OUR BLOG

Here you will find our latest works, company news and more. We update it on a regular basis so be sure to come back soon. Please like, share, pin or tweet the post you enjoy.

New Website Design for Cricket’s Photo & Cinema

Posted on January 11, 2017 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure recently launched a new website for Cricket’s Photo & Cinema. Cricket’s is a premier photography studio serving the greater Orlando, Florida area with its studio located in Winter Garden. We originally designed Cricket’s logo a couple years ago, and they came back to us when they were ready to improve their online presence. The new website was built in WordPress utilizing a fully custom, search engine optimized, responsive (mobile, tablet and desktop friendly) design.

The new custom WordPress website features:

  • A sticky header for convenient navigation
  • An easy to maintain home page slideshow
  • A custom testimonials widget with smooth transitions
  • A featured image blog feed
  • Masonry style photo galleries that use WordPress’ native gallery for easy maintenance
  • A seamlessly integrated blog with featured image and excerpt landing page
  • Related blog post feed for improved click-through rate
  • Added column structures to expand layout options
  • Search engine optimized for multiple photography focuses

Old Homepage Design:

Cricket's Photo & Cinema's old website home page design

The old website (home page shown above) was not very user friendly. The blog was completely hidden, only to be found if you hovered over the four images towards the bottom of the home page. There were too many main navigation tabs, some links where the same color as the background, therefor completely hidden unless you accidentally hovered over them. The photo galleries and blog landing page took forever to load and the site wasn’t properly search engine optimized. Lastly the old template limited how content could be displayed and gave the site a generic cookie cutter feel.

New Homepage Design:

Cricket's Photo & Cinema's new website home page design

The new home page design in much more content rich, which is great for search engine ranking, along with enticing users to click deeper into the site. The sticky header, as mentioned above, allows the user to navigate the entire site at all times – no matter how far down they scroll. Social media tabs are tied directly into the navigation bar, along with a slider search field. Below that is an easy to maintain slideshow and a custom testimonials section. Next we added a “Types of Photography” section allowing users to scroll/slide to any of their services. Following is a videography and wedding tips area, and the homepage is completed with a latest blog post and affiliation section.

Visit Cricket's Photo & Cinema »

Click here to learn more about our website design and development services »

Website Redesign for a St. Louis Metro East Home Builder

Posted on December 5, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

statecon3-web-design

Visual Lure recently completed a new website for State Construction, a premier residential home builder based in O’Fallon, Illinois. The company was started in 1967 with the goal of building quality luxury homes at affordable and competitive prices. They have a great local reputation for building superior-quality homes, and for having a completely transparent construction process that eliminates all pricing surprises.

The new website was developed responsively in WordPress with features that include:

  • an easy to maintain home page slideshow
  • custom page templates for the subdivisions and home model sections
  • easy to update masonry/lightbox style photo galleries
  • a sticky header for convenient navigation of the site
  • a custom home models section for quick view of each home
  • short code columns for layout flexibility
  • a custom testimonials widget and more…

Old Homepage Design:

State Construction old website design

The old website was extremely dated. It was not mobile friendly, or responsive, therefor delivering a bad user experience on tablets and particularly on smart phones. In additional to this, the design was distracting with no real focal points, two random tiers of navigation, the color palette was unsophisticated making the site feel cheap, and an extra logo and random content seem to be used to simply fill up space.

New Homepage Design:

State Construction new website design

The new home page design features their phone number and client login access right in the header for convenience. The two tiers of navigation have been consolidated into one bar, and now houses a search field. The new slideshow replaces random house photos with the three main strengths of their brand: Uncompromising Craftsmanship, Superior Quality and an Impeccable Reputation. Next it features the company’s current three subdivisions and their five main home models, which after some basic research, proved to be what potential customers were looking for. Below that is a video and description of their transparent construction process. The homepage is completed with a custom testimonials widget and a footer with important contact information.

Click here to visit the new State Construction website »

Click here to learn more about our website design and development services »

Logo & Package Design for a St. Louis Supplements Company

Posted on November 10, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

2nd Impact is a St. Louis, Missouri based supplement and nutrition company that produces a superior line of Whey Protein and Creatine products. They use the most expensive, highest grade ingredients to produce a premium line of supplements. They initially came to Visual Lure for a logo, and after completion of that, they immediately engaged us to design all their packaging. See the progression of the logo and packaging below.

2nd Impact provided the exact colors they wanted and requested a simple text-based logo. Here are the initial logo design options:

2nd Impact logo design round 1

…and here is round 2 of the logo…

2nd Impact logo design round 2

…and here are the final logos in both color and black and white:

2nd Impact final logos

Once the logo was completed we immediately went into designing the packaging as they wanted to get into production right away. Here are the first two design rounds of the package design:

2nd Impact packaging design options

…and here are all the final labels for their initial product line:

2nd Impact Packaging Design All

View the entire branding package here »

Click here to view our entire package design portfolio, or click here to learn more about our packaging design services.

 For a package design quote, please call 618.407.9231 or email us at info@visuallure.com.

Package Design for Supplement Freeze Pops

Posted on October 14, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure recently completed new packaging design for Amino Freeze Pops. Amino Freeze Pops are frozen treats for adult athletes and body builder that are packed with Electrolytes and BCAAs. Essentially, it is a frozen post-workout recovery drink. They provide a boost of energy, help with hydration, can increase stamina and aid in building muscle.

