Our new office & mailing address is:

337 South Cedros Avenue, Suite D
Solana Beach, CA 92075

Then you realize that the location you have chosen to open your restaurant is in the middle of nowhere and in the back of an old strip mall where all the other stores are closed down. You have no visibility. Sure you can pay for advertisements but that will only get you so far. Location, location, location – this is perhaps the most important factor to any brick and mortar business’s success. Life isn’t different on the World Wide Web either. So many people have great visions of creating an online business or presence and put in an amazing effort to produce a beautiful web site, only to find that they don’t get any traffic. With the amount of like businesses to be found on the web, what are you doing to stand out in the crowd?

This is where SEO “Search Engine Optimization” comes in to play. Although SEO is not a new term, you may be hearing more and more about it everyday when it comes to your online presence. The term, which was first used back in 1997, is one of your greatest weapons when it comes to the exposure of your web site. Research will tell you that the majority of “searchers” will skip over the pay-for-placement ads and go right to the top of the organic listings (those listings usually after the top 3 shaded ones). This is where you want to be.

The good news is that you can get there; the bad news is that it will take more effort than simply adding a few choice keywords to your code. At Durrani Design, as a San Diego based business, we know how much competition is out there. The quality of your work may be the best around but if people can’t find you then the opportunity to be noticed is drastically reduced. Our suggestion is to take pride in every aspect of your business and don’t be fooled by people claiming they can get you to the top of the listings by just adding 5 keywords to your site. This would be like claiming you have the best burger in town all the while using frozen patty’s from your national food distribution chain.

When it comes to SEO there should be no backing down – it’s a full time job, making sure that you not only get to the top of the list, but that you stay there as well. Just like anything in life, the more you give to something, the better results you get.

This month at the Miva blog we discuss making your website design top-notch while also keeping it relevant to your industry and audience.

I first started working with Miva Merchant back in 2001 as a freelance developer. Back then, most people’s first exposure to Miva Merchant (originally Miva) was the result of it being offered as a free shopping cart add-on to their hosting plan. Since it was free software, many small businesses began using it without even really considering other choices. Over the years since then, many free open source shopping cart platforms have come and gone; and while many of those original Miva Merchant customers may have jumped ship along the way in pursuit of that mythical perfect free shopping cart, those who stuck with Miva have been the beneficiaries of a mature, solid, well-built platform that has made millionaires of many of those first small business owners.

Read our complete post at the Miva Merchant Blog.

Congratulations to Encinitas Foreign & Domestic Auto Repair! Their website, at www.runcarrun.com, has just been named one of the Top 10 Automotive Repair Web Sites by industry leading magazine Auto Inc.

The Auto Inc. ”Top 10″ contest includes submissions from companies all over North America, and the results were just published in the January edition of the magazine, in an article called “Cream of the Crop.” The start of the article reads, “As usual, we were overwhelmed by the number of entries we received this year for Auto Inc.’s 12^th annual Top 10 Automotive Repair Web Sites awards,” and goes on to say that the sites were evaluated using the following criteria: First impression, visual design, appearance, navigation, consumer friendliness, technical, objective/purpose, innovation, credibility, interactivity, and encouraging action.

The EFADAR site was designed with user-ease and interactivity as a top priority. Aesthetically, we created the graphics with EFADAR’s neighborhood, the southern-California beach town of Encinitas, in mind. “Very unique-looking site,” said one of the contest’s judges. “Nice use of color and design to reflect the surrounding community.”

EFADAR co-owner Julie Macaluso said, “Our Web site combines innovative design with user ease, large iconic buttons, easy-to-understand graphics and all vital information at the customer’s fingertips. We had a lot of fun with the redesign and are extremely happy with the results.”

