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GoodSource Solutions is a nationwide organization that specializes in supplying food options to schools, relief organizations, corrections facilities, non-profit food agencies and other alternative markets.  Though GoodSource has been an industry leader for over 20 years, they recognized that they needed an updated web presence.  They came to Durrani to redesign and develop a cohesive site for their multiple divisions and to give them a fresh, professional online showcase for their products and services.

Using a Wordpress MU multi-user platform, we created a customized Content Management System that GoodSource can easily and efficiently maintain in-house.  We applied a modern, clean design and a site structure that incorporates each of their company’s six divisions, housing a unique restricted area for each division so that distributors can access pricing and additional materials which remain hidden from competitors and the general public. 

To correspond with the launch of their new online presence, GoodSource has also launched an email marketing campaign to highlight specific products and specials.  We have handled the process of programming the html emails, coordinating and sending them on schedule, and providing analysis of open and click-through rates.  GoodSource has found email campaigns to be a relatively inexpensive and effective method of online marketing, and Durrani is happy to provide strong solutions that boost GoodSource’s online presence!

Encinitas Foreign and Domestic Auto Repair (EFADAR), located right down the street from us in Encinitas, CA has been a Durrani Client since last summer. We recently re-designed and launched their website, converting an old constrained Flash site to a dynamic, graphic rich site where customers can make appointments instantly online.

In addition to website design, we often assist our clients with marketing and publicity throughout the year. When we work with a client, we become as knowledgeable and intimate with their products and services as possible, so naturally it becomes easy for us to promote and brag about them in an informed way when needed. Our staff can be called upon to draft press releases and send them out to media contacts and outlets nationwide.

We recently wrote and issued the following press release on behalf of EFADAR to announce their certification as one of the first environmentally “Green Stations” in California.

If you are in North County San Diego and need automotive repair services, EFADAR is your place to go.

Read the full press release below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Durrani Design is excited to announce the launch of the new website for Perfect Fit USA at www.perfectfitshop.com.

Perfect Fit USA is a new local personal training studio located in Carlsbad, CA. With their grand opening scheduled for May 2009, they are gearing up with a new website, new marketing materials and new promotional products.

The website is completely custom made from the design to the PHP programming. Our team designed the look and feel as well as all of the logos, artwork and branding. In addition to their websites, we has also created their entire business collateral package including business cards, brochures, mailers and even custom screen printed T-shirts (through our promotional tees division at www.teecompressed.com).

Along with the PerfectFitShop.com website, we are also in the process of designing several other online sites for them including an e-commerce storefront. Their future store, Kettlebells for Mommies (www.kettlebellsformommies.com) is currently under construction and is built using MIVA Merchant 5.5.

We’re excited to announce the launch of our latest web design project at ZENsei.com. ZENsei, a fellow local Encinitas business, joined Durrani as a client in the fall of 2008. At that time, they were struggling underneath the burden of an online store that was difficult to maintain and update, where months would go by before they were able get new product clothing lines posted on the site. They also wanted to create a fresh new Flash introduction to really showcase the rich details of their fashions. As we’ve said before, image is everything and online shoppers need to come as close to touching and feeling a product as possible or else you won’t get the sale. As an online retailer, you need to overcome the obstacle of your customers not being able to experience your product like they can in a retail store.

We started by creating a large expanding view flash runway for each of their seasonal collections to show each item in multiple full-size detailed views. This allows customers to really get in and experience the fashion. After launching the flash runway, we went right in to work on redesigning the website to match.

Part of the problem with the original ZENsei website was that it was built in osCommerce. Now, we’ve used osCommerce ourselves and it is a popular open-source shopping cart platform but, in our experience, for every benefit it has from being free and open source, there are equally as many negatives for maintaining it and trying to build a business with it. We’ll save the osCommerce versus other systems discussion for another day, but for ZENsei we put them into our favorite shopping cart of choice, MIVA Merchant 5.5. MIVA is an extremely extendable and expandable system will grow with any size company. The source design templates are simple to work with and maintaining the integrity of the core system files and maintaining security is much much more efficient.

So, after a few months of work, we have now launched the new website. At Durrani we are firm believers in rapid application development, which simply means getting the site up quickly so it is functional, operational and making money (or serving the other business goals you have set). You can always polish the look and tweak the fonts and colors and graphics once the site is live, but all to often, sites get delayed for too long to get things just perfect. Of course, we don’t ever want to merely launch buggy or poor quality work, but there is a right time to go live and we get there quickly. 

The economy is bad and continues to get worse. This is no time for businesses to roll into a ball and crawl under a rock. The marketing work you do now and plans you put in place will all be much stronger when the economy bounces back.

We invite you to sit back, relax and browse through the NEW ZENsei.com.

Durrani is excited to announce the recent launch of the new Bumbleride.com website for 2009. Bumbleride is a leader in urban and stylish baby strollers for the young and modern family, and we have been proud to have them as a client for over a year.

For this latest redesign, we wanted to take advantage of the growing size of standard computer monitors and make the best use of this wider available space. A product website is the online showroom for a company and pictures are the most important feature. Customers aren’t visiting the website to write a research paper on baby strollers, they are there to view the product, compare specifications and buy. So we made sure to use big and bright images to showcase the features of the strollers along with their signature vibrant color lines. Making sure customers can navigate quickly to the information they are looking for is a top priority.

Also in the 2009 redesign is the expanded use of multimedia, both with flash video and image galleries. Although Durrani was not responsible for the actual creation of the videos or the product photography, we did ensure that the presentation of the videos and the theme of the flash players themselves seamlessly integrated into the new site design. Using the colorful and playful Bumbleride lifestyle photography, we also created a new short flash movie introduction to set the right tone and mood that is important to the Bumbleride brand.

For the technical aspect, the site was built entirely custom from the ground up using PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and Flash components. Certain content sections of the site are also being delivered from a MySQL database. A Wordpress blog is also integrated completely into the global design so visitors can pass seamlessly between the blog and main product pages.

As with any website, a business needs to first ask themselves, what is the purpose and goal of building the site and what is the call to action for the visitor? What is the intended result of having a customer visit the website? With Bumbleride the answer is to promote their brand and laser-focused image to their audience, showcase their baby strollers in the best possible and most attractive way and increase sales directly or indirectly through their distributors.

In a world where people’s attention span is growing smaller and smaller as we are bombarded with an overload of information, you have to be quick and concise in your message. Less is more and image is everything.

Visit the new Bumbleride.com

We are liquidating an overstock of custom screen printed t-shirts from Ascendant. Durrani designed all of these unique t-shirts. We have 6 cool designs available in various sizes and colors. We are selling the overstock surplus left-over.

T-Shirts are only $14 each with free shipping.

Visit our online store at TeeCompressed.com. There is a limited quantity available.

Here are a few of the t-shirt designs:

Shop now online at TeeCompressed.com.