ARK Website v2 Launch: An Improved Destination for Everything ARK
With ARK moving at the speed of crypto, we set out to overhaul the ARK.io
website to keep up with our development of products, services and
infrastructure. Today, we are unveiling the all-new
ARK.io website featuring new content, an improved user
experience and a clearer vision.
ARK’s new website is the culmination of collaboration across all departments
within the ARK Team. The executive, development, marketing and communications
teams all came together to tackle this important project, and it is the opinion
of this author that the result is something the entire community can appreciate.
Visit the all-new website here:
https://ARK.io
A Clear, Concise Vision
The homepage of the site sports the six core values recently outlined in the
all-new whitepaper for 2019. These core values
drive the team and community forward in creating a blockchain platform and
ecosystem that can bring true value to everyone who needs a powerful and
flexible blockchain solution:
- Simplicity — Open-source code and blockchain creation tools enable everyone
to leverage blockchain technology - **Security **— 51 delegates underpin, secure and maintain the ARK Public Network
using a DPoS consensus mechanism - Speed — Eight second block times ensures the ARK Public Network is both lean
and efficient - Scalability — A network of interoperable bridgechains enables the ecosystem
to scale exponentially, without slowing down - **Sovereignty **— Create your own custom blockchains with bespoke governance to
meet your own requirements - **Support **— Our dedicated community and expert team pride themselves on
providing the highest level of support for ARK users
Distinct Audience Segmentation
The overall ARK Ecosystem has all kinds of people within it, and the new ARK
website is designed to speak directly to all of them. Users can easily see the
ways they can buy, spend and use their ARK tokens, as well as how to participate
in the ARK community. Developers can be exposed to all of the technical moving
parts associated with ARK technology while learning how to build with, and
contribute to the platform. Unlike previously, in many cases they won’t even
have to leave the website to do so.
- The User Hub** **exposes visitors to the advantages of
ARK, and allows them to learn more about ARK’s open source projects like the ARK
Wallets and ARK Explorer. Information on how to buy, spend and use ARK is
available, including the Spend App VISA
card
which can be linked to ARK, and the ARKTippr Tip Bot. - The Developer Hub allows programmers to dive into
all the technical aspects surrounding the ARK Ecosystem, including the intuitive
ARK Deployer, which allows developers from all walks
of life to create an entire standalone blockchain customized to their needs. The
hub also acts as a portal to documentation, GitHub, bounties and rewards, the
ARK Community Fund, delegate information, the Powered by ARK Program and more.
Whilst the new website places a key focus on the user and developer audience
groups, the keen-eyed among you may notice the omission of an enterprise focus
on the new website. This is a conscious and strategic decision.
An enterprise audience comes with their own needs and challenges they are
looking to solve; they come with expectations around branding, business
structure, content, tone of voice, process, products and services and more. In
short, all this means they have to be approached and catered for in an entirely
different way to both our user and developer audiences. In order to target and
provision for an enterprise audience appropriately a standalone website, and
tailored commercial approach is needed. This is something we are actively
exploring and developing. More information on this can be found in our roadmap,
and we’ll keep you updated as we progress.
Live Integrations & Dynamic Data
In our recent Consensus 2019
presentation, we mentioned
that our new website will literally come to life with live integrations and
reasons to keep coming back. The new ARK website delivers on these promises by
providing a steady stream of new information pertaining to the status of the ARK
Ecosystem. Take a look at a few examples below:
- GitHub —** **Repositories of code can be accessed
directly from the site. - Custom Projects —** **The status of custom projects
with special bounties can be viewed. - Bounties** **— Community developers work hand in hand
with the team to enhance ARK. The site features leader boards and a live commit
feed. - AIPs — ARK Improvement Proposals allow the community to
participate in the future of ARK. The new site allows visitors to browse and
submit AIPs.
More Detailed Roadmap
In accordance with plans laid out in the new whitepaper, we have enhanced the
ARK roadmap on the new website. Roadmap items have been added with detailed
sub-tasks and the quarters where work is expected to take place. The
percentage-progress system allows visitors to see how far along each item is.
The roadmap can also be filtered by the below:
- Completed — shows all of the items that were already completed
- **In Development **— highlights what we are actively developing in the next four
quarters. - **Exploratory **—these are the items we want to develop in the near future. When
these items move into active development it will be reflected in the roadmap by
moving these items into the In Development section
User Experience & SEO
The new website has been developed with on-page and technical SEO best practice
in mind along with the use of latest technologies such as — modern image
formats, lightweight CSS framework (Tailwind CSS), JavaScript framework (VueJS),
Laravel framework for back-end, preloading of the content that is firstly
visible, and TypeKit for loading of the fonts, …
All pages have been mapped to user goals and optimally structured to boost both
engagement and user experience metrics. A full keyword analysis was undertaken
prior to content creation, not only to maximize search engine visibility and
click through rates — but to ensure content relevancy to the site visitor
related to their queries.
The website’s broad range of pages and sections means that it caters to multiple
audiences with different levels of intent — containing content with carefully
crafted call-to-actions that improve flows from site-entry to conversion.
The website platform is both SEO-friendly and highly flexible allowing future
functionality improvements. This reworked architecture has allowed serious
improvements in many technical aspects, most notably with page speed and
crawling — Google PageSpeed
improved drastically, on desktop we now have a score of 100% (old site
was~78%) mobile has a score of** 90%+** (old site was~22%).
Since SEO (like our website) is a fluid, ever-evolving process we’ll be
improving and monitoring the metrics as the site beds in, and going forward to
ensure that we are continually optimizing.
What’s Next?
The new site launched today is just the start. Over the coming months we’ll be
improving and updating the site with new sections, modules and pages as our
development progresses and our outreach efforts grow. Here are a few examples of
some of the future improvements currently outlined for the website:
- Product Pages — More details covering ARK products and projects such as ARK
Explorer, ARK Pay and ARK marketplace as development moves forward. These pages
will act as a front door for visitors to learn more. - **Service Pages **— More details covering services and programs ARK offers, like
the Powered by ARK Program, for example. - Platform Concepts/Topics — More content that expands on the core topics
surrounding ARK technology, bringing in TL;DRs of concepts someone might find in
the whitepaper, for example. - Blog/Resources Hub — Clean and obvious presentation of external resources
from within the new site and self-managed blogging CMS.
Reporting Issues
We always welcome feedback. If you come across any bugs or issues on the new
website and would like to report them, please open an issue on our Github:
https://github.com/ArkEcosystem/ark.io-issues
Thanks to the Community
The ARK community is a driving force for everything that we do. Community
feedback on our current site played an important role in the design and
execution of our new iteration. So, from all the team here at ARK we would like
to give the community our deepest thanks for all your support and encouragement.
**Take a look at the new website by visiting **https://ark.io
Follow us on social media ( Twitter | Facebook | Reddit | YouTube), join our community ( Slack | Discord ) and stay tuned to our blog on Medium. | Read the ARK Whitepaper Here