cultureblog

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 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 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.

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!

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