K&J Web Productions

ContestConditioning.com

Kevin Morton — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:50:47 +0000

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URL: www.ContestConditioning.com
Time to prototype: 12 hrs 30 min
Start to finish: 33 hrs 45 min

Went Live In: March 2013

ContestConditioning.com is the brainchild of fitness enthusiast Hank Uhlaender. After seeing just a few photos of Hank side by side, it is clear that he has quite the story to tell. Moreover, after corresponding with him it is also clear that many others will not only find his story inspirational and relatable, but will be won over by his positivity and motivation as well.

Hank has transformed his body in an incredible fashion, and now he is taking what he has learned and applying it to help others in their goals of attaining healthier bodies and stronger physiques. His methods have the unique approach of employing competition as a primary motivator that pushes one to achieve the best results. For example, training with Contest Conditioning may put you up on the stage of a fitness competition within the year, in front of hundreds of people and a panel of judges in the small bit of clothing that usually accompanies such competitions. Talk about a strong motivation to get fit!

Hank’s body transformation is featured prominently on the home page, because it is no less than incredible and gives the visitor an immediate notion of the type of character Hank brings to the table.

The Contest Conditioning brand employs several different types of content, and working them all seamlessly into one design was a goal of ours from the outset. In addition to blog articles, the brand also publishes a quarterly magazine, produces video content, and has clients contributing their success stories. On top of that, they were launching a line of Contest Conditioning supplements and needed an e-commerce solution that would effectively handle sales as well.

The Contest Conditioning E-Commerce Store

While the publishing and fitness services branches are a main part of the Contest Conditioning business, they were also were just realeasing their first line of Contest Conditioning supplements and wanted an e-commerce solution to sell them, as well as their other Contest Conditioning branded workout gear.

Built on the shop.contestconditioning.com subdomain using Shopify’s incredible e-commerce software, the Contest Conditioning store is nicely integrated into the primary domain and offers Hank a lot of useful tools to manage and scale this side of his business.

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DrPierreRousse.net

Jordan Sandoval — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 18:09:37 +0000

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URL: www.DrPierreRousse.net
Time to prototype: 5 hrs 30 min
Start to finish: 15 hrs

Went Live In: January 2013

Dr. Pierre Rousse, an experienced chiropractor in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, was in need of a website that he would be proud to present. The trouble was there weren’t many good alternatives for him with traditional designers and maintenance services.

We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Pierre in the Fall of 2012, and after hearing of his website woes we were happy to lend a hand. Thus the project of DrPierreRousse.net began.

With Dr. Pierre’s wishlist in mind we set out to find a perfect design to match, and we found one. If you view the site now, you will find an interesting, straightforward structure complemented by gorgeous features. The color scheme meshes well with that of Dr. Pierre’s logo, making use of a base of sleek grays with hints of blacks and reds. This design also makes use of subtle, but visually stunning, features, such as the sliding notch in the navigation bar and beautifully textured backgrounds. In addition, the site is clearly branded, with Dr. Pierre’s logo highly visible regardless of the page the visitor is on.

Dr. Pierre’s Bio Page

The site layout is simple and user-friendly, but at the same time it provides a very cool and unique scene for visitors.

Site navigation is stationary in the left hand side of the site, and browsing the site is intuitive. Visitors can easily find the information they need, whether that be the office location, about Dr. Pierre’s method, new patient forms, or how to contact Dr. Pierre.

Gliding down from the Bio Page

On top of that, visitors can find additional resources that Dr. Pierre wants to share. Being a health and fitness advocate himself, it is very important for Dr. Pierre to have a platform to promote useful tools that can help interested patients live in a healthier manner.

This site also includes a blog component, in which Dr. Pierre can post about upcoming conferences, events, and more.

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TheCornerOffice.us

Jordan Sandoval — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:52:52 +0000

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URL: www.TheCornerOffice.us
Time to prototype: 5 hrs 30 min
Start to finish: 18 hrs

Went Live In: January 2013

The Corner Office is in the business of providing office space and professional services to small and medium sized businesses in the suburbs north of Atlanta.

