Website design is our bread and butter. We’ve been designing websites since 1999, which was the stone age compared to the sites that are being designed today. We switched to Content Management Systems (CMS) back in 2000, before “blogging” was even a term. WordPress started as a “blogging engine” but many of us saw the usefulness in using it as a full CMS. Always evolving and finally being recognized as a full CMS, it has won many awards including best Open Source CMS in 2009 and regularly beats out Drupal in comparisons.
Why so much talk about WordPress? Because it works. We can build you a great website, packed with features, great looking design and since it’s built on the WordPress platform you can easily have full control over your site, being able to edit every last word, any time you wish.
Some of the action packed features we offer are: A powerful location search engine so your customers can find your retail outlets, google map integration, live help desk integration for you to see who is on your site and be able to chat with them in real time all from your website, ecommerce integration, secure payment forms (SSL), social networking integration, awesome image galleries, facebook “like box” integration. Every website, no matter how small, gets built in contact forms, “image expansion gallery” and google analytics website traffic monitoring.
Below are some recent websites we
have designed for our awesome clients.
Beltway Buzz Online
BeltwayBuzzOnline.com
2011
Beltway Buzz Online is the online hub for the print publication we spend much of our time designing. This site is “tricked out” as much as it can. It is still built, like all our sites, on the WordPress platform. New articles are easily posted into the system using a multiple author system. It is tied in seamlessly with our Beltway Buzz Business Guide with a Business Guide search box on the front page. The site utilizes an advanced comments system, facebook integration, social networking buttons and many forms to help the production of the print edition run smoothly. All print editions of Beltway Buzz are available through the website using our online “page flipper” program. Beltway Buzz Online uses an advanced advertising system allowing for complete tracking of website ad clicks.
Beltway Buzz Online StoreStore.BeltwayBuzzOnline.com
2011
The Beltway Buzz Online Store is based on an online store system that is really simple to use. Although there is not much website design that went into the making of this store (although we hope to redesign in the future), it is important to note the simplicity of some online businesses that might at first thought seem like a huge investment. Our online store takes graphic designs and allows us to sell them on products from apparel to keychains. Orders are handled in a secure shop and each item is individually created and shipped. We’ve been in the webdesign and graphic design business a long time and know where to find the good shortcuts. If you have an idea that you are sure is going to be too big for your budget, contact us anyway, we might surprise you with a hidden gem.
Beltway Buzz Business GuideBeltwayBuzzOnline.com/Guide
2011-Present
Beltway Buzz Business Guide is a community based website featuring a top-of-the-line database program to power the many options and functions that go into this website. This system can be replicated for many uses, from niche markets to full listings for major cities. We can pull all the “yellow pages” information for businesses in a given area and set up free listings for your town or city. Businesses can then “claim” their listing and build their portfolio within the business guide site. Through businesses purchasing advertising, classified ads, advanced listing options, and much more, the investment on a site like this will pay for itself in no time. This system also features deep SEO options to make sure you’re at the top of your game.
North Country ShedsNorthCountrySheds.com
2011
North Country Sheds has a vast array of storage sheds, garages, cabins, pavilions, playhouses, swingsets and much more. This site is a showcase not only of their products but how well WordPress can easily organize a large site without making it feel overwhelmingly large. Finding exactly what you need is never more than two clicks away in an organized fashion. This site is secured with an SSL certificate, allowing them to take credit card information without a full e-commerce site for online down payments.
River View Outdoor ProductsRiverViewOutdoor.com
2011
River View Outdoor Products is open for business Thursday-Saturday at their local Amish market. They were looking for a way for potential customers to be able to find them the rest of the week. The one request I received from the owner was to make people go “wow!”. We tried to achieve the “wow” factor with a fun and lively slideshow showing off their many products and inserting gentle sales pushes along the way. The rest of the site needed to showcase the products they resell from various Amish manufacturers. We setup a “page flipper” online catalog environment for each catalog. This site also feature custom google map implementation and a contact form with spam protection.
Jones & Martin Auction & AppraisalsJonesandMartinAuctions.com
2011
Jones & Martin Auction & Appraisals was a fun challenge to build. They had an existing site from another designer that was difficult to update. They came to us asking if we could simplify the process and make listing new auctions as easy as possible for them. We implemented a few scripts that were already written allowing us to save a lot of time for the client and tweaked them to fit their needed perfectly. They now are able to update their website on their own. Through a simple auction posting process they change their main page, auction listing pages, google maps, image galleries and more, easily and efficiently.
Kurtz Truck BrokerageKurtzTruckBrokerage.com
2011
Kurtz Truck Brokerage came to us with one main need. They needed to be able to let their clients easily know what trucking runs were coming up and where they were headed. We shaped their website around this main need. We build custom map graphics for them and showed them how easy it is to update their own website within the WordPress platform. We putting the finishing touch on this website with each image being wrapped in a cardboard frame to match the nature of their shipping business. This website also features a contact form with spam protection.
Sports and Imports of Pasadena, MDSportsandImportsOnline.com
2011
Sports and Imports has been with us a many years now. They recently updated their website to tie in better with the car dealership inventory service they use for their vehicles. This is one of our simpler sites, being coded and designed from start to finish in just two days! This site features custom google maps integration, an easy to use contact form with spam protection, facebook and twitter integration and a few other tweaks to make it run a smoothly with their inventory as possible. LaFianza Design setup the company Facebook and Twitter accounts and were available for social networking advice and training.
Black Creek EnterprisesBlackCreekEnt.com
2011
Black Creek’s new website features a highly customized WordPress site design. We modeled the site design to match their brochure. It features some advanced functionality like requiring contact information to be entered before automatically starting a download of their current brochure, among other special requests. This site is great example of Level Three background replacement, where structures were photographed on the lot of the client and then carefully clipped into beautiful backgrounds that blend right in, as if the structures belong in those scenic spaces. Read more about background replacement for product photography here.
Lake Monticello Dining GuideDiningAtTheLake.com
2011-Present
Lake Monticello Dining Guide is a sister site to the Lake Monticello Business Guide. This site is an example of advanced CSS and Javascripting. This site style could just as easily have been for a single restaurant, featuring their menu and current specials. It is also worth noting here, that we do offer online order taking, just like the major pizza chains. We can build your website around a custom ordering program that will email or SMS orders to your restaurant. We have multiple check out options, including online processing. If you don’t have internet in your store, we can couple our service with a portable email device (Peek) to easily receive orders.
Trickling Springs CreameryTricklingSpringsCreamery.com
2010-2011
Trickling Springs Creamery is a site packed with features. Social websites are a big part of their marketing and tying these social sites into their company’s site was an important part. In addition to facebook and twitter button on each page, the news page features the facebook “like box”. The Find Our Products page uses a custom google map to find locations but also uses the very powerful location engine Ultimate Locator. We encourage you to test the location search to see just how powerful and what a great resource Ultimate Locator is for listing your company’s locations.
Woodhaven CottageTheWoodhavenCottage.com
2010
Woodhaven Cottage is a vacation rental nestled in the Pennsylvania mountains. This is an example of a relatively simple site. It features five pages, a functioning contact form that gets forward to your existing email address, or we can set one up for you at your new domain name. This size site can either be based on WordPress giving you complete control over your website or you can leave occasional website updates to LaFianza Design which, as in this case, was the more economical option. This and all of our sites incorporate an “image expander”, click on an of the images on this or any of our sites to see the background darken and the image expand to fill your screen. This is a great way for your viewers to get an up close view of what you’re displaying.