cultureblog

We’re pleased to announce the launch of  our latest client website at www.flipnfit.com for    Flip N Fit, a San Diego-based designer and manufacturer of gymnastic, cheer and dance apparel. The client came to us to utilize a MIVA Merchant shopping cart to generate greater sales and overhaul their previous design to better showcase their unique, hand sewn products.

We gave Flip N Fit a fun, energetic design to attract their young, female demographic and easy-to-use navigation to make finding products and checking out a breeze! Since Flip N Fit does not have a retail storefront but sells to gymnastics centers and dance studios in the greater San Diego region, they wanted an efficient way to track referrals and offer personal discounts. We employed a variety of MIVA modules, including one that would allow the client to track how the shopper learned about the company.

To create the retail-store experience for Flip N Fit’s customers, we customized their MIVA Merchant cart to allow for color swatch options, related products, a detailed size chart, and easy shipping options. The result? A virtual storefront that Flip N Fit was missing. Flip N Fit’s new online home is the perfect way to have a face in the community—both online and locally.

In late November, one of our longstanding clients, Harvest Farms, approached us with a  challenging proposition. By January 15, 2010, could we create a custom-designed database application on their existing website that would allow their customers to “build a box” of food products and tally each nutritional value? Needless to say, Durrani happily rose to the challenge.

Harvest Farms supplies a variety of food products on a weekly basis to numerous institutions throughout the country. The food products offered include boxed meals—customized based on dietary and budget requirements, sandwiches, sliced lunchmeats and cheeses. But instead of ordering these boxes via the standard phone call or e-mail, Harvest Farms wanted to make building a box fun and interactive for their customers.

After compiling the nutritional values and photographing over 70 products that would go into the boxed meals, we swiftly moved into development. The database, built from scratch in PHP and MYSQL, allows the user to select one product from each food category, creating the meal of their choice. All the while, the total calories, fat grams, carbohydrates, etc. of each item are being added together. The user can view the total nutritional summary along the way and then submit their boxed meal to a Harvest Farms account rep.

Now Harvest Farms’ customers are able to build their food boxes and obtain the nutritional value for not only an individual product—but the entire box—within moments. Check out the new “Build-A-Box” application at Harvest Farms.

We are excited to announce the launch of the new First Aid 2000 website at www.fa2000ca.com!  First Aid 2000 is a local company offering first aid and emergency preparedness supplies to all kinds of businesses and schools.  (Look around your office… do you have a first aid kit handy?  If not, you should probably give them a call.)  As First Aid 2000 realized that their industry was becoming increasingly reliant on the web to gain new business, they came to us to create a website to showcase their company’s services and inventory.

First Aid 2000’s inventory is nothing to sneeze at – with hundreds of products in dozens of categories, the organization of products with their correct product codes, descriptions, and images was quite the feat.  It required a massive product spreadsheet and close monitoring, but the end result is a successful and organized listing of the First Aid 2000 inventory, so that existing and potential clients can view all offerings.

We built the First Aid 2000 website on a WordPress platform; Even though the client isn’t going to utilize the traditional “blogging” functionality of WordPress, the content management system (CMS) that it provides will be invaluable.  If a product code changes, if offerings change, or if new features need to be highlighted, those edits can be made quickly and easily – minimizing the effort of upkeep for the site.   

We’re thrilled about another successful local partnership and the opportunity to take First Aid 2000 into the world wide web. 

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the newly redesigned The Brittle Company website at www.lavacrunch.com! The Brittle Company, whose website is named after its star product—a light and crunchy macadamia nut brittle—produces gourmet candy and is distributed in fine specialty food shops nationwide.

If it hadn’t been for the 2008 economic meltdown on Wall Street, Lois Basiger may have never found her passion in the brittle business. The abrupt halt in the corporate finance world, where she had worked for 30 years, gave her the chance to explore other business opportunities. Namely, the specialty food business! Together with her friend Judy, they formed T.U. Roberta (Thank You, Roberta), named after Judy’s mom and the creator of the delicious LavaCrunch and Gold Country Crunch recipes.

