As we’ve been building websites here at Chris Strom, LLC, we’ve been building up a small collection of handy cut-and-paste pre-made HTML snippets.  After awhile, we figured they weren’t doing much good just sitting on their hard drive between projects, so we’ve built a site to put them onto the web and share them with the world: HTML-Assets.com

We’ve got pre-made code for various HTML dropdown menus like selecting one’s age, selecting US states, selecting countries, selecting time zones, and so on — I mean, who really wants to type out all 200+ countries of the world by hand into an HTML select box?  We’ve also got a selection of HTML Lorem Ipsum text pre-cut into various paragraph and list formats, pre-made HTML markup for CSS dropdown menus, and Javascript code snippets.

We also have a pre-built HTML “skeleton page” that we use as the starting point for every web page we build.  It comes with a 960 pixel fixed-width canvas that aut0-centers in the web browser and automatically stretches vertically to fill the browser screen regardless of how much content it is filled with.  It also comes with a pre-made <ul> footer menu that auto-sticks to the bottom of the browser screen.

We’ll continue to add to this site over time, so be sure to visit every now and then to see what’s new.  Also, if you’ve got ideas on additional time-saving code snippets to add, leave us a comment below or drop us a line and let us know!

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Our finished Cavendish Scott website redesign

Cavendish Scott is a Denver-based company that specializes in ISO management system consulting, auditing and training.  They have a large client base and offer a wide range of business services, and needed a correspondingly large website overhaul to match the scope of their business activities.  Their previous website had become very dated both visually and technologically, and years of hodgepodge maintenance by many different people had left it in need of a comprehensive restart.  When we took on this project, the first thing we did was plan out an overhaul of the site’s information architecture, breaking it down into four categories:

• Our Services
• Our Company
• About ISO
• Contact Us

As we were planning the information architecture, we noticed that most of the current site’s content focused mostly on talking about the company itself, with little written about how they could help the customer.  So we made sure to boost the amount of content in the Our Services section as well, to increase the focus on serving the customers’ needs.  The “Our Services” section was further divided down into three separate categories, based on the company’s three main areas of business: ISO consulting, ISO auditing and ISO Training.

After we had the site’s new information architecture planned out, our redesign process followed our standard web design workflow: Visual design, followed by XHTML/CSS template construction, followed by development and implementation.  We focused heavily on the homepage during the visual design page.  It would be fairly content-heavy: there would be a company introduction, a recent news section, a newsletter signup form, a Featured Services area, and more.  We worked heavily on taking this information and presenting it in a visually effective manner, with a clear hierarchy of information — something that would draw the site visitors in to learn more, rather than overwhelming them and turning them away.  We made an eye-catching introductory paragraph and accompanying graphic at the top of the page, along with a prominent portion of screen real estate dedicated to Cavendish Scott’s current featured services.  We focused heavily on featuring strong calls to action — a large percentage of the page’s prime real estate is dedicated to quick-links to featured areas of the site.

Strong calls to action on the site's homepage

Another key consideration during the visual development phase was the appropriate use of color: we focused on achieving the right balance between using enough color to balance out the site’s text-heavy content, without making it look excessively bright and loud — this was a professional business-to-business site, not the Cartoon Network.

Effective use of color livens up the text-heavy content

The site’s development and implementation was similarly involved, with the site needing a good amount of custom functionality.  The homepage’s newsletter signup form was programmed to plug directly into the client’s iContact.com newsletter software API, with built-in form validation and confirmation emails to the client.  The website’s News section is powered by a WordPress engine, with a custom homepage script to pull and display headlines from the several most recent postings.  In addition, we built custom functionality into the training schedule page, so that users could quick-link from every class listed on the training schedule right to either its accompanying class registration form or to an appropriately auto-completed contact form to request more information.  On the training registration form, we used AJAX functionality in order to dynamically update the available course dates as users changed between the different training courses offered.

Quick-links to the appropriate auto-completed signup and contact forms

AJAX functionality powers dynamically updated input fields

The finished project was a resounding success and a huge upgrade to the company’s website presence.  We were pleased to be able to work with Cavendish Scott on such a seminal project for their company, and look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.

You can see the finished site here:

www.CavendishScott.com

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The new LCMS New Jersey District website

We recently launched a redesign and re-implementation of the website for the New Jersey District of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS).  They had a district convention coming up in June and they wanted to overhaul their site in preparation for that event.  The project spec had three main objectives:

• A visual redesign with a more professional look
• An easy-to-use content management system to allow the district office staff to be able to easily add and update the site content
• The ability for the district staff to continue using their existing web-based tools on the new website: Picasa photo galleries, Google calendars, Constant Contact e-newsletters, email, etc.

