Website Design
Portfolio
These are examples of the websites I've designed. Many clients have been with me for more than 10 years, and each site has its own story to tell. They range from small websites whose only task is to inform or entertrain, to decidedly for-profit E-commerce websites capable of transforming the casual visitor into a satisfied customer using state-of-the-art security for handling credit card transactions and other private information. You'll find even more examples of my website designs below these featured sites.
Featured Website Designs
French Gifts Online Store
These Minneapolis-area entrepreneurs have been enormously successful selling French gift and home decor items for over 20 years. They had a retail store in a French-themed hotel in the area, and have also been selling online for many years. They contacted me because their site needed several different repairs and their previous web developer was no longer available. I solved their immediate problems, and went on to convert their site from osCommerce to Zen Cart to better showcase their products. I created a custom layout for their site, and have since been working with them on search engine marketing.
After 1 year, traffic to the site was up 20%, their order volume increased by 16%, and their total sales revenue increased by an amazing 93%! We're moving the site to a new mobile-friendly layout this year and fully expect to continue their growth in traffic and sales.
Chimney Service Minneapolis
A family-owned chimney repair and maintenance service in the south Minneapolis metro offering chimney inspections, cleaning, and repair. I updated their entire website from a bloated GoDaddy Webbuilder disaster and created a fast, lean, mobile-friendly website that works much better in today's online marketplace. I also provided a custom appointment request form that's easy to use and gives the company the vital information need to close a sale.
The re-design is new, but already showing strong signs of increased traffic to their site.
Home Improvement/Rennovation
This client is in the highly competitive home improvement business. The company specializes in vinyl siding, energy-saving patio doors and windows, and kitchen remodeling. They feature products from leading manufacturers, along with professional contracting services. The website is designed to have a dramatic first impression with a big, bold slideshow on the main page and a prominent display of their business certifications, with clear "call to action" navigation to encourage potential clients to request an in-home presentation.
The site includes a separate page for each area of home improvement services they provide, with details about the manufacturers and products they rely on. I also created a Customer Management System that lets the owner track appointments and generate sales reports. The site is still relatively new, but already performing so well that the client calls me at least once a month just to thank me for my help.
Custom Specialty Packaging
Cosmic Company is a leading producer of wholesale custom specialty packaging. They make boutique quality packaging for merchandise of all kinds, serving retailers, restaurants and delicatessens from coast-to-coast. They had an existing website that needed extensive internal software repairs, but their original design company disappeared. I was hired to repair several problems in the custom version of the osCommerce e-commerce software that supported their client management and order processing MySQL databases, and to eliminate nagging problems in their web design and EMail set-up.
I recently redesigned their website as shown here,
and rewrote the administration software to make it easier for their staff to use. I continue to
provide them with maintenance and new programming services to keep this website updated with new pricing and
security services. They are so satisfied with my work that they had me build a second separate website for
the company's new B2B food service packaging product line.
New Orleans Fishing Charters
Captain Billy was referred to me by another client in Louisiana. The website for his New Orleans Fishing Charter service needed a make-over. I brightened up the layout, designed a new logo, and added a slideshow to the main page that showcased customer testimonials. His rates are clearly displayed along with details of the acommodations he offers. With some added search engine marketing services I provided, he's doing very well even in the post-Katrina environment.
San Francisco Psychotherapist
Greg Brown has a psychotherapy practice in the San Francisco Bay area. He wanted a website that would be warm and inviting, and would let him share his approach to psychotherapy. The site includes many pages of information to help potential clients become familiar with the services he offers through his thriving practice.
As I often do for clients who offer personal services, I encouraged Dr. Brown to let me prominently display his photograph on the website's main page. Where the whole web seems to scream anonymity, nothing engenders trust and confidence in the medical field like a picture of the business owner.
Calgary Electrical Contractor
This family-owned electrical contracting company in Calgary, Alberta Canada had a website with several issues. The owner had originally designed his own site. It was visually unappealing and failed to clearly present the critical information that potential clients visiting the site would want to know. Fortunately, they had a professional advertisement created for their Yellow Pages ad, which I used as a foundation to give their site a facelift in a way that improved their brand recognition. I recently updated this website for mobile devices. It now automatically adjusts the display for smartphones, and tablets.