We would agree – this redesign was a particularly fun and rewarding one. The Macalusos found Durrani through the Encinitas Chamber of Commerce, and they came to us seeking a complete overhaul of their online presence. The thing that made their project so fun was that, after discussing their goals and branding, they stepped aside and let us go to work – no interjections or rounds of massive edits. They hired us for our expertise, and they took full advantage of it. Too often, a creative agency becomes a captive of a business-owner’s own personal creative ideas, and the whole reason behind hiring an agency is lost. Design can be seen as subjective, but marketing-driven design is a finely-tuned science, and the EFADAR website is a perfect case study of what can happen when a client trusts the experts.

We are honored to be a part of the EFADAR family and to count them among our clients, and we’re excited that their website has been chosen for this award. Check out the full article online at:www.asashop.org/autoinc/jan2010/topten.htm

DisplayWorks is a premier exhibit house with over 30 years experience, an award-winning portfolio, and client list of high-profile companies spanning a wide range of industries.  They create custom-designed themed environments, including tradeshow exhibits and booths, interior environments for retail and corporate spaces, and event decor.  DisplayWorks operates under the motto Listen. Analyze. Create. which drives their service-oriented approach to each client and each project.

DisplayWorks came to Durrani to redesign their website, and  we are excited to create the new site to be an online showcase of their extensive portfolio as well as a tool to show potential clients all of the services and experience that they provide.

Durrani Design + DisplayWorks.  We think this will be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

This is especially important if you have employees making continuous updates to your website content. Most shopping cart platforms, including MIVA Merchant, have global headers and footers for content that is included on every page of the site, such as your site navigation links, footer information and promotional banners. This content is being delivered to the web browser when a visitor is on both non-secure pages as well as on secure pages, such as when in the checkout process. As the global areas of your site get updated with new content, you need to make sure the links to banners or security badges or any tracking codes are created correctly so that they are accessible on every page in the website and do not cause security alerts or broken images.

Of course, having a reliable and professional development support team handling your store maintenance and website updates will minimize any shopping cart problems, but it’s always smart business to be hands-on with your online store. Even in the absence of any technical problems, it’s still a good idea to run through things and keep the customer experience fresh and up-to-date. Never just assume that if your shopping cart worked ok yesterday, it still will today. Check, check and triple check.

We’re excited to be recognized for our design, and to be a part of this collection of great websites. Check out the article at http://www.reencoded.com/2009/08/23/website-background-images-examples-and-implementation/

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.

The Restaurant Depot is one of the nation’s largest restaurant suppliers, with over 70 warehouse locations nationwide. But in order to truly compete in this modern digital age, you have to be represented online. That’s where the partnership between Durrani and The Restaurant Depot was launched. We’ve been with them from the beginning, designing and developing their first online storefront with MIVA Merchant version 4 and recently embarked on a design overhaul and major migration upgrade to MIVA Merchant 5.5. MIVA 5.5 provides online merchants with a ton of flexibility and expansion opportunity. The Restaurant Depot, online at TheRDStore.com, relies on Durrani to support their online store and product database of almost 10,000 products – one of the largest online restaurant equipment and supply retailers.

But we didn’t stop with just their main online store. The latest and most exciting development with Restaurant Depot has been the creation of several prototype in-store kiosks, which feature a cloned version of their primary website and allow customers to easily search for available products both in store and online. This gives customers a much wider choice of equipment and supply items then just their local neighborhood warehouse can provide. If the Kiosk prototypes are successful, Restaurant Depot hopes to roll them out to most of their regional stores.  For us at Durrani, this project was a huge success for many reasons – one of which is that it demonstrates the strength of the MIVA Merchant e-commerce platform. Clients always ask us if MIVA is the right choice for their business and The RD Store is a great example that shows MIVA can keep up with the best of them and perform at an enterprise-level that will grow as big and as fast as your business.

“Image is everything and online shoppers need to come as close to touching and feeling a product as possible. You need to overcome the obstacle of customers not being able to experience your product, like they can in a retail store. Take time to present your products in the best possible way with clear and vibrant images and accurate descriptions.”

Joe McDonald, Managing Partner, Durrani Design

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