Website Design Clients
Sunraise Printing, Hadley, MA
Sunraise Printing in Hadley, MA provides a wide range of printing services, including offset printing, short-run and full color digital output, signs and vehicle and window lettering, screen printing and embroidery. The previous site was an ambitious ecommerce version which was difficult to maintain or update, largely invisible to search engines, and generated almost no sales or visitors. The new version went back to basics, stressing a clean interface utilizing SEO techniques to increase visibility to Sunraise's target customer base, and a modular design which allows new content to be added in a logical way. A simple php-based online ordering system for UMass faculty and staff to order business cards was added in 2009, and the entire site changed from html to php in 2010. Traffic has more than doubled during the past two years, and the site now appears organically on the first page of Google for many relevant searches.
PioneerValley.info, Easthampton, MA
This is a site I've been working on just for myself - no client involved. It is intended to be an overall resource for people, places and things in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, since there doesn't currently seem to be a single site to serve that purpose. Given how many new people move here each year (new enrollment at UMass Amherst each year is more than the population of many local towns!), I think it could be very useful. As a plus, it gives me a reason to get out my camera and make day trips - something I don't do often enough! I experimented with making the site Drupal-based, but converted it to WordPress in December, 2009. Either CMS allows visitors to add content and participate in forums, but given my time constraints, I find WordPress much easier to maintain. I could really use some writers and photographers to help add content - if you're interested, contact me.
Jane Hanson Productions, Easthampton, MA
Jane Hanson Productions of Easthampton provides musical theatre production and direction and the Summer Musical Theater Intensive and Summer Vocal Music Academy camps. The Proficient Musician offers individual and masterclass vocal and choral instruction and lessons. The original site was created by a graphic designer lacking HTML experience. The redesign involved re-doing the logo to sit on the black background (previously, it appeared as a white 'box' on top of the dark background), implementing templates and CSS styles to make updates and future design changes easier, re-organizing the structure, expanding the navigation, and incorporating a 'hide email' script to reduce spam. Basic SEO techniques were implemented which should result in much more traffic.
Hilltown Land Trust, Huntington, MA
The Hilltown Land Trust is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving agricultural and rural land in Franklin and Hampshire County. This is a complete redesign and expansion of their old site, which consisted of six pages and no images. Due to the completely volunteer nature of the organization, I received very little direction on how to proceed with the redesign and content development, which I developed with the target audience in mind. Since this is a land trust, I felt images would be important, and solicited several from board members, as well as using my own photography. However many of the Hilltowns do not have high-speed internet access, so the site is also designed to load quickly. In addition, search engine optimization techniques were implemented which have resulted in an average 10x increase in visitors since the site was re-done in August 2007, allowing many more people to find out about the organization and land trusts in general.
Landtrust Database System
Originally developed with the Hilltown Land Trust, this is a PHP/MySQL online database system which allows a landtrust to maintain a comprehensive database of their client properties, including property and deed information, contacts, conservation restrictions and monitoring reports. The database is intended to allow trusts in different states to configure it to their specific needs by making changes to a single file, and for small organizations without a central office to maintain it as a secure web-based system without the need for specialized hosting, accessible by any user on either Mac or PC without the purchase of additional software or extensive training. The system uses a secure registration and login, with administrator control to set permission levels and access to different parts of the database or editing and reporting functions.
Bindery in a Box, Northampton, MA
A smaller site used to promote and provide detailed information on a hand bookbinding system developed by Dea Sasso, owner of Light of Day Bindery, Northampton, MA.
Michael Kuch, Northampton, MA
The web site of the artist and fine arts bookmaker Michael Kuch, a protogé of the late Leonard Baskin. Includes images of Michael's paintings, sculpture and limited edition books, show information, and a CV. If you live in the Pioneer Valley you've probably seen his sphinx sculpture, which is on permanent display in downtown Northampton.
Chris St. Pierre Photography, Boston, MA
A portfolio site which uses Javascript to redirect viewers to two different versions, depending on their monitor resolution. Developed entirely via email with the client, who was living in France while the site was developed. Contains NO Flash, but does incoporate a javascript to show the status of loading images on the portfolio pages.
Jo Landers Business Services, Easthampton, MA
(this site)
This site, developed for my own business, is intended to provide resources and information useful to bookkeepers, business owners, and executive directors, while marketing my services. The original site was largely plain vanilla HTML and CSS, though the old verson of the Frequently Asked Bookkeeping Questions did incorporate a modified WordPress PHP/MYSQL database to provide searches and automatic cross-linking, while the What's the Real Cost of an Employee? page used javascript to perform real-time calculations and provide interactivity.
Although the old version of the site ranked high in organic searches, I realized that the navigation system didn't do enough to let visitors know what else was here. The current website makes greater use of php and javascript, and incorporates a menu system that highlights related content, replacing the links the old site used at the bottom of each page.