Last week we launched a new website for one of our clients, English Gardens Designs. They had a site that they had made themselves originally and were looking to launch a bright, clean, new site that incorporated the branding we had implemented for them in their brochure and business cards.

We decided on a CMS (Content Management System) solution so that they would have control over what was on the site. They could make changes anytime they wanted to. It also included a blog they have called “What’s Blooming?” which publishes automatically to facebook. This allows them to do less work since they don’t have to post something in more than one place. These feeds could be added to other social media as well.

I was approached by Jeff Montaigne of Coastal Kitchen to re-design their website. I was really excited about this because Coastal Kitchen is a special restaurant to my wife and I. The first time we went there was right after I had proposed to her. We had the best meal at that time and have not been disappointed on any subsequent trips. So, I went back to my studio and really started to study their site. There were a lot of good and bad things about the site. It had been setup by the original owners of the restaurant, a group out of Atlanta. Jeff inherited the good with the bad when he bought the business.

The Good: It was based on a WordPress backend. Not only that, but Jeff knew how to use it, and actually did update it with events they were planning. We were initially thinking it would just be a redesign of the template theme that was currently there. The content portion of the site was pretty good. Readable text, good font choices and colors.We wouldn’t get that lucky however.

The Bad: The site had been adapted from another restaurant’s website. The former owners had multiple restaurants, so after they made the first site, they ported over site and changed the images out. But they didn’t change any of the keywording, additional text, etc. So this site was really pushing an Atlanta restaurant as far as Search Engines were seeing. The menus were just PDFs of the actual menus and had to be downloaded to be read. Jeff and I both hated that. The look of the site was pretty boring and it had some annoying flash on it that was totally unnecessary.

So I started from scratch and made a new theme. I took a number of photos both at the restaurant and the marina which it backs up to. I made it so that every page had a different, relevant photo. The menus were redone as editable text, which will help them immensely. The new look was approved and work began. Getting access to the FTP side of the site was difficult due to it not being given to Jeff when he bought the business. They gave him WordPress login access but not the FTP side. So after we finally got that straightened out, I got to work and reworked the site. It is now up and working great. Jeff is very pleased with the new site… and I am looking forward to the next time I get to go there for some food instead of work! Hmmm, I think a Drinks with Jeff would be good.