With family-owned company values and the friendly customer service that typically comes along with that, as well as with a beautiful facility in a prime location, The Corner Office is the type of place that fosters a comfortable and functional business atmosphere.

However, even with very appealing qualities, one of the challenges for this firm is remaining competitive in an area that is laden with other office suites buildings.

Office suite pricing is relatively similar across the board, making business space almost a commodity good. But The Corner Office has a unique story to tell in that it is family owned and operated in an industry that is largely dominated by franchises. They focus on transparency and straightforwardness in an industry that often does not publicly disclose prices and tends to give clients a runaround with their contracts. Many potential customers would resonate with these values.

Thus it became imperative for The Corner Office to express their business philosophy and culture in an effective way. And what could be more effective than doing so on a customized, elegant website?

The site design provides a rather striking setting in which to display content. First impressions are important, especially in an industry in which you represent other businesses, and we wanted to help The Corner Office make a stellar first impression online. With that objective in mind, we chose a steel blue color scheme and a design with clean lines to evoke a sense of professionalism and modernity.

The building itself is truly quite beautiful, and that made it easy for us to showcase. A large homepage slider and framed photos throughout the site show off the aesthetics of their gorgeous facility. All the photos are authentic and no stock photos were used. So visitors’ high expectations from viewing the images of a professional, high quality facility will be matched when they actually walk in the doors of the building.

The next step on this site was enabling interested parties to easily get in touch with The Corner Office management. Facilitating this interaction are multiple call-to-action links sprinkled throughout the site, which bring up beautiful lightboxes with the appropriate forms to schedule tours of the facility and inform the staff of specific office space needs. The forms are submitted using JQuery, which creates a seamless effect for the user through not having to reload any new pages. The display of the building’s phone number and address on every page, as well as easy access to directions in the sidebar, further help connect potential clients with The Corner Office.

The last, very important aspect for us to incorporate was a way to clearly present The Corner Office’s values of customer service and quality. The site has numerous testimonials from clients prominently displayed on the homepage and in the sidebar. Company culture is emphasized with highly visible statements from The Corner Office, and also by the clear display of rates for particular services.

From viewing the content on this site, one gets the impression that this is a straightforward, straight-laced company, and that’s a key impression to impart on a business owner looking for a stable and efficient work environment.

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ChaparralGardens.com

Kevin Morton — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 23:54:28 +0000

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URL: www.ChaparralGardens.com
Time to prototype: 4 hrs 50 min
Start to finish: 14 hrs 16 min

Went Live In: November 2012

Chaparral Gardens is a wonderful family-owned garden in the Central Coast of California, run by the dynamic duo of Cari and Craig Clark. One look at their product line of balsamic vinegars and specialty oils (with flavors like Champagne Mimosa and Pear Ginger Wasabi) and it was easy for us to see that they were true artisans of their craft. We therefore couldn’t wait to help give them a website that was of as high of quality as their products.

Cari and Clark make their vinegars pretty much entirely by hand on their 20-acre plot–everything from pulling weeds to harvesting crops to fermenting vinegar infusions and labeling bottles. They work hard to make a beautiful, unique product, so we knew that they had a great story to tell that their visitors could connect with. We wanted to make the story of their garden a main feature of the site because we knew that visitors would feel much more at home amidst the personalization. And connected visitors are much more likely to become connected customers.

Before

After

While we use WordPress for most of our content sites, our favorite e-commerce platform to use is called Shopify. It provides all the resources needed for a business-owner to track inventory, sales, shipping, customers, and in a nutshell, streamline store management.

We built ChaparralGardens.com on the Shopify framework, so now Cari and Clark have a beautiful admin area where they can manage their store anywhere they have internet access, even on their mobile phone.

We used Shopify’s Liquid programming language to build a testimonials section, so visitors could see what other customers have had to say about Chaparral Gardens, as well as a recipes section, so Cari could include her favorite recipes for specific vinegar flavors on their respective product pages.

Shopify also made it easy for us to add Customer Login features, so that Chaparral Gardens’s customers could track their orders easily on the site, and Cari and Craig could have a running list of people who love their product and may want to hear about updates in the future.

