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Central Oregon Cleaning Co. is an up and coming house cleaning company based in Oregon. They specialize in cleaning homes, whether those homes be primary residence, commercial properties or investment homes. They required a website due to their business growing and their clients asking for pictures of their work. The requirements given by Central Oregon were that the website must reflect the state of Oregon while also reflecting the company's mission and vision of keeping a high standard for cleaning. This then became my challenge for the website, to create it in a way that reflects the company's standard of cleaning while also reflecting the state of Oregon. To do this I decided to focus on the design elements present on the site as well as the color scheme of the site. The color scheme reflects Oregon and the abundance of nature the state has while the elements on the page represent the standards of the company. Additionally, the client wanted the site to be optimized for SEO, making it easier to discover and find information about. To accomplish this I focused on the copywriting on the different services pages. Since these were the only requirements present for the website, I had freedom of creation, which is reflected by the design choices made on the site. Minimal animations were used to keep the page from causing too many issues for individuals viewing on different platforms and while there are floating elements, they are kept to a minimum, only being present to provide contrast.
One of the challenges faced for this project was to create it in a way that reflects Oregon as a state. This was accomplished through the use of color. Oregon as a state is known for its abundance of nature. As such green had to be a color used on the site. With green being the primary, it would’ve caused the site to look messy and strange, which would’ve gone against the other challenge of this site, to have it reflect the company’s high standard of cleaning. So green became a highlight color as having it be a secondary would’ve caused problems with color clarity and text color. Now that green has become a highlight color, the primary and secondary colors are left bare. Since cleanliness is a focus, the only choice for primary would be white and for contrast and legibility, black would need to become a secondary color. The three colors have been decided however, when creating the site there were sections that needed more contrast. To handle this a secondary highlight color was chosen and the first color was changed. The two highlight colors now became #457D58 and #3fd973, a darker and lighter shade of green that reflects Oregon as a state incredibly well. When it came to fonts, a serif font couldn’t be chosen as it would add too much noise among all the elements already present on the site, which would’ve made it look messy. So sans serif was the only option left. Among all the sans serif options present, Montserrat was the best as the spacing between the letters provided clarity and the way it presented the color black against the white background gave a sense of cleanliness.
On this site you’ll notice that in the services section there’s a lack of portfolio pictures. This was intentional because each service needed to be communicated both visually and through text. When it comes to cleaning the best way to understand is see and to do that stock images that best communicated each cleaning method were used. The portfolio images are all kept in a dedicated gallery. Now I had a second challenge with this site, to represent the company's high standard of cleaning. The best way to do this was to structure and add elements to the website that would make it look clean. To do this the color white was chosen as the background and you’ll notice bubbles present in certain sections of the site. The bubbles represent cleaning, showing that even the site itself has just been cleaned. To keep the rounded theme circular images were used and clickable elements have also been turned into circles, giving the website a more rounded and clear look. Every now and then you’ll see leaves floating on the page, this was once again intentional as it presents a contrast to the clean locations on the site, a real time reflection of how the work will be done while cleaning homes.
In the beginning we were given two challenges. To create the site in a way that reflects Oregon as a state and to create it in a way that reflects the company's high standard of cleaning. Solutions to both challenges were explained in the above sections. But there was one more additional challenge. To create the website so that it's SEO optimized. Since the use of images and elements were limited I decided to focus on copywriting instead. I wrote the sections in the services page to be 800 words in length and to be at a diction level of a fourth grader, making it easier for everyone to understand. In addition, I wrote them as generalized as possible, making it so that whenever someone in the central Oregon area would search for cleaning services, one of Central Oregon Cleaning Co’s pages would appear. After launching the site the client has seen an even bigger growth in their business with a higher conversion percentage and more calls for cleaning.