Looking for more design control than his current Blogspot account offered, Buffalo-based photographer, Sean Husvar approached me about implementing a WordPress blog for him based on a great, clean design by Nubby. The look and feel of the site represents a new identity that will carry over to Husvar’s MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and other social media account profiles. “Go Live” for the new site kicks off a social media marketing campaign.

The site is a WordPress blog with a WPESP Portfolio theme, heavily customized to match Nubby’s design as well as be semantically correct and search engine friendly. Other work for the project included setup and configuration of several analytics, search engine optimization, and social media plug-ins.

Related posts:

1. Embrasse-Moi Lingerie blog
2. 12 Hours In A City
3. Boy Scouts of America Pack 48 blog

Krudmart is a Buffalo New York-based e-tailer and street lifestyle website. While Magento is their e-commerce platform of choice, they wanted to upgrade some of the stock buttons and images that came pre-installed with something that fits in a little better with the aesthetic they’ve worked hard to develop. But skinning new buttons was just a small part of the larger project to make the site more customer and search engine friendly.

Although the site boasts loads of great content (mostly linked to from the homepage), it wasn’t well-organized and didn’t have a sense of hierarchy or direction. Everything screamed out to be clicked. Reorganization of the content on that page was designed to focus more on product sales (and featured products) and minimize the draw of the additional content (blog, polls, etc) which is secondary to the purpose of the site.

Product pages also lacked clear calls to action (adding to cart) so the redesign of those buttons focused on making them more prominent and noticeable. Customers would also become confused after attempting to add a product to their cart because confirmation messaging appeared at the top of the page; often not visible after they had scrolled down to read product descriptions. This messaging was moved to directly above the ‘Add to Cart’ where it was more obviously associated with the action on the button (and also always visible). A subtle fading (to white) background animation was also added to attract attention.

Like the homepage, the shopping cart itself was cluttered with lots of content and options, and the buttons were not designed or placed where they stood out. There also wasn’t any real difference in the appearance or location between the buttons for the primary action (checking out) and secondary actions like editing the cart or viewing related products. Along with creating a noticeable difference in the size and locations of the buttons for our primary focus (getting the customer to checkout), the layout of the shopping cart was also simplified to make it easier to use and digest the information contained in it.

In addition to layout changes on the homepage, product pages, and checkout process pages, underlying HTML code was modified to be more semantic and meaningful to search engines.

Lance and I were very happy with work that you did. We have nothing but positive things to say about your work ethic and we were very happy with the results. We saw a positive sales increase immediately. Thank you for your service as well as your dedication to our project. We certainly will be calling you for any future work. Thanks from Krudmart!-Christina Vinci

Related posts:

1. Shop Derma Spa
2. Lumens: Quick Look
3. Austad’s Golf: Express Shop

As a local Boy Scouts of America pack leader, Jon, wanted a website where he could easily disseminate information on upcoming pack and den activities as well as post pictures from those events.

I set Jon up with a WordPress blog that allows him to create and edit all the content. Author accounts for each den leader allow them to be responsible for all the content pertaining to their groups, offloading that task from Jon. Gallery photo management software allows Jon and the other den leaders to upload photos and create/edit albums. Parents and others, with the proper permissions, can browse the albums and even send photos to services like Snapfish, Shutterfly, etc.

Best of all, WordPress and Gallery are free open-source applications. Which helped Jon get a website with loads of well-supported features and still stay within his budget.

Related posts:

1. Embrasse-Moi Lingerie blog
2. HUSVAR Photography
3. 12 Hours In A City

Embrasse-Moi, a luxurious lingerie boutique in Pittsford, had a Blogger blog with loads of great content in the form of articles and fashion reviews, tips, and news. Unfortunately, since all that content was hosted on the Blogspot.com domain, none of their hard work was benefitting their own website, http://www.embrasse-moi-lingerie.com, with increased search engine ranking.

I set up a new WordPress blog on their existing domain and imported all their content so they wouldn’t lose or have to manually enter any posts or comments. They also really liked the design, layout and features of their Blogger blog so I created a WordPress theme that retained that look and feel as well as all the sidebar features.

