Taking a Freelance Note

Trillium Haven is a relatively new farm-to-table restaurant in the Eastown neighborhood of Grand Rapids. It’s somewhat upscale, and owned by the actual Trillium Haven farmer. I got a minute to check out the web site, and am now obsessed with the idea of visiting.

For those who do not visit often: I am borderline crazy about striving to eat clean, whole, local food. I fail. Often. But the goal remains, and plays a large role in my day to day life.

But this post is about the site itself. As a freelance writer who works primarily in web content creation, I couldn’t help but notice the absence of any written homepage content.

I am a firm believer that a homepage should, within a few sentences and above the fold, tell you exactly what kind of site you are visiting. I want to know what the web site represents without hunting all over and reading a 2,000 word “About” page.

Here, I was greeted with, not words, but a video. Brilliant! All I had to do was click the play button and I got my intro, a location, imagery and company personality. The video communicated what I expect of a homepage and a whole lot more without forcing me to (horror of horrors!) navigate and read.

This is not to say that I felt there was no room for improvement. A sentence or two might still be a good idea, especially if the video won’t load for whatever reason. The style of the video felt somewhat formulaic, maybe not as Grand Rapidian as it could have been. Maybe that was the point.

My point is that opening a site with a simple video as opposed to a wordy homepage could be a very cool thing. I may have to develop some new web design skills…

Also, if you’re in the GR area, go to Trillium Haven. Let’s support and drive this movement!

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