Little by little, we’ve been sprucing up our website to make it easier to navigate and better at showcasing our podcasts and sponsors. Here’s a little survey of what we’ve done and why:
Banner
When we launched the website and announced the network in May of 2017, our main image was a picture of the Smoky River, taken on a weekend excursion. It conveyed “Alberta,” but it didn’t really say “podcast.” Nor did it say “network,” unless you stretched the river metaphor rather far.
Our logo is intended to reflect the ripples that our podcasters send out into the world each time they publish; it helps that the shape is reminiscent of sound waves. The three concentric circles represent the three important players in our endeavour: listeners, podcasters, and sponsors. Together they reflect our mission to build listenership for Alberta-made podcasts and connect those listeners to Alberta-based businesses and organizations.
We gave those ideas to Laura Diaz of Laura Diaz Designs, and she came up with the striking image you see at the top of our site now. The triple fist-bump reinforces the collaboration among the three players, and reflects the co-operative spirit that we hope infuses everything we do. The colour palette is bold and somewhat ecumenical for an Alberta-based network — we’ve stayed away from the colours of the main sports teams in Edmonton and Calgary!
Grid
When we announced the initial 10 members of the network, we could easily display them all on the home page. At first we organized them alphabetically, and then, as we grew, we re-organized them by subject. But at 40+ member podcasts and more affiliates on top of that, the home-page display was becoming too unwieldy.
So, with the help of the ever-versatile and patient Breanne Byrne, we’ve come up with nine tiles representing categories that our members and affiliates fall into. Some straddle more than one category, but we’ve chosen the one that seems to fit best. Each tile clicks through to a page where you can learn more about the podcasts and access to their websites.
Our affiliated podcasts, which are produced by our sponsors, are now integrated into these categories instead of languishing near the bottom of a very long scroll-down.
Sponsors
Speaking of sponsors, they are now more visible, thanks to our more compact grid. We can’t thank these businesses and organizations enough for their ongoing support of the Alberta Podcast Network, particularly our founding sponsor, ATB. There’s a small summary of them on our home page, and we connect them to their affiliated podcasts on our Sponsors page.
If you’d like to harness the power of a local podcast network to spread the word about your business or organization, we’d love to help. Displaying your logo in this array is but one small piece of the value we deliver to our sponsors. Learn more.
Navigation
We’re building this airplane while we’re flying it, so coming up with coherent navigation under ever-changing circumstances has been… tricky. We think we’ve settled on a decently intuitive menu now. Look under “About” for more on our story, as well as information on how to join, how to sponsor, and how to pitch yourself as a guest to our podcasters.
There’s also an alphabetical listing of all of our member podcasts linked on our Contact page.
As always, this is a work in progress. Many thanks to our podcasters for all of their hard work, and to the listeners who invite them in. The best way to stay up-to-date on the network is to subscribe to our newsletter. If you have questions, hit us up at hello@albertapodcastnetwork.com.