SW-Originals Portfolio: Websites

	Quality Carpet Cleaning: Another redesign of a client's website to make it more professional looking and provide more information in a more organized, user-friendly manner. Click here to see what this page looked like before the redesign. I think the Berber carpeting for the background is a nice, subtle touch. New on this website: important certification information; a testimonials page; a series of helpful hints pages for carpet care and stain removal; and a contact form instead of just email options.

	The Screen Specialists: A recent redesign for a client, with the goal of making the site look more professional, provide more information to their customers, and increase sales by increasing their visibility on the search engines. Click here to see what this page looked like before the redesign.

	Argy's Collectibles: The second most complex e-commerce site that I have developed, using the Agora Cart, and without hiring any outside programmers. (The most complex e-commerce site I created was while working at Rockart Signs and Markers from 8/6/06 until 3/12/10.) Not only are there product categories, but there are subcategories as well, and the products themselves needed to be sorted alphabetically by name, rather than by SKU (stock keeping unit). This company is based in Canada, with customers spanning the globe, so taxes had to be configured to only charge taxes to those in Canada, and charge them correctly as some taxes are for products only, and some taxes are collected on products and services (meaning shipping and handling charges). Other challenges included incorporating real time inventory control, so that customers could not order something that was not currently in stock. I also added a live help feature, so that any online customer could contact my client instantly if they had any questions about products or services.

	Health Restoration International, Ltd.: Health Restoration International is a non-profit foundation dedicated to educating and providing resources for emotional, spiritual, intellectual and physical health. The founder, Marilyn Murray, spends approximately 6 months of every year in Moscow, training people to help others recover from abuse and addictions. The challenge of designing and building this site was to coordinate the massive amount of information, and make it easy to naviage through, while adding functionality to sell Ms. Murrays' books online as well as accepting donations to the non-profit organization online, securely. A firm supporter of Agora Cart, due to it's robustness, flexibility and affordability (not one of my clients have ever complained about the cost), I again used that software for the e-commerce section of the website, both the book sales area and the donations area.

	www.patiodoorrepairs.com: A one-page workhorse of a site. The client tells me that he still gets most of his business from this one-page website, over six years later. This website was created for a company that specializes in the repair of sliding glass patio doors. This company didn't require a huge website, just a single page with a lot of information given via the Flash commercial (my photography of my patio door...Dave fixed it for me and did a superb job!), and meta content which does a fine job of driving people to this website.

	www.thecarpetfrogsbiz.com: After working on the design and production of the printed collateral for their CD, the next step was to create a website emulating the CD, to list song lyrics, provide enticing song clips and sell the CD, via an Agora Shopping Cart. This site augments the main Carpet Frogs website, but is linked to it. This was only my second time working on an Agora shopping cart, and much customization was needed, as the client is in Canada, and there are very different taxes charged in Canada vs. in the US. Also, I wanted to incorporate the Cascading Style Sheets from the other pages into the shopping cart, as visitors to websites like the feeling of continuity they get when the pages are the same...and they don't feel like they've been thrust off to another site which they may not feel comfortable with.

	www.guesswhofans.com: A website that I run, and maintain, and test new web design skills on. Pages include a php-based bulletin board that I configured for 400+ board members to converse on, concert listings, a complete discography, and many pages of concert photos, most of which I took.

	Mirror Doodle: First of all, I was enamored of this unique product, and considered myself lucky to have been selected to create its debut website. While there are growing pains with any new company, my clients were very thorough and had truly thought things out. It was a joy to work with them. Alas, the website is no longer active and I don't know what happened to this wonderful product. Once again, I used the Agora Shopping Cart because of its robustness, its configurablity, and its affordability. And I thank all of the people on the Agora Bulletin Boards for their help getting a slew of enhancements to work.

	BMF Productions: A Flash intro was needed for this website. A short internet "commercial", if you will, to explain all of the services offered by this entertainment and production company. I offered several options to the viewers: the ability to start and stop the movie to read more throughly; the ability to click on any of the buttons at the left to see that segment of the movie again; and the ability to just skip the intro and enter the website.

	Speedway Racing Tours: Yet another website that is just gone. The goal of this website redesign was to create a more dynamic, exciting website, while making it more sales oriented and friendly. A Flash "commercial" was created for the home page to elicit enthusiasm and excitement about attending races, while explaining the services that Speedway Racing Tours provides. Problems encountered and fixed along the way on the old site were java scripting errors and scripts that didn't function correctly. Click here to see what this page looked like before the redesign.

	O & P Enterprises, Inc.: A very simple informational web page about this company, and their philosophies, established primarily so that interested parties can contact them easily. Included designing the logo.

	Healing Chi Therapeutic Bodyworks: The goals of this site redesign were: a) to create an ambiance more akin to the experience of having a massage; b) to break up the informative text via composition and the addition of photography; c) to promote sales and become more search-engine friendly; and d) to make the site easy to navigate. The project included re-creating the logo and all site photography. Click here to see what the home page looked like before the redesign. Note: The client decided to dabble in his own web design once I was finished, so the live website doesn't match exactly what I had designed.

	Shabby Chic Boutique, presented by Flying Dollar: This was an e-commerce website for a client who had only been selling via Ebay. I recommended Agora Cart for the shopping cart area, as it is a very robust program, and it was free to the client. I enjoy passing savings like this along to my clients. I included a search feature, discount coupons, "more information" on products, and a larger imaged when the thumbnail image was clicked on. Another instance where the client decided to have someone else make changes to the design after I was done, which altered the effectiveness of the design. In my design, the navigation was at the upper left of the page for ease of use for the customer. Now, navigation flows down the left side of the page, forcing customers to scroll, scroll, scroll for information. Oh well!

	Cats And Dogs: This website is for a Toronto-based pop/rock band, Cats And Dogs. Due to timeliness of information (upcoming concerts) as well as the length of time it takes to be listed on various search engines, I wanted to get pages out there even as they were being worked on. The page pictured is the photos page. An interesting challenge, using three separate Flash files to call images, and keep load times down for those on dial-up connections. When a page number is clicked, thumbnail images for that page are displayed. When a thumbnail is clicked, the large image appears. The song files are uploaded, the guest book and forum now work, and most of the site is functional. Alas, the band and the website are out of commission.

	www.matchupsingles.com: Another example of an excellent idea that was never totally successful for whatever reason. Many years ago, a very astute man had the idea to ask people looking to find others to date to ask a range of pertinent questions about many areas of their lives, and match up people based on the mathematical weights given to their answers. He created both a hand-held device to be used when face-to-face with other people, and a website version of this questionaire to be used on an online dating site. Since then, other dating sites have implemented questionaires like this to facilitate matches. I'm sorry, Ed. I was behind your innovative ideas every step of the way.

	Dance instruction video website The goal of this redesign was to create a more professional-looking, sales-oriented home page, while still tying in with the rest of the site. Flash was utilized, once again, to take advantage of the prime real estate of the home page, and give an overview of all products being sold. Click here to see what the home page looked like before the redesign. The headline was "Partner Dancing" and no where did it say that the thrust of the site was to sell learn-to-dance-videos. And click here to see what the site looks like now, after not paying me for 20 hours of my time, when I only billed for 6 hours, and they plagiarized my ideas/expertise, from changing the site title to match mine, to changing the headline to match mine, to putting all the links on the left as I had done, etc. In any case, this ex-client is the reason that I now request a 50% deposit up front...because what you are paying me for is my knowledge and expertise in selling products and services. I can't repossess that once I have utilized my precious time and shared my expertise.

	www.castlesuperstores.com: I was employed by Castle Superstores from November, 1996 through December, 1998, to help create an e-commerce website for this company. The first stage was to have a static website online, with select products for sale, while the database-driven, MS Merchant Server website was in development, which was a hugely expensive project. Eventually, we reached the goal of having over 5,000 products online and available for sale. We did achieve over $1 million in online sales.

This document last modified: Monday, 10-May-2010 16:32:12 MDT