When the word “Joomla!” comes up in conversation online or in person with other professionals or potential clients; there is, at times, backlash with remarks such as “oh, Joomla? Joomla sites never look good!”, or ”How can a Joomla! website design ever look good, when all the Joomla! sites I’ve ever seen look terrible?”

I typically have two remarks to that:

1. A lot of the Joomla! community revolves around do-it-yourselfers, and companies / organizations who are looking to go low cost. While this in and of itself is not a problem, it does mean that templates are made to be easily and cheaply accessible (as well as extensions), which typically means that the effort put into the stock design of those items (templates & extensions) is pretty terrible.
2. There are a lot of hobbyist web designers, and sometimes even IT firms that say they can design websites. While that statement may be somewhat true, it - coupled with Joomla! being easy to use - can lead to you receiving a very bad, Joomla-based website. Why? Well as it turns out, those people really don’t know how to design, and they’re actually just giving you pre-built, bad looking templates and saying, “here ya go!”.

Now, this is where value comes into play - would you want to spend $1,500.00 for a new Joomla! powered website that looks terrible; or spend an extra $1,000.00 ($2,500.00 total) to have the time put in for professional design that makes your friends and colleagues go “WOW!”? I’m assuming the latter.

* Please note, those prices just mentioned are fictitious and do not represent how much your website design project may cost. Website design projects are almost always estimated based on size of site in terms of content, features (blogs, web forms, eCommerce, etc.) and are typically fix-based estimates. They can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars, to tens of thousands of dollars.

Remember, you generally get what you pay for (this is an averages type statement). If you want to be cheap, you can expect cheap results. Invest in value (I will cover this in a separate topic in the future), not lowest cost.

Here’s a great example of a Joomla! website design that looks great, functions well, and is for a larger (Windows-based) company:

Case 1: Cloud.com

Cloud.com is a service that provides cloud (private and public) hosting / storage / data management to individuals, businesses and organizations; quickly and efficiently. Recently bought out by Citrix (coughs)Microsoft(/coughs), the website is based on Joomla 1.5 and runs a number of very popular extensions for the CMS.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the extensions they are using, and point out a few things they did well with their design.

Extensions used:

• Most notably - K2 (all normal content pages)
• K2 is a CCK (content construction kit)-like component for Joomla! that has a good number of content enhancements built in, such as slideshows, video, custom fields, and more. This component works great for magazine / news websites, but can work just as well for any website (size doesn’t matter… really, it doesn’t).
• Easy Blog (blog section of website)
• Easy Blog is a commercial blogging component for Joomla! that offers many of the features and workflows that WordPress does, with tagging, publishing, trackbacks, author profiles, built-in commenting and more. While functionally Easy Blog is nice to work with, it could put up a pretty big struggle with styling (refer back to my comments earlier about extensions that are made for people that don’t know what they’re doing… Hence, making it harder for people that do - like us).
• Jomsocial (social networking / community)
• Jomsocial is actually pretty fantastic. They’ve been able to piggy back off of Facebook pretty well and have developed a pretty advanced social networking extension that allows you to have users build their profiles, communicate via messages & chat, organize groups, events, post pictures and videos, and so much more. We’ll have to see how well they keep up with the new timeline concepts that Facebook just announced, though… They may just be left in the dust (or have to raise their prices to accommodate).
• Kuena (forum)
• Forums have become a larger feature of the past, however, still have a place within communities such as Cloud (and other tech service / product industries). Kuena is a very popular forum component used in the Joomla! community and allows for good admin moderation, user workflows and more.
• AcyMailer (newsletters)
• AcyMailer is an enterprise level newsletter component that can be integrated directly into Joomla! What this means, is that you no longer have to spend money on Constant Contact / iContact or Mailchimp (though Mailchimp offers a lot for free and is a pretty great service - we use it for ourselves even). You can create detailed reports on who viewed your mailings, bounce rates, etc.; as well as upload as many contacts and organize into as many lists as you want. And to top it all off, it comes with a few pre-built templates, but also allows you to custom create your own. Fantastic!

Design Notes

As you can see from looking at the Cloud.com website, it’s pretty slick. It exhibits a very clean UI (user interface), and an inherent user experience (UX). Folks, this is what letting a good designer do their thing, looks like.

They do a great job of utilizing clean lines, complimentary colors, and clear CTA’s:

 

Their content display is clean and easy to read, and is complimented well with graphics and imagery (this is the value you get when you choose to invest and trust in the capabilities of a good designer or design firm):

 

Even their footer looks nice and represents clear actions for you as the site user to act upon (newsletter signup, social media):

 

The Cloud.com website is a true testament to how good a Joomla! website can look, function, and complete organizational goals. All that is required to achieve this is proper planning, selecting the right firm to design and develop (or hire the right people internally), and allowing the process to follow its natural path.

Summary:

When it comes down to it, this post isn’t just about beautiful Joomla! website design, it’s also about you making the right decision when deciding to hire a designer / design firm. We can make Joomla websites look just as pretty or cool as WordPress, Drupal, Expression Engine, or whatever else you want to put on the list.

Make the right decision and work with someone who has a solid design history, who is willing to learn and understand your business just as well as you do, and who has tools such as Joomla! to back it all up.

If you are looking for a high level design firm, and online solutions to help improve and grow your business, then get in contact with us today. We’re always ready to review and propose on your project for you and look forward to learning more about you and your business!