Now, Chaparral Gardens has an earthy, elegant site that highlights the artisan nature of their product-line and makes it seamless for interested visitors to place orders. Their unique, delicious flavors would sell themselves in just about any functioning website, but now with this beautiful design we have a feeling they are going to sell themselves quite a lot faster!

It was a joy working with Kevin and K&J. They were extremely profesional and quick. Kevin was able to take all of our content and create a beautiful web design showcasing our products. He told our story better than we could.

Our sales have more than doubled since the site went live. I only wished I had found them sooner.

Cari Clark

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SyattFitness.com

Kevin Morton — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:03:20 +0000

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URL: www.SyattFitness.com
Time to prototype: 4 hrs 30 min
Start to finish: 16 hrs 25 min

Went Live In: November 2012

SyattFitness.com was a pleasure of a site to work on. Owner Jordan Syatt is an ambitious up-and-comer whose work was, at the time we began working with him, starting to get picked up by some of the major fitness media players (Men’s Fitness, T-Nation, Muscle & Fitness, for example). He approached us after he saw our work on another fitness site and wondered what we could do to help him present his brand and encourage community and interaction on his site.

Jordan was very upfront with us from the start–he and computers go together like Steve Urkel and a squat rack. But despite not being a tech wiz, Jordan had already built an impressive following and community on his blog. People flung to his articles from all around the Internet, and it was easy to see why–he’s sharp and has a contagious positive energy that comes across in all of his articles. That positive spirit also came across in every conversation we had with him, and we realized it was our task to make it come across in his site’s design as well.

We used a lot of white space as our canvas for SyattFitness.com that everything else worked off of. Prominent on the homepage we included a Featured Slider area that highlighted (1) Jordan’s smiling face and what he’s all about in a nutshell, (2) his personalized coaching services, and (3) what his clients have said about those services. If you take a look at them, you’ll see that his positive energy is felt in each one of those slides.

We also gave Jordan a featured area on the homepage where he can highlight his fitness videos. He was already producing a lot of videos on YouTube and embedding them into his articles, but this homepage feature now aggregates them and brings them to the forefront on his site to immediately connect with his visitors in a way only video can.

Our task on sites like Syatt Fitness’ is to streamline the communication channels–to make it as smooth as possible for Jordan to communicate with his reader and for his reader to communicate with Jordan. The former is largely about content organization. We took Jordan’s post categories and laid them out cleanly in the header navigation, while using the sidebar of his posts to showcase his most popular, most recent, and random articles. Among the other things we did to organize Jordan’s content was to put a list of related content as well as calls to action to share his article and subscribe to get updates of his new ones in one of the most important areas of the site–the end of each post.

On the other side of things, to help Jordan’s readers communicate back with the site we used our favorite all-in-one commenting and community-building platform, Disqus. It’s a beautiful, sleek system that makes it painless for visitors to interact on the site. I can’t say enough good things about Disqus, really.

Newsletter subscriptions were also very important to Jordan, as he wanted to grow a mailing list of dedicated readers to help grow his business. So we hooked him up with a lightbox call to action called Popup Domination. Now, when visitors come to Jordan’s site and read through his articles, they are invited to download a free copy of his e-book by signing up for his newsletter.

All in all, Jordan now has a site that is going to immediately signal professionalism to his visitors, while making it very easy for them to interact and connect with his brand. We had a blast creating this with him, and it is pretty clear to see that Jordan is going to do big things with it.

Working with K&J Web Productions was a pleasure. I know legitimately nothing about web design, computer programming, SEO…really nothing about technology in general. Fortunately K&J were more than understanding and walked me through every step of the process.

From the very beginning they had a perfect understanding of what I was looking for in my site. They knew what I wanted, where I wanted it, how I wanted it to look, etc, etc, etc. Without hesitation they built a clean, easy-to-use, and badass looking website. I couldn’t be more pleased.

Thank you K&J! I’ve got the best site in the world and it’s all thanks to you.

Jordan Syatt

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JFMCon.com

Kevin Morton — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 01:56:58 +0000

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URL: www.JFMCon.com
Time to prototype: 6 hrs
Start to finish: 14 hrs 50 min

Went Live In: November 2012

JFMCon.com is a site we did for local San Diego construction company Johnson, Finch, & McClure Construction, Inc.