The original LCMS New Jersey District website

We broke the project down into four phases:

• Site re-organization and information architecture planning: The original website, after years of organic growth, had inconsistent organization of its content.  Working with the district, we planned out a new top-to-bottom re-organization of all the site pages, divided by category.  For instance, “Missions,” “Stewardship,” “LWML,” and “Conferences & Conventions” were all moved into sub-pages of “Ministries.” We also planned out the major content and interface elements of each page type: Homepage, Menu pages, Body pages, Blog pages, etc.
• Graphic design, layout, and look-and-feel: We produced several proposed mockups of a redesigned homepage layout and discussed them with the client.  Once we had the homepage visual design finalized, we used it as a basis to design the other site pages.
• Building XHTML/CSS Templates: With the look-and-feel for all the site pages planned out, we built XHTML/CSS templates for each of the major page types, ready to be implemented into a content management system.
• Implement the site on a suitable content management system: We researched various content management systems that would be powerful enough to meet the needs of the client, but still simple enough for them to be able to easily pick up and use.  In addition, due to budgetary considerations, we also wanted to use an open source solution.  We ended up selecting SilverStripe, an open-source, PHP/MySQL-based system. Daniel Bergquist handled the development and implementation of the site, converting our XHTML files into SilverStripe templates, and building in all the functionality that the site needed.  We wrote additional CSS as needed to cover all content contingencies, and corresponded with the client during the process.

The design for the site's menu pages

The design for the site's body pages

The new site launched on June 3, 2009, just in time for the district convention.  It was the biggest site that we’ve worked on yet, both in size and functionality.  It included such things as embedded Picasa photo slideshows, an embedded calendar, a dynamically updated homepage news feed, and multiple blogs with RSS feeds.  You can see the finished website here:

www.njdistrict.org

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Peter Strom's official website

We recently launched the official website for Peter Strom, a Denver-area singer and guitarist.  The site’s main purpose is promotional, with a short introduction, Pete’s repertoire, client testimonials, and song samples, with a call to action to a contact form.  As it is a small site, we were able to spend some time making a more complex and visually interesting layout than would be possible for a large, content-heavy website.  In particular, we focused on pushing the CSS code to create higher-end typography usually only seen in print media.  The visual design is based off of the logo and color scheme we designed for Pete a few years back.  We were also able to take the time to build some nice illustrative effects on the navbar buttons as well.  It was a fun project and a good change of pace from some of the larger website projects that we’re currently working on.

Wow, things have been busy around here recently.  Lots of work flying around these days it seems like.  One of our most recent projects was designing the identity, branding and website for ClearPivot, LLC, a Denver-based startup company that specializes in marketing metrics and analysis applications.

CLEAR = transparency in numbers, encouraging other parties to view and interpret the data, not hiding anything; open
PIVOT = swiveling from the data to the business (& back); the data provides information on the programs which in turn should align with the business goals; flexible; versatile
CLEAR + PIVOT= CLEARPIVOT

First part of the project was designing the corporate logo.  Working with ClearPivot’s CEO, Greg Davoll, we worked up many different possible logo drafts and discussed them with him.  During the creative process, we started out with rather complex logo design drafts but gradually began migrating towards more minimal, understated designs that concisely expressed the meaning of ClearPivot.  Finally we arrived at the current logo:

The final ClearPivot logo design

The clean simplicity of the logo illustrates the clear, open and transparent nature of ClearPivot’s product and business philosophy. The stylized “P,” of course, represents swiveling and pivoting, illustrating ClearPivot’s marketing metrics philosophy of aligning marketing data with business goals, which in turn pivots back to more marketing data.

After the logo was finalized, the next step was designing and building the website.  (As the web is increasingly becoming the foundation of companies’ marketing strategies, corporate websites are more and more the first priority when building a marketing campaign, second only to the brand identity itself.)

As with the logo, we increasingly focused on producing a clean, understated, yet still eye-catching site.  We decided on a color combination of predominantly white, gray and blue, (with a few other highlight colors for good measure) and a very organic feel in the visual forms.

The homepage for www.ClearPivot.com

The website is both visually and structurally flexible enough to grow with the company—as ClearPivot expands its range of products and services, so too can the website expand with additional content.  In addition, we paid special attention to the top banner on the homepage: focusing on bold marketing points, an attention-grabbing visual design, and strong calls to action (See It, Try It, Contact Us).

So come check out ClearPivot at www.ClearPivot.com.  As always, we’d love to hear some feedback: you can write to us on our contact form, or just leave a comment below.

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