Happy July!!
Remember when we said we would be taking a break in June for Jitney's Journeys restructuring? Well, the main reason was because we would be spending the month in Hawaii for JD's job (thus, we wouldn't be able to ship any products out). We knew this time would help us to take a step back and analyze our plan in order to keep moving forward at a stronger pace. That was the plan, anyway.
Fast forward halfway into the trip... nothing. No direction. No new plans. No focus. I laid in bed one night praying that God would just let me sleep because as I tried to plan, I was only getting more flustered and confused. I wanted to start from scratch.
I was utterly discouraged.
But instead of letting me sleep, God began to stir a vision. A plan. A direction. I started working on a new logo design (something that fit our style better) and moved onto laying out the new blog design. A few hours later (JD was getting ready to go into work at this point), it was complete. I would be ready to change up the design on Blogger and introduce our new logo that afternoon. (I will post about the new logo design soon!)
Thanks to JD's wisdom, we decided to hold off until July. (He knows how much I like to tweak things after I've "finished" them.)
The next day, I had the urge to switch from Blogger to learn Wordpress. I've been wanting to figure out the platform for years and I figured this would be the time to do it. I enjoy designing our blog but there had to be a better, cleaner way. As soon as I began trying to learn Wordpress, I immediately got overwhelmed. Then I went back to Blogger. It was my safety zone. At the end of the day, it simply wasn't minimalist enough for me. To add onto that, a lot of our visitors are mobile visitors and our blog looked horrendous on mobile. On the actual site, there were so many "pages" that needed to be changed, and so many graphics and HTML code that would need to be changed. While I enjoy the challenge, my desire to change up our design so often began to take up too much of my time, especially when I could be making new products for our business. It didn't make sense for me to focus so much on the blog design when I could focus on more beneficial ideas.
So I researched Squarespace, completed the 14-day free trial and fell in love with it. Squarespace is officially the first service in Jitney's that we've actually outsourced. Up until this point, it's been all JD and me working on everything without having to pay another person to do it for us. This was worth it though.
Even though it's a few dollars out of the Jitney pocket fund, it feels so good to know that I can "build" the website so easily, change it up whenever I'd like, and create a site people enjoy looking at. The Layout Engine is simple and super fun to play around with. The blogging platform is rock solid with tons of features. I could really go on and on about it.
So, welcome to our new website / blog / marketplace!
We're so glad you have joined us! Browse around and let us know what you think. We'd love for you to email us with any suggestions or "Ahhh!! This needs to be fixed ASAP!!" comments. In fact, you can do so on the Contact page (just so we can make sure it's working properly).
I'm certain there are many things I will need to edit or switch around for a more user-friendly blog / marketplace but for now, I'm overjoyed.
What platform do you use for your blog? Do you outsource the design work?
