if you were used to how we did our reviews on the old website. Definitely check them all out!
The Guides Section
Just like the other sections, Guides and How Tos gets it’s own signature colour (royal purple) and we have two sets of fonts chosen: Merriweather (Titles) and Lato (body, elsewhere) for the How Tos section, and Playfair Display Black (Titles) and Rubik (body, elsewhere) used in the Detailed Guides section (which is coming soon).
Just like the Reviews section, the How Tos on CoffeeGeek are getting a massive visual overhaul. A huge intro photo is your introduction to each How To. We’ve gone back and forth between using slides and galleries to show you the visual step by steps. Everything is laid out to be super easy to read and digest; in fact, we went with a single column (no sidebar) look for How Tos, with wide margins, to take away distractions (which actually costs us some money, as we can’t provide as many placements to our advertisers, who help keep this site going!). The history sections of each How To are also quite beefed up.
We’re still fine tuning how the Detailed Guides will look, but they will be launching soon. We had five of them on the old website, and every one is getting a complete overhaul and update.
Opinions Section
If our CoffeeGeek Blog is our daily newspaper, our Opinions Section is the weekend magazine deep read zone of this website. And like the other sections, they get their own colour scheme (deep red), and their own fonts (Montserrat for Titles, Playfair Display Light for body and elsewhere). The entire section has it’s own layout as well, more formulated to be like a magazine. The landing page has big bold feature articles up top, and an easy way to dive into the columns below. All the articles have tags, links to the author and main column (as well as other pertinent info), an easy to read layout, but a sense of formality in contrast to the Blog’s more quick and friendly format.
We also have some new columnists coming on board. All will be introduced in individual blog posts, so stay tuned!
Phase Two Plans for CoffeeGeek
The above is just Phase One of our new website, and I’ve left a ton of detail out. But you may be asking, where are the community features that were so prominent on the old website? Comments, ability to sign in, member pages, and the forums?
Phase Two of the CoffeeGeek new website is a brand new community focus. I want a lot of it to be a surprise, but in simplest terms, we rolling out something very similar to what facebook offers (without all the baggage) on this website in Phase Two. You’ll have the ability to do many of the things you love doing on facebook (or my long lost favourite, Google+) and it will all be tied in with the entire website and how you interact with it. One really cool feature I can tell you about is that if you are a member of the CoffeeGeek website, you can have you own custom sign in and landing page, showing you all the site updates from your favourite authors, content sections and even other members.
One thing that isn’t coming back is our forums. At least not in Phase Two.
When will you see Phase Two being rolled out? Our goal is within 4-6 months after this new website launches.
Phase Three Plans for CoffeeGeek
Phase Three is far off in the distance, but we do have our whiteboard plans for it. It includes
- Bringing back the Consumer Reviews section
- Enabling a website marketplace so you can sell your used coffee equipment
- A much more involved Resources and Educational component on the site, including online tutorials and classes
- Possibly bringing back the old website’s forums.
We expect Phase Two to have some teething pains, so we won’t even begin fully working on the Phase Three plans until the website is humming along. This means Phase Three is scheduled for 2022.
About the author
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.