JFMCon had a very well-designed Flash site when they came to us. Local businesses often want to get rid of their Flash sites because Flash does not lend itself well to ranking well on search engines. But JFMCon was not much concerned with the search engine pitfalls of their Flash site, because the size of their construction projects are such that all of their customers come from offline referrals anyways. Instead, they wanted an update in design simply so that their site would display on mobile devices (Flash does not work on any Apple devices–its other big pitfall) allowing them to show it to clients while in the field.

Since we had a well-designed Flash site to use as a model, our job was simply to translate that site into a new dynamic HTML design, while creating an organization structure that would present JFMCon’s portfolio intuitively and allow them to update content themselves with ease.

The end result is what you see in the image to the left. It is a design and execution that we hope will serve the JFMCon team well into the future.

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WeeMonstersPlaysets.com

Jordan Sandoval — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 00:34:52 +0000

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URL: www.WeeMonstersPlaysets.com
Time to prototype: 7 hrs
Start to finish: 18 hrs

Went Live In: September 2012

PR stands for Page Rank, and is the public view of Google’s ranking of a site on a 10 point exponential scale, according to the number and quality of incoming links that site has pointed to it.

WeeMonstersPlaysets.com is a wonderfully cheerful site built for Wee Monsters Play Systems, a small business specializing in providing playground equipment in the Atlanta, Georgia area.

While Wee Monsters’ old site was playful and fun, it was built in flash, which meant it couldn’t be search engine optimized and wouldn’t show up on many mobile devices.

The owners realized that they were in need of an upgrade, one that would make their site more user-friendly, mobile device ready, and accessible to customers searching on Google. They needed a site that was well-organized and functional to effectively display their products, and they also wanted to retain a jovial feel to reflect the family-friendly nature of their business.

Before (Flash site)

After (Optimized site, full length)

We made the current site such that searching for forts by size and by price, as well as searching for accessories and customizations, is a snap for visitors. All products are categorized to create a clean site structure that can be easily navigated.

Importantly, featured images showcase examples of playsets other customers have ordered, creating a visually-driven display that links to additional information for Wee Monsters’ products. It also allows customers to access a richer amount of information for each product. When customers have access to information on great products, they are more likely to follow through with a purchase.

Naturally, access to good reviews also contributes a lot to a customer’s willingness to buy. The Wee Monsters site is equipped with a 5-star review commenting system on each of their playsets, as well as a testimonial section featuring glowing words from past customers.

All of this is nestled inside a whimsical site look and feel that the Wee Monsters crew wanted to preserve from their previous site. But this time it is optimized for search engine success!

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AmericanRelight.com

Jordan Sandoval — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 05:14:05 +0000

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URL: www.AmericanRelight.com
Time to prototype: 5 hrs 50 min
Start to finish: 42 hrs 40 min

Went Live In: September 2012

American Relight was breaking into a relatively new field, and owner Jim Flannery knew it was necessary to have a great website as his startup company moved to the next level. They were growing quickly, and needed to put a professional and high-tech foot forward as more customers began to rapidly find out who they were.

Having a clean and informational website was especially important for American Relight because its business is one that many people are not familiar with. They are in the business of retrofitting lighting in large buildings with LEDs, which saves property owners money on energy bills. What’s more, American Relight’s business model is to do it at no-cost to the property owner (profits are instead made on the savings the owner achieves), so we needed to design with the intention of communicating that this no-cost opportunity is not “too good to be true” but actually makes very practical sense for both parties.

On Jim’s wishlist was a sleek, modern site that would allow him to explain his business to potential clients, as well as a platform to showcase the company’s work. Mr. Flannery was a perfectionist, and it paid off for him. We collaborated extensively with him to create the site you see at the top of this page, search engine optimized and filled with aesthetically functional information features like the tabbed comparison chart you see below.

American Relight had a lot of information to communicate to their website’s visitors. Organizing that info was a key concern of the design process.

