Garrendenny Lane Interiors
Posted on | August 19, 2008 | Comments Off
Website started November 2007 and developed in stages over 2008.
Designed logo. Designed look and feel of website. Installed blog and cms and customised theme for blog, built pages, added photo gallery plug ins and provided training in updating website. Set up a shop solution to enable the selling of around ten products with shopify and implemented a shopify theme to look like the existing website.
Garrendenny Lane Interiors Website was launched in 2008. The site was developed over several stages, and took a year to reach its final form – consisting of a brochure website, blog, online shop and photo galleries. As the site has regular posts and updates, the site was built in a simple CMS, training was provided in how to manage the website and the online shop and the website is updated via the CMS by the owner, Lorna. Lorna keeps an excellent blog, and her enthusiasm and use of the blog to create a really excellent ‘electronic’ business front for her business is excellent.
Developing a website over stages can suit a client as perhaps at first, an online presence is needed to provide information, then this can be developed to include several other features and functions. The final stage of the building of the Garrendenny Lane Interiors Website involved the implementation of an e-commerce solution, and an online shop facility was developed. The website has three main strands to it – information, both text and photographs, blogging and selling products online. It also acts as the Garrendenny Lane Interiors shop front as the business is operated from home.
The first stage involved designing a logo, setting up up domain and hosting, and then creating a static website, presenting information about the newly opened Garrendenny Lane Interiors business.
Logo
Lorna asked me to design the logo for her website – I have to say I was not really comfortable doing this as print design is different to web design and it is a totally different way of working - I really do prefer designing web page interfaces. However, as my emphasis when designing websites is on good graphic design, and with lots of ideas and enthusiasm from Lorna I decided to give it a go. I have designed logos before, and often provide simple texting for a persons business name, if they do not already have a logo designed. After two attempts and help from Lornas business advisors, I designed the final logo, that is now used for all Lornas marketing material.
BLOG
The second stage involved setting up a blog, using the same design as the website in order to provide consitency of brand. A unique header was designed to reflect the more informal nature of the blog and to present relevant images and a lovely photo of Lorna the owner of Garrendenny Lane Interiors and author of the blog.
The third stage involved adding in features such as an easy to update online gallery to showcase the fabric and wallpaper available and a selection of the furniture for sale at Garrendenny Lane Interiors and other functional features such as a newsletter.
The fourth stage involved in setting up and installing a content management system (cms) for the client to update all aspects of the website themselves. Training in updating the site and using all the various features of the site was provided.
ONLINE SHOP
Setting up the Online Shop
The final stage involved the setting up of an online shop facility for Garrendenny interiors to sell some of the products in stock online. At first the intention was to sell about ten items, however, the online shop now sells several interiors products. The technology used to build the online shop is shopify. This is a relatively new technology, it is a small fee based hosted service, very much geared to the small business set up for selling products online. The service provides a very good secure method of managing online sales. From a web designers perspective, the shopfiy product is also able to be customised according to the design of the client. I set up shopify for Garrendenny Lane and I also redesigned the standard template designs that come with shopify in order to make the shop front have the exact same design as the website and the blog. I built the first few products, then I provided training and documentation for Garrendenny Interiors to update the products to the shop themselves. I provide ongoing support to the online shop as new new features are added to the shop. However, Lorna completely manages the online shop herself.
This is a great website. This is also a site I am very proud to have been part of the making but it is really nice to see that the site is definitely Lornas as she makes regular updates. The products that are stocked at Garrendenny Lane Interiors premises and those stocked on the online shop are a must buy for those who want to have access to purchasing the most amazing products for the home and gifts for family and friends. Lorna keeps regular posts to her blog, a must read for those interested in Interiors and reading about family life on a busy farm, events around her local area and just great writing. Check it out if you have time.
Testimonial from Lorna – 2008
Lorna – owner of Garrendenny Lane Living Interiors
“I would wholeheartedly recommend Maura as a website designer: She didn’t frighten me with technology, listened intently to my wants, undertook research on my behalf, developed my ideas and presented me with a user-friendly and impressive website that I can update easily with photos or text. As well as the brochure pages, Maura set up photo gallery pages and an online shop over a couple of stages as the business developed and has also provided me with training and handouts to refer to. She also helped me to set up the blog and ensure the website was well optimised. I feel very proud of my website and I recommend Maura wholeheartedly, she has done a wonderful job.”
[September 2008] Lorna Sixsmith
Comments Off
Latest Projects
PRH Ireland Website
PRH Ireland website has been launched 18th December, 2011. The site has a custom design and has been developed with wordpress as a CMS.
Website Reaches Finals Irish Web Awards 2011
The Wandesforde school website that I designed in very close consultation with the ideas and vision for the website from the very talented blogging and website business owner, Lorna Sixsmith, is in the finals of the Irish Web Awards 2011. It is in the ‘Best Education and Third Level website’ category alongside some very large [...]
Poster for Edith Stein Conference
A poster has been designed for the opening night of the Edith Stein Conference to be held in NUIM, Maynooth in June 2011.
Email Design and Build
Recently launched for Sonas Housing in April 2011, is a new emailer, that has been designed and coded for the campaign monitor platform. I designed the emailer in consultation with Sonas.
Simple Paypal Shopping Cart Customised
Paypal shopping cart solution developed to sell four training and resource books published by Dublin GAA Games Development. The book details page also incorporates an embedded pdf viewer for the potential buyer to view in situ an extract from the book.