Peacock Production Studios will be posting case studies detailing the many websites that we have developed and maintained over the years. From logo design through the latest upgrades, we will provide an in-depth look at the various processes involved in developing and maintaining a professional website. We begin our series looking at PicnicTables.com which was the first website we developed for our client’s “Franchise Ecommerce Websites”.
| Logo Design |
When developing a website from scratch, the first step in the process is to design a logo. A logo can be colorful or gray, playful or serious, simple or complex. Depending on the style that is selected by the client, it will drive the layout and “feel” for the website. The directive for the logo design of PicnicTables.com was pretty straight-forward. The client was looking for a simple, colorful design. The obvious choice was, you guessed it, a picnic table! After many iterations, the green and yellow color scheme was chosen in an attempt to capture the feel of the outdoors.
The logo was designed in Adobe Illustrator in a vector format so that it could be used for marketing campaigns, print advertising, etc. It is extremely important to create your logo in a format that is easily transferrable across various media sources. The logo is the first step in creating a company’s brand and we strive to make it as easy as possible for our clients to use their logo in whatever marketing campaigns may arise in the future.
| Website Design |
Once the logo was selected we had a visual marketing brand to work with. In order to help brand establishment, we styled the interface to match the chosen logo. Due to this being the first website of many for this client, the design was created with these other websites in mind in order to maintain a consistent feel. There are a number of different ways to create Websites. While some may choose to hand draw a concept and then start coding HTML, we take a more graphical approach to the design and layout using Photoshop. The designing of the interface is very important for usability. If a visitor to your site can’t easily locate your content or if the layout is confusing to them, they will leave your website. With any new design, you must plan ahead. This will enable you to adapt to any changes that arise quickly and easily. PicnicTables.com in particular has many products and images. With that in mind, special attention during the design process was given to facilitate fast loading pages. Also, knowing that there would eventually be “sister” websites, we focused on creating a design that would work across multiple products.
| Website Construction |
After the website design was complete we then cut the design into web based code using HTML, CSS & jQuery. Using well-defined Meta, h1 and h2 tags, the code was written to be search engine friendly. During this process, the basic colors for the website were created. Again, using the selected logo as our guide, we created the site in green and yellow to keep a consistent feel throughout the website.
PicnicTables.com is an e-commerce website so during the construction of the site, particular focus was given to creating a shopping cart. The shopping cart for PicnicTables.com contains many features, including credit card processing, real-time shipping rates, order receipt page and e-mail and the flexibility to modify your product.
| Custom Programming |
You may think that after a website is developed and pushed into production that the work is done. This is definitely NOT the case. As PicnicTables.com attracted more and more customers, many enhancements were requested from our client. These include, but are not limited to:
Promotion and Banner Management
Dynamic Content
Product Search
Google Analytics Tracking
Sitemap.xml
Testimonials
Reviews
Canadian Shipping
As of the time of this posting, all of the above enhancements have been completed except for promotion and banner management. One of the next major upgrades includes promotion and banner management.
| Search Engine Optimization |
Even if you have the coolest website in the world, it doesn’t do much good if potential customers can’t find it. In order for a business to prosper on the internet, they must be ranked high in search engines. Early in the development process, Peacock Production Studios pays close attention to optimizing websites for search engines. By utilizing dynamic sitemaps, static product page names and keywords (along with our trade secrets), we make your site attractive to search engine spiders. While nobody can guarantee a #1 ranking, we constantly are working on maintaining a search engine friendly site. Currently, when you search “picnic tables”, PicnicTables.com is thirdth result in Yahoo and 6th result in Google. These are impressive rankings considering all of the businesses that sell picnic tables. In fact, PicnicTables.com is ranked higher than Lowe’s and Target!
In closing, PicnicTables.com has been a huge success. As with any successful Ecommerce site, there are continuous upgrades and enhancements. Not only are these upgrades requested by the client, but you must stay ahead of the technology curve and try to beat your competitors to the latest and greatest features. Again, PicnicTables.com was the first franchise Ecommerce website we created. We have successfully mirrored this site for 9 other franchise sites.