Embrasse-Moi’s blog design and features stayed the same, their publishing process stayed the same, and now they get all the search engine benefits of having all that great content on their own domain!

Related posts:

1. Boy Scouts of America Pack 48 blog
2. HUSVAR Photography
3. Yaeger, Treviso & Associates, Inc.

My good friend Clark has been getting a lot of press recently about his new project 12 Hours In A City and I’m pleased to announce I’ll be helping him out.

These guys are using JetBlue’s All You Can Jet Pass to get a taste of America and get the experience of a lifetime. They’ll be visiting about 27 cities in 30 days, relying heavily on contacts made through social media sites for tips on interesting things to do in each city, rides around town, and places to crash for the night.

So far they’re off to a good start, they made it on the homepage of CNN’s Travel section the day they left and got invited to a see a Red Sox game from the Dunkin Donuts box at Fenway Park in Boston (their first stop)!

With their rigorous travel schedule and the fact that they’ll be spending most of their downtime in the air, I’ll be administering the site, making updates here and there, and implementing some additional social networking functionality.

Good luck and safe travels!

Related posts:

1. HUSVAR Photography
2. Yaeger, Treviso & Associates, Inc.
3. Embrasse-Moi Lingerie blog

Lumens, a high-end retailer specializing in lighting and home accessories, contracted with Bazaar Voice to provide them with Ratings & Reviews functionality and needed those features implemented on their website. Implementing third party technology in an already complex E-Commerce environment is always tricky but things went smoothly and both Lumens and their customers are happy with the results.

Michael is an outstanding web developer. He implemented numerous functional improvements to our Retail eCommerce site including Quick Look, Recently Viewed and Ratings & Reviews quickly and effectively.-Vince Barriero

Related posts:

1. Lumens: Recently Viewed
2. Lumens: Quick Look
3. Austad’s Golf: Express Shop

Sheri needed an informational website for the American Cancer Society’s local Celebrate Hope Gala honoring the Wegman family. The clean, elegant design maintains the branding established by their print invitations. In addition to the details about the event, including the amazing menu, the site also gives donors access to Candle of Hope order forms.

Michael exceeded my delivery expectations for the project. I have known Michael both professionally and personally for a number of years and I have always been impressed with his willingness to go above and beyond to delight his customers. Thank you Michael!-Sheri McKenna

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1. Radiant Skin Clinic & Shoppe
2. Lumens: Recently Viewed
3. Lumens: Quick Look

Lumens, a high-end retailer specializing in lighting and home accessories, wanted to provide their customers with a summary of all the products they’ve viewed during a particular time period.

We created a section, titled Recently Viewed, in the right-hand column that briefly summarizes all of the products a specific customer has viewed. Each product is linked to it’s full description page where it can be purchased. Only the five most recently viewed products are displayed at any given time in the sidebar but customers can view every product they’ve looked at one a special page.

This feature is developed so that Lumens can easily change the number of products displayed in the sidebar at any given time as well as the period of time that products are considered recently viewed (ex: a browser session, 30 days, a year, etc).

Michael is an outstanding web developer. He implemented numerous functional improvements to our Retail eCommerce site including Quick Look, Recently Viewed and Ratings & Reviews quickly and effectively.-Vince Barriero

Related posts:

1. Lumens: Ratings & Reviews
2. Lumens: Quick Look
3. Austad’s Golf: Express Shop

I implemented an “Express Shop” feature for Austad’s Golf, a family owned business with 11 retail stores throughout the Midwest. The Express Shop, appears in an attractive modal window (overlay on the current page) and allows customers to view basic product information, select sizes and colors, and purchase a specific product directly from category and search results pages.

Michael is an extremely dedicated and hard-working individual who responds to direction better than you could possibly imagine. Projects and tasks that are asked of him are always completed in a very efficient and timely fashion and he is never afraid to voice his opinion or his thoughts on the task at hand. All of this coupled with his high levels of creativity and responsiveness make him a dream to work with.-Joel Harrington

Related posts:

1. Shop Derma Spa
2. Lumens: Quick Look
3. Lumens: Recently Viewed