News
At Matt Weeden Design, there's always something going on. See below for the latest.
Pages:
5/10/10: Redesign for abalancedsole.com launched
Elizabeth Heard with A Balanced Sole provides reflexology services to clients. (For those who are unfamiliar, reflexology involves applying pressure to reflex points in the hands and feet to promote relaxation and improve circulation) She had her Web site through her professionals association, but the options and customization they allowed was very limiting. Elizabeth wanted to expand her online offerings, so she hired me to redesign the existing site and add features to it.
Some key features of the site include the ability for Elizabeth's clients to pre-pay online; the ability for other reflexologists to purchase a video to display on their site; and multiple versions of the videos that enable them to play on both a desktop computer and on mobile devices.
Elizabeth herself is thrilled with the new site, and response from her peers in the reflexology world has been overwhelmingly positive!
4/7/10: Redesign for ojibwatea.com launched
Ojibwa Tea of Life™ is an ecommerce site that sells a traditional Native American blend of tea called essiac, along with other herbal and holistic resources. After 15 years of being in business, sales started to slow. As part of a revitalization effort, I was brought in to give the Web site a makeover and implement a new shopping cart (the existing cart seemed to give customers difficulty when checking out).
I created a fresh, modern design from the ground up; made the navigation more user-friendly; made the site (and especially the home page) more "convertable"—essentially making it easier for the customer to find products and place an order; implemented the Zen Cart framework to manage products and take orders; and migrated the site between Web hosts after the existing host suffered such problems as all of their customers' sites being unavailable for the entire weekend. The domain name transfer finally went through on a Wednesday morning, and just like that the site was live, with little to no down time while the transfer completed. Within an hour, the first customer had already placed an order!
We are hopeful that this overhaul will encourage shoppers to come back to Ojibwa Tea of Life and restore the business to its former profitability.
There are at least 5 other projects in the works, so check back soon for the latest!
3/19/10: Matt Weeden to present on custom WordPress designs on March 27
I've known Mike O'Neil and Lori Ruff with IA Social Media for a while now. Mike's new book, Rock the World with your Online Presence, is all about how to build yourself a 'rock star' profile on LinkedIn. They brought me in to customize their WordPress site in support of the book (www.rocktheworldbook.com). The results so far have impressed them enough that they invited me to speak at their next WordPress meetup group. The meetup is on Saturday, 3/27 in downtown Denver. I'll be presenting on several custom WordPress themes that I've built for sites, and how customization can work for your site as well.
http://bit.ly/9OS2kY for details.
2/22/10: Global Referral Groups sign-up completed
With all the final bugs worked out and payments processing smoothly, we were able to take the online sign-up form live for Global Referral Groups. As mentioned below, the system keeps track of who is in what group, and what industries are filled in what group. This prevents anyone from signing up in a leads group where that industry has already been filled.
Everything about the process is automated, so as soon as a member's payment has been accepted they are entered into the database and that industry for that group is no longer selectable in the sign up form. They also automatically appear on the members listing page, which draws from the same database.
Speaking of databases, the events calendar on the home page also pulls from a database. This allows the client to log in and make updates without having to ask me to do it and wait for me to take action. Timely and affordable! And, thanks to the powerful combination of PHP and MySQL, events are automatically removed from the home page once the day of the event is over.
2/2/10: New site Dawson Media completed
Problem: Redesign a Web site and deploy it as a WordPress theme as quickly as possible.
Solution: I was able to throw together a design in Photoshop overnight on a Thursday. The redesign was approved on Friday; by Monday morning the WordPress theme was ready to upload, and the finishing touches were put on by Tuesday after the end client provided the last of the content.
Although it was built as a blog platform, WordPress is also very useful as a content management system. With this setup, the folks at Dawson Media can log in and update any of the text/photos on any of the pages, and also add pages as they see fit.
It's not a typo: this site and the Global Referral Groups site wrapped up on the same day, after which I took a much needed nap.
Pages:
