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Website Design

We approach web development and website implementations with your organization from a slightly different perspective than a typical website design firm. We strive to work in an evolutionary way appropriate to organizational scale and client levels of technical knowledge. We want our clients to be successful on the web and enjoy the project process.  More >>

ParentsCAN
the andrew mistler FOUNDATION

Web design in our firm is treated as another method of business or technology coaching. It is one of our checklist points for capacity building and often the first tangible way we are able to sit down with a firm and work with them on business and marketing issues in a strategic way. Many organizations we work with are on limited budgets, know they need a website or a website update but often started down their business path without a clear strategy or an easy to articulate mission or vision for their website. Sometimes they have lost access to their website due to staff or vendor transitions or are overwhelmed with other tasks in their organization or afraid to even begin the project because of the technical learning curve.

Our methodology will help you feel comfortable undertaking a web project. The process we undertake with our organizations uses the web design process to collaboratively find a common language for detailing a business strategy and solving organizational needs that make sense for the client and the target market they are trying to reach with their website. As we work together, we usually find other ways to help our clients that provide meaningful long range solutions in a variety of business areas. The "website" project is sometimes just a first step.

Here are a few case studies of some of our successful website projects:

The Mistler's came to us not really knowing where to start with their project but knew they wanted to "tell their story" in a meaningful way. We evaluated their domain name ideas and listened carefully and intuitively to their program vision over several months ... this website design was the initial result delivered in time for their second fundraiser. We had fun integrating and animating the butterfly graphic they brought to us. We worked with a sound engineer to tighten up the gallery page audio loop.

This entrepreneur was not ready for a full multi-page site, but wanted to take his marketing to the next level for a fast approaching tradeshow. He knew that he wanted to add pages later and also maintain some control over updating his own work portfolio as he finished renovation projects. Using a combination of his own photos and some stock graphics kept the project affordable, creating an elegant one-page site with buttons that can easily link to future page development for his website at a later time but for now just link to anchors on other areas of the page. We also implemented a photo gallery using open source tools that he can easily update in the evenings. The gallery feeds back to a nice slideshow widget on the site keeping this very small site reasonably fresh.

This project started as an ordinary site cloning and web conversion project of "frames" to SEO-friendly "CSS and tables" with an enormous amount of technical content updating involved (60 plus pages). This firm's target market is focused on North America and some of the content still had some German language links to the parent company as well as page titles and alt tags in German that did not help their U.S. marketing efforts. In addition to coaxing fresh news from constantly traveling sales staff and developing new PR content for the site, we have been working with the staff to (1) improve product graphics without revealing product design trade secrets, (2) determine more logical sub-navigation landing pages to allow for improved load time for the video widget integration, and (3) to also maintain an adequate amount of written content for accurate product education as well as balance keyword density.

Aranelle Consulting also developed very detailed "contact us" forms with spam-protecting CAPTCHA encryption for two of the sales departments. Initial client prospects appreciate these forms as they are able to send measurements to the sales staff to articulate their technical needs and questions. Niche prospects, to our amazement, do fill the forms out completely (indicating customer trust in the site) and sales inquiries have increased according to staff.

Buying Dreamweaver software licenses through TechSoup is extremely affordable for nonprofit organizations. This is what we have been encouraging nonprofit organizations to do that receive a one time grant for site development, cannot afford ongoing professional web site maintenance nor an expensive monthly proprietary CMS package but want something more flexible than a blog or less cluttered than a social media site. Our tactic is usually to build simple, uncomplicated HTML sites that are not locked by another program (like Contribute) and empower staff to take care of their own site after basic coaching. We offer rescue services for folks that get in over their heads and need some guidance and are happy to make site corrections from back up files. However, we have never had an org like Girls Inc. grasp our 1-hour telephone training about "Get" & "Put" in Dreamweaver editing software and run with it so quickly. These women in Wayne County have taken good care of their site and have some pretty amazing "Girl Power!" going on.

Personal Counseling Service, Inc.
www.pcs-counseling.org

Personal Counseling Service, Inc. asked us at the end of their Compassion Capital strategic planning project to use their remaining consulting hours to quickly freshen up their website built in Front Page. It had been neglected and not updated for a couple of years and lacked warmth. They wanted to incorporate the feel of their calming "beach" graphics from their brochure, eliminate some poor stock image choices by prior staff and an old-fashioned forward<->backward navigational structure, but keep it in Front Page for a little bit longer and maybe learn how to update it themselves. We built it quickly and ran out of time to fully polish the design, but it has helped them with improved organizational credibility in their public relations transition.

Due to the workload of their Capital Campaign now underway for their 50th Anniversary, they have passed updating tasks back to us and want to make it a more sophisticated CSS site. We are working on a fresher, more readable design for them appropriate to their upcoming milestone. Stay tuned for the new look and feel. We will post it here.

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OLD Front Page Site	Transition Site	New Site Coming Soon!

We have grown significantly this year (our fifth year!) and are managing various levels of technology aspects for about 45 domains presently across the U.S. We strive to improve our skills constantly and enjoy keeping up with new tech features that we can let clients know about. Some of our projects are simple, occasional web maintenance, some are in complex stages of web development. We have several other confidential sites currently under re-development that we will post here soon after they are launched.

Other interesting websites and blogs we have designed or are nurturing:

www.parentscan.org
www.napanonprofits.org
www.stmatthiasanglicanparish.org
www.strieterlegalnurse.com
www.wolfecenter.org
www.daffodilcreations.com
www.bathblest.com
www.edrtable.org
www.odncincy.org
www.deerfieldcondo-rama.com
www.blueoceanfacilities.com
www.lpmelectric.com

Recently won bids for full redevelopment:

www.covenanttocare.org
www.youthcount.com
www.erniesgarage.com
www.acsky.com
www.solarparents.org
www.kentonboonebni.com

Sites scheduled for a spruce ups on a spare Saturday:

www.rivercitydollmakers.com (CMS is migrating to a blog format)
www.dollmaker.biz (Blog redesign and Ad-word planning in development)

Other website development and other consulting project samples can be found on our Portfolio page.

Give us a call at 859.441.3896 to discuss your website changes or needs.