Category Past Projects

Look, the fact is there are bad players in the web design industry. It’s true in any line of work, of course, but it’s a shame that in this business, one of the worst is also one with a large Internet presence and amount of pull. Without naming names, we’ll just say that this company used to put out a phone book, and it had pages of a lemon-colored hue… They only go by their initials on the Web, though, these days.

Simply put, they’re evil. As in e-EE-vill. Exactly why and how is a rant for another day, but it’s always a tremendous pleasure to get to pull another business out from under their Palpatine-like yoke. Dave’s Garage Doors is our latest ‘rescue client’. Dave’s is owned and operated by a wonderful couple who just want to run their business and serve others, not be held hostage by a gazillion-dollar corporation, yet that’s exactly what was happening. Unable to get that company to even make the most basic of changes to their site, and paying hundreds of dollars a month for non-existent SEO services, they were faced with the choice of either completely abandoning their current site and domain, or continuing to pay ridicuous fees.

It’s not as easy a choice as it may seem, but they were able to see the benefits of spending money on a fresh start, with plenty of growth potential, versus staying with the status quo that was getting them nowhere. Even with the usual small-business budget contraints, we were able to build them a fantastic little website by keeping the majority of content to a single page with parallax backgrounds and on-page links, adding a second page strictly for contact purposes. We’ll add a before/after work gallery as time and budget allow. Most importantly, our clients LOVE the new site, and the feeling of being independent once again. Check it out here: www.davesgaragedoorrepair.com

One of our long-term clients, Rod Triplett of Family 1st Pawn in Republic, is also the Vice President of the Missouri PawnBrokers Association. Rod had been trying to convince his fellow Association members for quite a while (years) to pony up and replace their old (and frankly embarrassing) website with something modern and new.

His wise counsel finally won the day, and of course he hired Diamond Mind to bring the goods! This is what we like to call an “iceberg site,” in that only a small portion of is public-facing; the majority of the site is behind a member login wall. On the back end, we have given them a (working) member account creation and payment system, a chat forum for fraud alerts, legislative discussions, items wanted and items for sale, and much more.

Check out the new site here, www.missouripawnbrokers.com, and if you frequent pawn shops, be sure to tell them to join the MPBA!

We see a lot of what we like to call “Bob’s yer uncle” websites — where the business owner “knows a guy” who does web design. Whether that guy is actually your uncle, or your kid who’s in college, a fellow from church, or whatever, the fact is they’re still amateurs that you’ve hired to put a face on your business. First impressions are the same on the Web as they are in person! You’re not going to hire an amateur to re-wire the electricity in your house, or fix your leaking roof, so why do it for something that’s just as important? It’s your livelihood!

This was just such a case. At first glance, the orginal Spot Plus website was OK (at best) — looked professional enough, wasn’t going to immediately scare anyone away. But on closer inspection, there were plenty of issues with the site (a list an entire page long, in fact) and what was there was in no way going to entice customers to use their services. In the entire time the original site was up, Spot Plus never got a single contact through their online form. True story.

Thankfully for his bottom line, the owner (Jerry Grant) hired Diamond Mind to put a NEW face on his business, both with an updated logo and an entirely revamped website. For inspiration, we used some sage advice from a Chuck Mefford marketing seminar that Jerry and I had attended together — figure out the “why” and start from there. So, instead of focusing the new site on carpet cleaning services, we built it around why we, as homeowners, need to hire carpet cleaning, carpet repair, and so on. We want to keep our children healthy! We love our pets but they tear up stuff! (Personal experience there.) Accidents happen!

This was a whopper of a site, and a fun challenge to get it to all come together. I’m proud to say that it’s the best work we’ve done (to date). We even got complimented on it by GoDaddy help line personnel! (May wonders never cease.) Check out the entire site here, www.spotpluscarpet.com, and if you want carpet that’s “white sock clean,” call Jerry!

Hot off the (virtual) presses!  Here’s a single page website we built for Southwest Dealer Services, designed to go along with a radio advertising campaign put together by our referral partner Scott Dickinson at Mid-West Family Broadcasting.  As with many (seemingly most) of the sites we build, we had very little to start the design with; in this case, just the slogan “Fall in love with your car again!” Everything else had to be created from scratch.

Southwest already had a website — one that gives the word ‘antiquated’ new meaning — but for various reasons, the existing site couldn’t be redesigned.  So, for Scott’s campaign, we registered a new domain — www.fallinlovewithyourcaragain.com, duh — and used it solely for the landing page, to give the radio ads a recognizable and easy-to-remember URL (Scott’s MO for all of his campaigns). As Eppy Epperman once said, “We think it’s pretty excellent!”

The Legacy of a System, or, The System of a Legacy (System)

Just wrapped up — a complete overhaul of the StrongPath Financial website for our long-time friends/clients Dean Arens and Rick Flores.  These fine fellows are financial planners, which means every single bit of marketing they do must be overseen and approved by “compliance”.  When it comes to websites, these restrictions even go so far as to determine what website providers they are allowed to use, and all available template options from these providers have plenty of restraining factors built in.