Swimming Pool Supplies/Maintenance
I gave this New Jersey swimming pool maintenance and supplies company a website that tells their whole story at a glance. It uses bold imagery with a simple layout that immediately gives the user all of the important information about the company - the who, what, where, and how of their services. Combined with some adept marketing, they do very well in their local market.
Wheelchairs & Mobility Products
A California medical supply business hired me to create this full-blown ECommerce website offering mobility assistance products like electric wheelchairs, scooters, walkers, canes, and other durable medical equipment and supplies. Their online shop features several categories of products and relies on my RainboCart© shopping cart software that is easy to operate and maintain. I also designed their logo.
The design uses big bold images of their primary product line of wheelchairs and scooters, with their toll-free telephone number prominently displayed to help instill trust, along with that touchstone of online shopping, a free shipping offer to promote sales. Also note the familiar navigation tabs to help visitors quickly locate the products they want to see.
Management Consultants Minneapolis
This management consulting company in the Minneapolis area needed a website to convey competence, professionalism, and a sense of today's marketing environment to help to promote their business marketing, communications, and management services. The design is elegant and clean, along with a bit of sparkle to help convey a sense of style and a personalized approach to serving their clients. This client recently had me expand his website with new content he'd published and add to a blog for his articles on good management practices.
Executive Toys & Novelty Gifts
This Minneapolis entrepreneur created a novelty toy button and keyring, both of which play amusing sound effects. He needed a website to sell these online, but since he was only selling a very limited number of products, he really didn't need a full e-commerce website and was on a tight budget. So I created a custom installation of my RainboCart© software that connects with PayPal™ Payments Pro to automate the customer payment process.
The website includes a simple control panel so the client can manage his product offerings and track customer orders. I created a cartoonish design to reflect the lighthearted theme of his products, but the software behind it is all business. Naturally, I also installed software that lets users sample the sound effects these cute little toys produce. I'm also helping him to develop a marketing plan to drive visitors to his website.
Additional Website Design Examples
Diabetic Shoes Minneapolis
This client needed a website for his service providing custom theraputic shoes for people with diabetes in the Minneapolis area. The design is simple, attractive and easy to navigate, which is important because the users tend to be seniors, and it boldly displays his professional certification so that they're assured that he has the qualifications required. The site offers information on Medicare and private insurance services that will pay for the shoes and the necessary services, as well as forms, pamphlets and informative documents for users to download and read at their convenience. It integrates the PayPal™ Shopping Cart for the handfull of products that the client sells directly to clients, and also has a blog where he posts announcements of the information clinics he holds in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. It's a showcase example of my affordable Dot-Com Website Design Package for small business.
San Francisco Theater Group
An enthusiastic theater group based in San Francisco hired me to design a small website for them. As you can see, I took the promotional materials for their latest production and turned it into a front page graphic. I also added my RainboCart© shopping cart software to their site so that they could sell tickets and advertising premiums on their site. We're still discussing whether or not they want to add a BLOG. If you live in the Bay Area, be sure to check out their site for news on upcoming productions. The company has suspended operations recently, but has plans to re-open.
Cartoons & Online Comics
This talented Minneapolis artist wanted to put her cartoons and comics online. She had produced everything on her Macbook and needed it all converted into a format suitable for the web. I took her designs and made the site look even better than the originals with 3-D effects and overlays. It's always gratifying when I came make someone's vision a reality with an attractive, professional web design. Now she can share her artistry and humor with audiences around the world. The site is still very new, but growing every day.
Custom Prom Dress & Evening Gown Designer
This small evening gown and wedding dress design company needed to establish a presence on the web. They were competing with the largest dress design companies in the world by focusing on the fashions for juniors niche. They purchased my Dot-Com Website Design Package which included a photo gallery so they could showcase their designs. The site allows them to keep the content fresh by updating the stock dress styles using my search-engine friendly photo gallery software.
Lidocaine/Xylocaine Powder
This client came to me to repair several problems with his website's design and to improve his site's performance in the search engines. The original design was several years old and looked dated on today's computers and mobile devices. In addition to giving the website a fresh, new design, I added my RainboCart© software to allow the client to update his website whenever he wanted, including adding or removing products. I integrated my software with his credit card processor, so he didn't have to change any of his business practices. His site now enjoys dramatically improved search engine rankings as well as a much better conversion rate.
