Over the last couple of weeks we launched two projects of note that turned out exceptionally well. Our thanks to Xgaming and EACEF for letting us be a part of their new website projects. Both clients are fantastic to work with.

Xgaming

• Project details
• Visit website

EACEF

• Project details
• Visit website

We had the great pleasure of launching a number of projects over the course of April, and three of them recently landed in our portfolio.

Vigilant Investments

Visit this site in a new window
Read about the project

The Noticer Project

Visit this site in a new window
Read about the project

The Salon Professional Academy

Visit this site in a new window
Read about the project

Around here we just LOVE company names with numbers in them. Chalk that up to all the good domains being taken. Studio430 is the home of Jared McDaniel, one of my very closest friends, and the guy behind about 98% of the design work we do. Jared makes all of us look good.

Several months ago, we started working on a new site for his company, which also does unbelievable identity/branding, packaging and print work. Studio430.com is the result.

It's always fun to do a site every once in a while that can be a little more edgy and unique, so we decided to go horizontal. It was really fun, but doing horizontal layouts is not for the faint of heart. Be warned!

From the screenshot, you may notice a new and improved Project83 logo. I'm really excited about how our company is growing, and look forward to finishing some on-site remodeling in the near future as well.

So check out Jared's site and be sure to consider Studio430 for your next big print or branding project!

Although we have been hard at work on various projects over the last several months, the Showcase area of our website has been neglected. Today it gets a minor update with 2 projects that have launched recently

Ergonomics Made Easy

This was a really fun and challenging project for us, as it is probably the most advanced eCommerce integration we have done thus far from beginning to end. The company (obviously) sells products for people in some sort of pain at work. They sell everything from keyboards to foot rests to office furniture. Here is a quick before/after comparison:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Merchant Plus

I had the privilege of sharing an office with the swell people that run this company over the summer in New York. Merchant Plus is OUR merchant provider, and services thousands of other companies with the BEST in customer service. It was a real pleasure work with them on the new site.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Today I posted three new showcase sites that we launched in the last couple of months. Amazingly, all three sites are for individuals. Two own very successful consulting companies, and one is a renowned speaker and New York Times bestselling author.

Heartprints Adoption

Heartprints Adoption is the company of Sharon Brani, and she is fully dedicated to helping to-be parents navigate the complicated waters of the adoption process. Through many years of experience, she also shares excellent advice and information about adoption on her blog. It was a pleasure working with her, and a company doing such good work for people.

Lampion Consulting

Lampion is the company of Paul Heagen, a seasoned and very experienced corporate consultant. He works directly with CEOs and leaders of major corporations (Verizon, Disney and Cisco to name a few), and helps them communicate better with employees, shareholders and customers through a number of services. Paul is also an author, with a book called Real Owls Don't Bark available from his website.

Andy Andrews

Andy was one of our very first clients three years ago (still one of our favorites!), and his accomplishments are far too lengthy to begin listing in a couple simple paragraphs. He is a New York Times bestselling author, corporate speaker to virtually every major company you can think of, and more recently has begun blogging (thanks to some gentle prodding from us).

This project was a re-align (for a definition, see this article) from the previous version of the site, improving functionality, focusing on a couple main objectives and moving the whole site to our Springboard content management platform. We could not be more pleased with how it turned out!!

This past month, we had the opportunity to finish up a couple of really great projects . . .

Chris Rice Store

We love working on eCommerce projects, and the Chris Rice store was no exception. Chris is a fantastic musician, and an even better guy to be around. Quite simply, the main objective was not to stray very far from his current website design (done by our friends at Visual Inventor), but to still create something fresh and easy to use. This project is running an early version of our Springboard store platform, which is coming along very nicely. Enough talk, here's a screenshot and link to the site . . .

Premiere Speakers Bureau

Another one of our projects that just launched is for Premiere Speakers Bureau. Premiere works with the very best public speakers in the business, and their company is second to none in that business. They are very professional from top to bottom. We worked with them to design and code 4 templates, then handed it off to John McGary and his team to implement with their current system. They did a really nice job, and it was fun working with them. Here is a before and after look of how things turned out on the home page . . .