The old design featured icicle shapes that didn’t quite complement the logo/brand, and their attempt to visually highlight the Electrolytes and BCAAs fell short. The new design is much more cohesive and polished. Learn more about Amino at www.aminofreezepops.com.

The Power of a Hashtag

Are you using #hashtags in your social media strategy? If not, you should be, because you never know who will find you when you do. Landing this project is a great example of the power of a hashtag. Here’s the story: We recently completed new packaging design for 2nd Impact, a new supplement company based out of St. Louis, MO. We had just finished some of their designs and we posted them on our Visual Lure Instagram account. When we posted the images, we used the following hashtags: #PackagingDesign, #PackageDesign, #SupplementLabelDesign and #SupplementBrand. Within 30 minutes Amino Freeze Pops had followed us on Instagram, and we were having a conversation over the phone. We think that’s both crazy and amazing! A company based out of Boynton Beach, Florida, a company we would never have run into, is now a client all due to a hashtag.

Amino Freeze Pops Packaging

Our Packaging Design Services

Learn more about our package design services, or click here to view our packaging design portfolio »

 

Visual Lure Named as a Top St. Louis Web Design Agency by UpCity

Posted on October 3, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Top St. Louis web design agency

Earlier this year Visual Lure was named as one of The Best Web Designers in St. Louis by Expertise.com. Today we are proud to announce that another organization has honored Visual Lure. UpCity has named Visual Lure a Top Local St. Louis Web Design Agency for 2016. The criteria was based on how well the company represents itself online; from the user experience of the company’s website, to their social media presence and prominence in organic search results.

What Does This Mean?

UpCity’s Top Local Agency marketplace is a resource designed to connect small and medium sized local businesses with high-quality digital marketing service providers in their local area, allowing business owners to get the services they need quickly, from a service provider they can trust. The UpCity team independently reviews agencies across North America to determine the best service providers in each local market, ensuring that no matter where you are, great digital marketing services are never more than a click away.

About UpCity

UpCity provides a comprehensive local inbound marketing platform to help digital marketing agencies scale SEO, local and social marketing services. The UpCity platform serves as a single operating system that includes robust project management, sales tools, reporting, and can be fully white labeled to streamline client engagements from onboarding to ongoing engagement. UpCity, a venture capital-backed business based in Chicago, was founded in 2009. Learn more at www.upcity.com.

Visual Lure’s Web Design Services

Call us at 618.407.9231, email us at info@visuallure.com or click here to learn more about our web design services »

 

Holly Ireland Photography Website Redesign

Posted on September 11, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

New Holly Ireland Photography WordPress Website

Visual Lure is proud to announce the redesign and relaunch of a new custom WordPress website for Holly Ireland Photography. Holly is our favorite San Diego photographer who specializes in engagement, wedding, family, high school senior and dance photography. Even though we designed Holly’s old site, it had become dated by how it was coded and the load times had become subpar. The new site loads quickly and the code is now much cleaner. We have already seen a huge spike in search engine rankings since the relaunch, which was one of the main reasons for the redesign.

The old website ranked organically on page 3 or 4 of Google for “San Diego family photographer”, and since the redesign, you can now see it on the middle of page 1.  The new site ranks #2 on the first page for “San Diego senior photographers” and any variation of that search phrase. (I would consider this #1 on page 1 as the first organic listing is Yelp). One of Holly’s passions is dance photography and if you search “San Diego dance photographers” you will not only see that her site ranks #1 on the first page, but also #2 and #3. Lastly, we saw a huge improvement on her rankings for “San Diego wedding photographer”. Her old site bounced between pages 4 and 5, and the new site has been bouncing between pages 2 and 3.

From a design and development standpoint, the new website features a masonry collage on the home page with a cool hover effect, a sticky header for more user friendly and convenient navigation, a custom animated testimonials widget, fast loading masonry photo galleries and a quick loading blog landing page. On a responsive level, the new website renders much better on tablets and smart phones.

Lastly, we would like to congratulate Holly on being named San Diego’s Top Wedding Photographer by San Diego’s A-List. This was no small feat as there were over 160 photographers in the running. Even more impressive was that there were over 45,000 votes cast. Again, kudos to Holly Ireland Photography (and her husband Bruce) for being ranked #1!

Learn more about our Search Engine Optimization/SEO and custom WordPress web design services.

Sales Brochure Design for State Construction

Posted on July 29, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Visual Lure recently completed a new sales brochure for State Construction, a premier St. Louis Metro East residential home builder. They currently have three subdivisions with available lots: Bethel Ridge Farms, The Estates at Hearthstone and Cobblestone Ridge, with more in the works. The subdivisions are all located in O’Fallon, IL, one of the fastest growing communities in the St. Louis area.

State Construction has a solid reputation for their commitment to craftsmanship and for building quality homes. It was a pleasure designing a new brochure for them that reflects those same qualities.

Not only did we design the brochure, we also gathered print bids, coordinated printing and press checked the project for quality control. Printing was preformed by Schwartzkopf Printing in Alton, Illinois. In addition to the brochure design, Visual Lure is also designing and developing a new website for State. Check back soon for a post on the launch of their new website.

State Construction brochure graphic design

Our Graphic Design Services

Click here to learn more about our graphic design services, or here to view our graphic design portfolio. Please feel free to contact us with any questions about our design services or to receive a FREE quote.

 

Older Posts
Newer Posts