Marketing Consultant
A previous client liked my original website design so much that he recently had me create one of my Business Card sites for his newly-formed marketing service. He is an expert in leading sales teams and developing promotions for B2C companies that rely on direct sales and canvassing, and needed a website to promote his sales consulating services. The website is in it's early stage of development with just enough content to establish his business presence online. He intends to add more details about his services and experience in direct sales to consumers in the home improvement industry.
Minneapolis Psychologist
This prominent Minneapolis psychologist hired me to update his site in 2013. The original design dated back to 2000, and looked every day of its age on contemporary computer screens. Despite that, the owner liked the spartan appearance, so I had to retain the layout while bringing the internal coding up to modern standards. Now his site is mobile-friendly, which is now vital in his area of practice, and is also search engine friendly.
Minneapolis Entertainment Guide
I was hired by the owner of this Minneapolis Dining and Entertainment Guide to repair several problems left by the original designer. I completely rewrote the underlying code to make the site mobile-friendly and search engine friendly, without changing the overall appearance of the site. Since that time, user traffic has nearly tripled and maintenance costs have been slashed. I also added proper semantic mark-up so important information on his site about places and events appears in the Rich Snippets on Google and Bing. Ultimately, my work has amounted to a major redesign of the layout and the addition of software to enhance the user experience which has led to a substantial increase in traffic and revenue.
Animation Art & Collectibles
My first website, started in 1996. This site is my flagship ecommerce website for my side business in Minneapolis selling animation art and collectibles, and as such it serves as the proving ground for all of my e-commerce website design and search engine optimization services.
Based on my RainboCart© shopping cart software, the site is easy to maintain and is both search engine and mobile-friendly. The site performs well in the search engines and has given customers in over 20 countries (including Europe, the Pacific Rim, and the Middle East) the confidence that they could trust us with their personal and financial information.
Senait Agonafer Ministry
This client had a (very!) specific design in mind and provided all of the graphics, so all I did in regard to the design was to create some custom software to handle the technical aspects of providing the audio-visual services he wanted to provide for users. He knew exactly how he wanted his website to appear, and that's what I delivered. I always tell my clients, "It's your site, not mine." I always strive to employ attractive design, but I never let my ego get in the way of the client's preferences.
The website includes multimedia features that required my transferring audio recordings of the charity's namesake's sermons from cassette tape into digital format, as well as transferring a video on VHS cassette into a digital media for online presentation.
Online Book Reviews
Rainbo Electronic Reviews is a site that publishes reviews of popular books, books on tape, children's books, cookbooks, computer books, software, and DVDs and home videos. It's a great example of my Dot-Com Website Design Package. With its hundreds of pages holding the back-issues of the reviews in each category, the site is easy to maintain using a custom Content Management System package I developed, with a straightforward and logical structure so that users can navigate it easily. If you want to create an information portal website, my 30 years of experience in creating user interfaces combined with my website designs insures that your audience will spend more time absorbing your offerings and less time figuring out how to find the information they're looking for.
Pacifica CA News & Business Directory
This site offers news and information about my former hometown of Pacifica, CA which is just south of San Francisco. The website features a searchable directory of local businesses that relies on my custom content management software. The site also includes a directory of city government offices, schools, churches, and organizations. This website is mobile-friendly to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of people who turn to their smartphones as their primary source for local information, and is a good example of my Dot-Com Website Design Package for information-based websites.
Twin Cities Staycations Blog
The sour economy in 2008 inspired me to create this blog dedicated to stay-at-home vacations (ie. "staycations") in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. It's a Wordpress blog that relies on my custom design template to enhance the appearance and to include advertising to generate revenue. Wordpress makes it easy for anyone to operate a blog, and I can design a custom templates to suit your taste and needs, and to make it appealing to visitors.
How To Stop SPAM and Malware
I created this simple site to help people find information on combatting some of the plagues of this New Age of Technology. It contains information on stopping SPAM in your EMail, stopping telemarketers, stopping computer viruses, identity theft, spyware, and adware. Its a perfect example of my Business Card Website Design Package. It only has about 8 pages, but generates a respectable level of traffic. It doesn't need any sophisticated features because it just publishes helpful information on a handful of specific topics and links to other valuable sources of region-specific information.