PremiereSpeakers.com (before)

PremiereSpeakers.com (after)

This month we had the opportunity to launch 2 websites that we really enjoyed working on: Carlton Financial Group and Best-Selling Author.

Carlton Financial Group

This website is definitely among the more simple designs we have done, but I think it really turned out well and represents just what our client was looking for. The main objective was to provide educational information about insurance services the company provides, and to encourage potential customers to touch base for a quote. Insurance in itself can be confusing and daunting for people to get into, which is why we really wanted to keep things lightweight, simple and super-easy to use. The whole site really browses nicely, and has some really useful functionality to help people.

Best-Selling Author

Our team gets really fired up about doing e-commerce websites. There are so many things to consider when building an effective shopping cart that maximizes conversions, and this store turned out to be a fantastic example. Despite other great features and functionality on the site, if it does not help to convert sales, it is unsuccessful for our client. Although there is some debate in e-commerce circles about the effectiveness of multi-step checkouts versus one-step checkouts, we thought a one-step checkout was best for this site. Once customers click the "checkout" button from the cart page, it's just one page to complete the order. Thus far, it has been very effective. The cart is run by our in-house Springboard store software, so order fulfillment and customer management is a snap for the client.

This week we had the opportunity to launch a really fun project for a world-renowned photographer named Peter Nash. He has taken some very well-known shots of people like Sheryl Crow, Johnny Cash, Julia Roberts, Emmylou Harris and Kenny Chesney just to name a few. What makes Peter unique is that he made a decision to do something he was truly passionate about. His passion is to photograph dogs. As you will see, his work is phenomenal, and it was awesome creating a website to showcase his work. This project was a little different for us, because the art was not in the design. It was the photographs. Our job was to create a simple design that got out of the way, so users could enjoy the photos. As with every project, we learned a lot and we are really proud of how it turned out. There's only so much I can say about this site-it's just something you have to see to appreciate. My favorite thing about it is obviously the galleries. A huge THANKS goes out to JonDesign and their SmoothGallery script, which we customized for Peter Nash Dogs. So go ahead and check it out! Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments.

We recently launched a really fun project for MauiSales.com. This company is one of the top real estate firms in Maui, Hawaii and it was really great working with them. Our team learned a ton along the way, and we are very proud of the final product.

In addition to the design and layout, we also did a custom XML database integration so that users could dynamically search the Maui

on the site. We designed and built this integration from scratch, and it has a number of features that are unlike any other Maui real estate website. Such as:

• Users can search for properties from nearly any page on the site
• Once a search is done, users can easily narrow and sort their search, or just start over
• Each listing has an available "printable version" for beautiful printing
• Not to mention, we think it looks great and is really easy for people to use

Try the search out for yourself, it's a lot of fun looking at the amazing homes and condos available for purchase in Maui.

Web Standards and SEO are Friends

One thing that was a major priority for this client was search engine optimization. In a highly competitive real estate market,

is a great way to gain an edge. Since we create all our sites using web standards, the new design is creating instant results. Thanks to some really clean code and fantastic work from Alex at VKI Studios, MauiSales.com is already receiving more traffic, and moving up in some really popular search terms. If you don't believe me, just search for "Maui Real Estate" on google. MauiSales.com is the #1 result. We already have some additional features scheduled for this site that are just awesome, so keep checking back.

Recently we launched another project for a client we are very excited about, the Nancy Quarcelino School of Golf. This school, located south of Nashville, TN, has two incredible teachers that are among the best in America at what they do. My favorite part of the site is the functionality of the navigation/sub-navigation area. Designers can hardly ever go wrong from a usability standpoint in using some form of tabbed navigation, because it is instantly familiar to most computer users. The tabs, combined with a bright sub-navigation on interior pages made for a simple structure that is painfully easy to use. Note the use of "active" and "rollover" states with each link, which also gives the user more certainty with navigation.

To give this project a little perspective, here is a screenshot of their site before the redesign, and then of the final design we went live with.

Homepage (before)

Homepage (after)