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The last five months have been a whirlwind of web wizardry. We've been working hard, juggling tight deadlines, all while getting into the festive spirit with a pinch of Christmas cheer and a dash of Mardi Gras madness.

I'd like to show off the fab five website jobs below completed from September '23 to February '24.

Surveying the landscape before drafting the blueprints

landscape with tree

You'll find the following text on our About page:

"We don't force you to use technology that maximizes our profit. We discuss your needs, then build a website that maximizes your investment."

These aren't empty words, and the website projects below are perfect examples of how we can "maximize your investment." 

Websites can be more than marketing tools

Stafford Tile websiteStafford Tile & Stone has been a great client of ours since 2008, and we built a new website for them in 2012. It's gone through a series of facelifts and upgrades over the years, but it was still mostly a marketing tool. That has changed now since Peggy Stafford contacted us a few months ago with some great new directives. "We need more out of our website. We need for it to be the Stafford Tile location that is always open and always available for our customers."

Rocky & Carlo's Restaurant & Bar websiteAs a website developer who primarily builds content management system websites on established CMS platforms, I always had a bad feeling about Squarespace, Wix, Weebly and other "do it yourself" website tools. I'd wonder, "Will these services eventually take over the small business market? Will I lose business to these guys?"

SSL padlockLately I've been contacting the clients that host websites at I Design about the importance of adding Transport Layer Security or a Secure Sockets Layer certificate (SSL) to their website hosting package. In the past, SSL was reserved for websites that shared sensitive data with users or sold products. But that has changed and in today's world, secure websites are a must. 

Leger & Shaw is a full service law firm concentrating in maritime law and class actions & complex litigation. They hired a national company to build their original website, but they became frustrated with the poor design and lack of service and learned that bigger is not always better.

METTON image sliderIn my last news article, Does your website need a hero image?, I questioned whether following this layout trend was absolutely necessary. But I also mentioned that most of my new sites utilize photo sliders on the home page. So, if you're going to use a hero image or a big image slider on your home page, think about how it should look and work. Here are some basic rules to consider.

im a heroTake a look at almost any newer website design on the Internet today and there's a great chance you'll see a giant photo or a huge photo slider on the home page. Just like fashion, architecture, and other industries, web design follows trends. People see other sites and they want their site to look the same. They go to seminars where "professionals" tell them "your site must have an enormous photo on the home page."