Lois came to Durrani to redesign and develop a site where existing and potential wholesale customers could come to learn about her product and buy her products through a MIVA Merchant shopping cart. We gave The Brittle Company a new logo, applying a wooden, Old West theme and integrated a design that reflected the warm colors of her existing branding. The global footer illustrates the company’s two products—the foliage represents the island-themed LavaCrunch, while the golden foothills represent the Old Western-themed Gold Country Crunch. The site structure is easy to navigate, and incorporates a unique restricted area for wholesalers to access pricing and additional materials which remain hidden from competitors and the general public. But Lois is so pleased with her new site, that she’s already thinking of expanding her e-commerce store to include a retail section to capture a wider audience. We like that!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the newly redesigned Sauvage Swimwear website at www.sauvagewear.com!  Sauvage produces some  of the world’s most elegant and glamorous swimwear for women and men.  They came to us to produce an online showcase for their brand and a rich online experience for their customers.

We started by designing a clean user interface that focuses on showcasing the products in an effective and eye-catching way.  It can be difficult for design teams to create a website that is restrained and minimal, but when the products are as intricately designed and the photography is as stunning as Sauvage’s, those aspects must always take the center stage.  So with that in mind, we applied a classic look with a black, grey, and white palette and pinstripe lines as separators.  We used large images to maximize their effect, and let the products do most of the design “work.”

We applied this design in several ways to create a rich user experience for Sauvage.  The site begins with a Flash introduction, and then employs a javascript-based gallery, a MIVA Merchant shopping cart, and a WordPress platform for the company’s news and media features.  The result of using these different components is a multi-faceted experience of the Sauvage product line.  Customers can view products in a gallery without the additional information that a storefront provides, and they can then move into the MIVA shopping cart component of the site to learn more about the product, see additional views, and make a purchase.  As the customer moves from one area of the site to the next, the design elements remain the same to create a cohesive and seamless transition.  Our goal in constructing the site was to create an experience that was as close as possible to being in the front row on the runway and then walking right into the retail shop.

To create the retail-store experience for Sauvage’s online store, we customized their MIVA Merchant cart to allow for large imagery with a zoom option, alternate images, related products, products with several cuts that can be purchased as separates, a detailed and prominent size chart, a “favorites” section for shoppers, hassle-free shipping options with an order tracking feature for customers, and the ability to offer promotional codes at Sauvage’s discretion.  The result?  A comfortable shopping experience with a high level of detail.

It may be December, but it’s always swimsuit season with Sauvage.

Durrani Design is excited to announce the launch of the new website for Gregg Visintainer at vizisart.com! Self-taught artist Gregg Visinitainer, whose artistic alias is Viz, creates highly detailed pieces of artwork, using only pen and ink. Within each one of these sophisticated doodles, which are Viz’s signature style, there are hidden pictures, words and messages that all reflect a larger theme.

In the last year, Viz has been gaining recognition and momentum in the San Diego community. He recognized it was time for an updated, fresh web presence and a home to sell his prints online. He came to Durrani to redesign and develop a professional site that would give him an online showcase for his art, while also utilizing a MIVA Merchant e-commerce platform.

We were challenged to create a strong e-commerce site, but also showcase a product that is personal and reflective of the artist’s taste and talent. We applied a dark, clean design to highlight Viz’s art without taking away from his colorful, intricate pieces and created the Online Store to have the look and feel of a gallery. Durrani’s goal was to make it is as easy to purchase Viz’s art as it is to browse through his prints—giving users an effortless, pleasurable online shopping experience. We’ve successfully captured Viz’s artistic personality while also providing him with an efficient shopping cart—fitting for a progressive artist in the 21st century.

