It’s impor­tant to keep a web­site up to date, both the con­tent and the con­struc­tion.  After adding some more pho­tos and a few new pages it was time to bring Van­cou­ver’s The Emer­ald Coast up to date with regards to web standards.

Emer­ald’s web­site was orig­i­nally based on a web­site tem­plate that fea­tured a Flash ban­ner at the time.  Com­mon prac­tice at the time to incor­po­rate some ani­ma­tion and give web­sites a lit­tle punch, Flash now was a use­abil­ity and SEO hin­drance. IPads/IPhones don’t dis­play flash items, and the con­tent is often ignored or poorly inter­preted by search engines.

Emer­ald liked the look so Blender extracted the good and reworked using mod­ern HTML design.  Next some jQuery ani­ma­tions to get back that punch and we’ll leave alone for another few years…

The Emer­ald Coast

As Blender I have worked with clients from as far away as Aus­tralia, but by far the major­ity are local small busi­nesses here in Van­cou­ver. I like it like this. Over the years I have built solid rela­tion­ships with clients that have sup­ported and grown my business.

While meet­ing in per­son might seem inef­fi­cient, the truth is sit­ting across from some­one you can exchange ideas much more eas­ily. Meet­ing face to face is some­thing you take for granted in a nor­mal work­place, but as a self employed inde­pen­dent web designer, per­sonal con­tact is gold!

It’s not unusual to be meet­ing with a client or just talk­ing with some­one and learn­ing that I have worked with some­one close to them. The vast major­ity of my clients have come from refer­rals so reach­ing this local crit­i­cal mass feels really good.

So — Thanks Van­cou­ver Clients!

New client Squeeze Van­cou­ver had a web­site already, but it’s search engine traf­fic was very dis­ap­point­ing.  Blender was hired to opti­mize the web­site to bet­ter com­pete with other local chair mas­sage busi­nesses.  We quickly iden­ti­fied some struc­tural prob­lems with the web­site, worked with the client to cre­ate some new con­tent, and devel­oped an SEO plan.

Mobile Chair Mas­sage Squeeze Vancouver

UPDATE: Blender is happy to report that Squeeze has received it’s first clients from organic search!  After a lit­tle over a month clicks through Google are up 87%. Most impor­tantly we are see­ing our tar­geted search phrases start­ing to appear on the first page in some searches.

Blender is happy to wel­come new client Genssante. Blender will be doing their ongo­ing main­te­nance and updates.  First task — update the web­site using php script­ing to make main­tain­ing it eas­ier and cheaper.

Thanks to client Mark Rosen­garten (markrosengartenmd.ca) for the referral.

Just launched: Van­cou­ver trade­mark agents CoastalIP.com.  This excit­ing project focused on a web­site design that was search engine (SEO) friendly and user main­tained with a con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS).  The project lead was Cre­at­ing Excel­lence who gets credit for the lay­out and content.

Blender took their design and cre­ated Word­Press based web­site, our cho­sen CMS plat­form.  Care­ful atten­tion was taken to make the tem­plate adapt­able so the web­site can grow.  New pages can eas­ily be added, posts to the blog, client logos to the site footer.

The site is also designed for a tar­geted SEO cam­paign.  Spe­cific key phrases were researched and the site ensures these fea­ture promi­nently for google and other search engines to index.

CoastalIP.com is the lastest in a series of web­sites Blender has launched with Cre­at­ing Excel­lence, and we have another in pro­duc­tion.  Look­ing for­ward to many more!

Tech­nolo­gies used: Word­Press CMS, jQuery Javascript Library, HTML 5

Visit Trade­mark Agents  — coastalip.com

Site cred­its:
Lay­out,  Design, and Mar­ket­ing — creatingexcellence.ca
Build and Pro­gram­ming — Blender
Pho­tog­ra­phy — photosbykathryn.com 

Shortly after hav­ing Blender give his web­site facelift and back-end over­haul long­time client Gary Mitchell learned his book was being pub­lished.  He decided a com­plete re-design was in order to focus in this new direction.

As part of the pre­vi­ous update Blender had con­verted Gary’s web­site to Word­Press based con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem (CMS). This meant we could now change the entire appear­ance of his web­site with­out touch­ing the con­tents.  Gary would edit and update his con­tent while Blender restyled the appearance.

Tech­nolo­gies: Word­Press, PHP, CSS, Javascript, jQuery

visit OnTracCoach.com

Long time client Gary Mitchell of GEM Com­mu­ni­ca­tions wanted his web­site re-branded and updated.  On the top of his list of require­ments was a con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem and an SEO friendly design.  You can check out the progress at OnTracCoach.com.  Watch for a more in depth launch announce­ment here…

Blender recently launched Mas­sage Ther­apy on Dun­bar’s first web­site.  This brand new busi­ness just opened and need a web­site to help intro­duce them­selves to the Dun­bar neigh­bour­hood.  Owner Vicki Bell was referred to Blender by long time client Shel­ley Hilliard of Hilliard Design — thanks Shelley!

Vicki was on a tight bud­get so we focused on sim­ple straight for­ward func­tion­al­ity.  Search Engine Opti­miza­tion (SEO) was a pri­or­ity, as was cross-plat­form com­pat­i­bil­ity.  Fea­tured tech­nol­ogy was jQuery used in the tran­si­tions dur­ing page loads.

The Mas­sage Ther­apy on Dun­bar web­site is fea­tured in my port­fo­lio, and you can visit it online at massagetherapyondunbar.com.