Case Studies

Below are some samples of our work in web site makeovers. Pick an image for a larger view.

Dinners on Demand

The client already had a web site, but it was constructed in a graphics editor which made it suitable for print media, but it did not adapt well to web media. It was graphics-intensive, slow to load, and not very search engine friendly.

The fixed-size background graphics did not adjust to various type sizes, and resulted in overlapping images and text making it partly unreadable, not to mention unattractive. Or in the words of the client, “on your browser it looks like pure crapola”.

The page template and graphics were overhauled to correct these problems. In addition, all of the contact information at the bottom of the page was converted from pictures of text to plain text, styled to give the same visuals as before. As graphics, that information had been hidden from search engines and it could now be indexed.

The client had been hesitant to eliminate these graphics, fearful that plain text would be “boring” and not suit the rest of the design. Her comment afterward was, “You were right, plain text looks perfectly fine!”

Visit Dinners on Demand.

Chef En Route

The client had made her own web site using Microsoft Publisher, which is without doubt one of the worst tools for making web pages. Her main concern was the site not showing up in search engine results.

After a short inspection, the site was found to be only usable in Internet Explorer. In addition, the home page could take well over 30 seconds to load due to the enormous amount of MS-proprietary cruft that Publisher adds.

Much of the page content was in graphics, which did not display in browsers other than Internet Explorer. Search engines likely ignored the site due to extreme code bloat. The original home page, including graphics, weighed in at 290KB.

The new home page, including graphics, is less than 22KB, a reduction of over 90%, and loads in less than 10 seconds on dial-up. The new design is more inviting, the site is now usable in any browser, and is in Google's top 10 for select key words (it's #1 for some phrases).

Disclaimer: Search engine rankings are dependent on several things and there is no guarantee that every site will get similar results.

Visit Chef En Route.