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New Custom WordPress Website for Ideal Landscape Group

Posted on April 5, 2017 by JUSTEN HONG

ideal landscape group WordPress website design

Ideal Landscape Group recently contracted Visual Lure to help improve their online presence by redesigning their website. Ideal is a premier St. Louis commercial landscaping company that specializes in commercial groundskeeping, construction, irrigation, snow & ice removal and playground installation. In addition to design and development of the new site, Visual Lure coordinated the copywriting and photography through our strategic partnerships. Cindy Sorgea wrote the copy and Matt Marcinkowski captured the imagery.

The new custom WordPress website features:

  • Sticky navigation (main sidebar and secondary navbar on template pages) for convenient navigation
  • A custom Core Services section with navigation
  • Custom developed section/WordPress post types for the projects gallery that makes it easy to add, edit, organize and remove featured projects
  • Slider style photo galleries that use WordPress’ native gallery for easy maintenance with a stacked image transition on mobile
  • A seamlessly integrated blog with featured image and excerpt landing page
  • Added column structures to expand layout options
  • Search engine optimized for St. Louis commercial landscaping and all their core services

Old Homepage Design:

old Ideal Landscape homepage design

The old website (home page shown above) was extremely dated; at least 8 years old. It was not mobile friendly or responsive, therefor providing a bad user experience on mobile devices. It had a strange layout, all types of spacing issues and dated photography. Over the years, and especially since Google’s “Mobilegeddon”, the site had seen a steady decrease in traffic and drop in organic rankings.

New Homepage Design:

new Ideal Landscape homepage design

The new home page design is now better organized with a much improved flow. The side navigation bar is sticky, staying in place while the user scrolls. This makes it easy to navigate the site, no matter where you are on the page. There is a custom Core Services section (slideshow) showcasing a featured image, intro copy and learn more buttons to drive users to those landing pages. Below that is an Affiliations section that uses a simple WordPress image widget to add, edit, remove or reorganize the affiliate logos.

Website Photography

We had the pleasure of working with Matt Marcinkowski for the new site photography. We art directed a couple of shots, but it was mostly just Matt doing his thing. With some of the locations providing limited photo opportunities, Matt really turned nothing into something great. Below are some samples of the new photography.

ideal landscaping photography 1ideal landscaping photography 2ideal landscaping photography 3ideal landscaping photography 4

The Results + Organic Search Rankings

Since the new site has been indexed by Google, the (now properly search engine optimized) website has skyrocketed into top positions on the first page of Google for almost all of their core targeted search terms. Currently the website is ranking #1 on the first page of Google for “st louis commercial landscaping”, “st louis commercial landcare”, st louis commercial groundkeeping”, “st louis commercial landscape construction” along with most variations of those search terms. This has led to a solid stream of high value leads for Ideal and they are currently bidding on a handful of projects (leads acquired through the new site) that would pay for the new website 10 times over.

Visit Ideal Landscape »

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

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 »

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.

Visual Lure Completes New WordPress Website for EWR Architects

Posted on June 15, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Responsive designs for St. Louis Metro East Architect WordPress website

EWR Architects is an award-winning architectural firm located in Fairview Heights, Illinois. They specialize in architecture, interiors and planning, and serve the greater St. Louis Metro East area – along with most of Southern Illinois. Their services cover all commercial architecture with extensive experience in office, educational, healthcare, recreational, housing, civil/municipal and industrial.

The new website was built in WordPress utilizing a fully custom, responsive designed theme. The theme includes a high-performance home page slideshow, an easy to use column system, a fully integrated news blog, a sticky navigation sidebar, a sliding testimonials widget, and a custom admin section where EWR’s staff can easily maintain their markets and projects. We customized this section so all EWR has to do is: log into the admin section, go to the custom projects tab, then add, edit or remove their projects. This system is setup so easy all they need to do is: 1. press the add a new project button 2. select the market it goes under 3. add a title and description 4. select a featured image 5. press an “add gallery button”, then drag and drop their images in (The images automatically create a custom slideshow) 6. and press update. The project is then automatically added to their portfolio.

EWR website design custom projects page

Visual Lure completed this website in collaboration with of Cindy Sorgea, a very talented PR specialist and copywriter. She was in charge of project management and content creation. We handled everything on the design and development side.

 

Visit EWR Architects

 

Learn more about Visual Lure’s web design services »

 

Branding Package for a Tampa, Florida Photography Studio

Posted on June 4, 2016 by JUSTEN HONG

Donnie Jones Photography is a Tampa, Florida photography studio that specializes in weddings, engagements, high school senior portraits and maternity photography. Donnie is a very talented photographer and someone who understands the importance of building a brand and doing everything right the first time around. He is pretty much our ideal client and we can’t wait to see his success.

Donnie Jones Photography came to Visual Lure wanting a luxury, high-end looking branding package, and we’re confident that we delivered. It started with the logo which features an integrated DJ monogram along with a logo for his premier Gold Collection. We then designed an identity package which included business cards, letterhead and envelopes. We finished everything off with a fully-custom, responsive, fast-loading, easy to maintain WordPress website. The website features a large random loading image on the home page, a fully integrated blog, a sticky header, masonry light box photo galleries and subtle CSS animation effect that give the site a sense of elegance and sophistication.

 

DJP-logo-branding

Tampa, Florida wedding photographer Donnie Jones

DJP-wordpress-web-design

 

Learn more about Visual Lure’s logo design & branding or web design services »

 

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