This redesign was necessary (and a long time coming) because the prior provider’s templates weren’t responsive or mobile-friendly in any way.  And I’m pretty sure the person who designed the content management system did so while listening to Tal Bachman’s “She’s So High”… the year it came out!  Suffice it to say, it was old. And clunky. And like working in a straitjacket.  And… you get the idea. At least the new provider’s system had a modern(ish) back-end, and some workable, and responsive, template options.

So, here is a “before & after” look at the StrongPath website’s home page.  We actually designed the “before” version of the site, as well, which was itself a redesign of an even older and more basic (e.g. ugly) site.  The first redesign, done back in 2011, was literally a case of “the best we can do with what we have to work with,” so please judge it based on that, ha.  The new site is not perfect (by our standards, at least) but it is MUCH better, and you can use it on your smartphone!  Which is nice.

Check out the full site at www.strongpathfinancial.com, and keep Dean and Rick in mind when you’re looking for help with your investments, 401(k), college funding plans, and retirement planning.

A good friend of ours, Preston Dial, has been a professional photographer for over 4 decades, but medical issues have severely limited his ability to use one hand, which has meant that he can no longer do most of what he did for a living. Photography is his passion, though, not just his livelihood, so he turned his attention, and his incredible talents, to real estate photography, where he can take as long as needed to set up a shot and not have to worry about the subject going off to do something else!

Few home sellers, or even real estate professionals, give much thought to how much of an impression the pictures of a home for sale make on a buyer, but in actuality, many times the prospective buyer makes a decision on which house to look at based on how it appears online, and may never even see it in person if it doesn’t look good enough! A home that’s up for sale may be a real beauty, but if “cell phone snaps” are all a buyer sees, that home may never draw the buyer to see it in person.

So, we built this WordPress site for Preston to use as a ‘display case’ for examples of his work. And amazing work it is, too. Check out the full site at: www.affordablerealestatephotography.com. And share Preston and his talent with anyone you know who wants to get the most value when selling a home!

Stills can’t capture the beautiful parallax effects of this website we built for Casey Cooper, a mortgage banker with USA Mortgage.  As with all of their lenders, Casey was given a free corporate website when hired — and as you can probably imagine, that cookie-cutter corporate template left MUCH to be desired. (It even uses Flash!) Some of the folks there have wised up and established their own web presence, and Casey asked us to do the same for him, even giving us some fellow co-workers’ sites to use as guideline examples.

Well, short story long, Casey was definitely not expecting the final result to be what it was!  We can safely say we blew his mind with the site we gave him. After all, mortgage loans aren’t exactly the stuff of which dreams (and dreamy websites) are made of.  Our thought process on this site, however, was to play up the “dream home” aspect of getting the right mortgage loan to buy that house you always wanted.  And, of course, the right mortgage loan can only be arranged by the right mortgage lender!  (P.S. That would be Casey.)

Check out the full site at: www.ccoop4mortgage.com. And if you know someone who needs a loan and would like to work with an experienced lender who gets the job done right, have them call Casey. He always has your best interest!

Steve Cox, owner of Dents Unlimted / Cox Collision / The Car Spa, recently refurbished an older building in downtown Springfield, turning it into a modern climate-controlled storage facility, and asked us to build a website for his newly christened Cox Climate Controlled Storage.  “Yay,” we said, “A storage center!”  (Read that as Wayne’s “Hi. We’re in Delaware.”)  “What do you have for us to work with on this project, Steve?” we said.  “Well, I have a logo,” said Steve.  And that was, in fact, it.  (Amazing how many sites we do that start in this exact same manner.)

So, the fertile (diamond) mind was put to work, and an entire site was developed from what was originally a black-and-white logo. (Kudos for the green coloring go to Cody Boggs of PostNet – thanks, man.)  The final result was pretty spectacular, we think, especially relative to your typical storage center website (including Steve’s competition).  Check out the full site at: www.cccstorage.net. And be sure to let your friends know that climate-controlled, ultra-secure storage is available in a convenient and central location!

It’s always nice to wake up and find one of your clients featured in an article on the front page of the local newspaper. (In a non-criminal fashion, of course!) In this case, our latest client, Missouri Sun Solar, was one of the businesses spotlighted in an excellent article by Thomas Gounley of the News-Leader, titled “Why Solar Power Is Finally Having Its Moment In The Sun.”

We took on this project in collaboration with our friends at High Tide Communications. The project entailed turning an existing static website into a customer-manageable WordPress installation, while keeping the look of the site as close to the original as possible, as well as moving the whole thing to a new web host. We also needed to ensure the new site communicated captured leads to the client’s CRM.

Here’s a screenshot of part of the new homepage — improved from the original, in our opinion 🙂 — and the best part is that the client loved their new site so much, they immediately hired us to do a second, similar project! So thanks to Mar’Ellen and Melissa at High Tide, and Jason at Missouri Sun Solar — it was a great collaboration.  Or, as they say in Firefly, shiny!