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CentralCoastFoodie.com

Kevin Morton — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:18:56 +0000

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URL: www.CentralCoastFoodie.com
Time to prototype: 3 hrs 05 min
Start to finish: 12 hrs 44 min

Went Live In: August 2012

Central Coast Foodie is the brainchild of California writer Rachel Duchak. She has been sharing her knowledge of the Central Coast sustainable food and drink scene on there since 2010. In 2012, with business picking up, she thought her design, which she liked, could use a fine tuning.

We worked with Rachel to select and customize a new design that would better highlight the remarkable food photography on her site, while maintaining a similar feel to her original site. Our goal going into it was to polish an existing piece, rather than to create a new one.

In addition to aesthetics, I wanted to introduce some new search engine optimization strategies to the CCF website in order to further tap it into the vast traffic source potential that is Google. Keyword research and some nifty code that auto-generates meta tags (used for communicating page content with the search engines) for each CCF article was a good start towards this end.

Before

After – Full Length

At Rachel’s request, we helped add features to the site such as a calendar and greater social media integration. But there were also a number of features for the site that we were able to envision for it once we brought out the sketchbooks.

The first was a featured area above the fold on the homepage for CCF’s sponsors that would provide the space to highlight each sponsor’s unique story in a way that just wasn’t possible in the previous space. This feature utilizes JavaScript to dissolve the first row of sponsors into the next row every few seconds, allowing for more sponsors to be featured. When a sponsor’s icon is hovered, their name appears in a rich script central in the featured area. Then, when the sponsor’s icon is clicked, a shadowbox dominates the screen elaborating on that sponsor’s story and connection to the site, including links to all the CCF articles that discuss their products or services. In a setting that is as local as the CCF site is, this kind of story personalization we thought would be a large positive for CCF’s sponsors (and, by extension, its future sponsorship prospects).

In addition to the sponsor highlighting feature, we also added what we call a “call to action section” in what we consider one of the most important areas of a content website–the end of an article. This section invites readers to subscribe in order to stay abreast of future posts, share the article they are on via social media, and to keep reading through the discovery of related posts.

When all was said and done, Central Coast Foodie now has both an aesthetically and functionally polished site. And is owner Rachel Duchak happy with the result? Well, take it from her own words:

After two years of creating content for our online foodie magazine, we knew we needed a fresh look for our WordPress site that made it easy for users to access CentralCoastFoodie.com on mobile devices as well as desktop machines.

K&J Web Productions not only helped us transition to a slick responsive web design that looks great on phones and tablets but they also amped up the SEO quality of our site and introduced new sponsor-focused features.

We’re ready to grow our audience significantly in the new year and needed a site redesign that could do some automated heavy lifting to help in that effort and we always want to keep our sponsors front and center. We couldn’t be more pleased with the results of K&J’s overhaul of our site and their professionalism and rapid response to every last question, big or small. Thanks!

Rachel Duchak CentralCoastFoodie.com

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KristiDaniels.com

Jordan Sandoval — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:27:03 +0000

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URL: http://KristiDaniels.com/
Time to prototype: 8 hrs
Start to finish: 12.5 hrs

Went Live In: July 2012

This site was designed to be a creative outlet for owner Kristi Daniels. Already successful in the professional sphere, Kristi wanted to branch more into the personal sphere with a platform for self-expression and for connecting with people on an individual basis. Kristi’s goal as stated: “I want people to want to get to know me when they see my site.” We think we’ve succeeded in creating a feel that accomplishes just that for her.

The clean design intertwines beauty and fun to give Kristi an online platform as sparkling as her personality. Complementing her fun and personable photos and content are highlights of soft pastels and sleek design elements placed purposefully to best display her content to her readers.

For example, on the homepage visitors are instantly greeted by a welcoming slider and can immediately see a snapshot of what the site has to offer just below. Her three main blog categories are prominent beneath the slider, giving visitors a broad idea of what KristiDaniels.com is all about. To provide a quick glance of what Kristi has been up to lately, the most recent posts and entries from her video blog are elegantly presented on the page as well.

This site is meant to be social in nature, so, of course, we made sure that it’s fully social media equipped. The colorful social media bar, in both the header and footer, was a custom addition that will help readers further engage with Kristi on the many social media platforms she is immersed in.

The end result is a crisp, elegant site that will let Kristi express her colorful personality!

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