A few months ago, I met a personal trainer who said he had a problem with his website: His site lacked visibility.

When I typed in his URL I found three problems:

1. His Domain Name was Too Long: www.empoweredthroughfitness.com.
2. It was Poorly Laid Out: Though a designer had worked on it – the site was too busy.
3. It was in Flash: This meant most of the visitors to his site on hand-held devices wouldn’t be able to access his site.

In order to improve his SEO:

1. I told him to shorten his domain name to empoweredbyadam.com. It’s a little shorter, and it references him. People will wonder just how Adam will empower.
2. I designed the site using WordPress removing all of the Flash elements.
3. I linked his site to Twitter and Facebook, and encouraged Adam to create a Yelp listing so clients could write reviews.
4. I also offered Adam a clean, and streamlined design.

Here is Adam’s previous site designed using wix.com:

The original Specialties page:

And this is his new website:

The new Specialties page:

Adam is pleased with his new site, and as long as he keeps up his blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts, he should achieve the SEO he seeks.

Confession: My father’s website was the first business website I designed. Dad (Herman Daniels, MD) is a Bariatrician and has a successful weight loss practice in the Washington, DC area. At the time, he had been abandoned by his web designer, and he needed a new website desperately, and I needed the practice as a new designer. So I took a few days, and put something together. This was the result:

Not a bad looking site, but definitely the work of a beginner. Though the site was successful in increasing business, I thought it was time to revisit it, and give it some new “flare.” I started by assessing his market:

• Many of his patients work in and around the Washington, DC area – so the location of his two offices needed to be prominent.
• He has a bilingual practice (English and Spanish), so it was important to design a separate Spanish site that incorporated elements of his English site.
• He has many patients in the weight maintenance stage of their program, and they need to find tips and recipes easily.

Now, the new homepage of his website showcases his offices, shares basic information about the practice, and updates healthy tips and recipes regularly.

Visit my portfolio to see more images from the redesign, or visit his website at:
hermandanielsmd.com to interact with the site.

Story:

Often a website doesn’t quite represent a company in the best light. Take Degenhardt Consulting an executive search firm which is owned by my good friend Carri Degenhardt Burke. Degenhardt Consulting’s original website was created using a hosting package from a company that provided “templates” for small business. Seemed like a good option at first, since web designers can be very expensive, but templates often have a few caveats:

• Flat files aren’t content management systems, and therefore aren’t easy to update, unless you know code. And what small business owner knows how to code?
• They are limited in color, layout and design.
• Over the long run, hosting/design packages are more expensive than CMS (free software + inexpensive hosting).
• You are designing your website on their server – which means you may not be able to export your website to another server (you can lose all of your files).
• Oh, and the templates… well they aren’t always pretty.

All this to say, Degenhardt Consulting’s original site looked like this:

It had basic information, but it was difficult to navigate. Carri couldn’t update it easily, so updates were infrequent, and she had no social media integration. A no-no given the nature of her business (Executive Recruiting).

Solution

Once we determined that the best site for Degenhardt Consulting and it’s employees would be a WordPress CMS choosing a design was simple. Degenhardt needed a website that had an eye-catching, compelling and interactive front end, yet the backend needed to be easy to update. Carri also writes a number of articles every year, and those articles needed to be included on the website. As well, each of her employees needed their own pages, that were integrated with specific social media options since each employee communicated with their clients using different tools.

The results were stunning (they can be seen at Degenhardt Consulting), and with traffic reporting Carri can now see how her website visitors (potential clients) interact with her site. Visit My Portfolio to see more images of Degenhardt Consulting’s redesign.

I’m very excited to announce that I’m doing a website redesign for Picsfilms.com! Picsfilms (owned by Matthew G. Piccolo) was one of my very first clients last year, so I’m happy that I’ve been given the chance to make a few cosmetic changes to my original design. As well Picsfilms is switching over from the all inclusive Squarespace.com hosting and design package, to a more customizable WordPress option. I’ll write more soon on why I believe Squarespace is an ok option, but not the best option in the long run for beginners.

Picsfilms new website should be up and running by next week. Thanks, Matt, for giving me the opportunity to work on your site again!

I’ll keep this introduction short, and allow you to peruse my new site. Feel free to write me at info@margueritedaniels.com. if you need a new website, a cooking class, or any copywriting!