We’d like to extend a very heartfelt thank you to the clients who have joined the Durrani team for a new website design and development project since October 1. Thank you for choosing us as your full service creative agency—we couldn’t do this without you!

Our latest clients…

Traveltrust, a travel management company headquartered in our hometown of Encinitas that develops corporate travel policies, negotiates supplier contracts and monitors traveler satisfaction.

Flip N Fit, designs and manufactures high-quality, fashionable leotards and apparel for gymnastics, cheer and dance.

On-Site Tech Support is a San Diego-based company offering computer repair and networking services to residential and business customers.

National Housing Relief, a brand new company whose online resource center will educate homeowners about their foreclosure prevention options.

Airverter, a leader in the industrial spray finishing manufacturing and distributing market for nearly 30 years.

KiddieCorp, national provider of high quality child care programs for all types of events—from trade shows and conventions to meetings and weddings.

Sauvage, designer and manufacturer of some of the finest swimsuits for women and men in the USA.

Stay tuned for the launch of these sites within the next few weeks!

Durrani is excited to announce that KiddieCorp, a national provider of high quality children’s programs at corporate and special events, is teaming up with us for their website redesign and development project!

KiddieCorp has been operating in San Diego since 1986 and has over 175 clients—making them a highly visible and trusted name in the meeting planning industry for over two decades. Their focus on safety, fun activities, consistency and complete service has made them a trusted name in their industry, but now they’re ready to bring their website into the new decade! They came to us looking for a fresh, professional makeover to their site that stays true to their existing corporate branding. For a company that combines a professional service with fun child care, we’ll be creating a new design that really showcases KiddieCorp’s expertise on both!

We’re looking forward to working with KiddieCorp president Chris Tempesta the rest of the KiddieCorp team to take their business to the next level!

Durrani is happy to announce the launch of the newly redesigned Cruxial website at www.cruxialwear.com! Cruxial is a new brand on the action sports scene, offering shirts and hats with unique design aesthetic. We were excited to give this fresh, young company an equally fresh, young and cool new look for their online showcase.

We were excited to work with Cruxial for many reasons, one being that they are a local company with an industry and a target market that we understand well. Since we’re located in Southern California a couple blocks from the beach, we essentially live in the center of the culture Cruxial represents. As a bonus, when Cruxial first came to us we had recently launched the action sports retail site S.A.W. (www.skullsandwings.com), which gave us even more insight into that industry.

Cruxial’s primary goal for their new site was to have a place to showcase their clothing line for customers and wholesalers to view the product. They also wanted a place to highlight the bands and surfboard shapers who have teamed up with them, as well as a blog and a photo gallery. They also wanted to be able to easily make their own updates and changes to the site. Durrani found a solution for all of these needs in a WordPress website platform. Using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS), their site is dynamic and flexible, easy to edit and expand.

One of the ways we used WordPress development in this case was in utilizing the array of WordPress plugins that are available today. Instead of starting from scratch to customize something like a photo gallery, we used a plugin and adjusted it to get the results we wanted. The final product is extremely beneficial for the client as well: now they can add, delete, and organize the images in their gallery easily and seamlessly. The moral of this story: Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Use the tools that are available to you to get the results you want.  In this case, WordPress and the available plugins were the tools we used to create a successful site for Cruxial.

Durrani is excited to announce that AirVerter, a leader in the industrial spray finishing manufacturing and distributing market, is teaming up with us for their website redesign and development project!

AirVerter’s advanced technology and innovative spray gun designs have made them a favorite among aviation and marine industry painting professionals for over 25 years. Their strong focus on worker safety and environmental solutions has set them apart from competitors throughout their history, but now they’re ready to utilize a MIVA Merchant shopping cart to allow for direct purchases online. With hundreds of parts for each spray gun to choose from, we’ll be creating a custom cart that’s tailored to make the purchasing process effortless for both the customer and AirVerter.

We’re looking forward to working with Bill, Mike and the rest of the AirVerter team to take their business to the next level!