Tuesday’s Tear Sheet: WordPress Shop Design + SEO Disasters
For those who aren’t familiar with Tear Sheets, in the imaging industry, a tear sheet is a promotion piece used by creatives to prove to clients that they’ve been published. For photographers and other creatives, it’s a printed piece, usually a reproduction of the magazine ad that their work was published for.
I’ve got two very different projects I’d like to share with you today.
Pink, Sparkly and V Saves The Day – Again
So what do you do when your client who’s launching a new business requests that her WordPress business site design be Pink, Sparkly and Have Butterflies?
Well, you design it of course!
Kate’s a blogger and a wicked seamstress. After looking through her portfolio and receiving some beautiful items she made for my kids, I encouraged her to start a web based business. Expand her reach. Put up an online shop. Go the mom entrepreneur route.
I wanted her site to kick ass by offering her custom services and to include her signature, one of a kind creations.
Yeah, I know, she could have put up an etsy shop.
But tell me this, when you google something you need to buy, how often do you see an etsy shop in the search results? Kate needed a business site. One that could be search engine optimized.
Though Kate can offer her services to her social network, why stop there? There are businesses looking for uniform embroidery, consumers looking for one of a kind gifts. Having her own business site that showcases her talent and offers her services was the answer.
I did have a couple of challenges though.
#1 The logo.
I don’t usually design logos, but I needed one to start. I just couldn’t pull the design together without it. Sew Gaelic being a brand new business didn’t have one yet. Kate’s been a seamstress for years and has many one of a kind dresses and embroidered products for sale. She has a unique eye for color and design and I wanted her logo to represent that. What better way to represent her line than a label?
#2 The WordPress Design
When designing a business site for anything apparel related, you do need to offer the client, someone who’s a one woman show, an easy way to update her site. Along with blogging about recent projects, Kate will be adding products and portfolio pictures. She needed a framework that makes this easy and yet not bog her site’s load time down with a bunch of different plugins.
So, I decided to take a different approach to the design and use a framework with the eCommerce built in.
Learning a new framework isn’t easy and the framework I used for this project is pretty new, support from the developers is there but the forum is completely empty.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m the first user or the only user who needs help.
I don’t usually work with frameworks (think genesis, headway, thesis) because the client would have to buy a copy of the framework to run the design’s theme. When you’re a mom entrepreneur taking a risk on starting your own business, budgets are tight.
So I used the web based interface to build the theme and then I spent hours recoding. Heck, I still have recoding to do. The site design is a work-in-progress.
I’m pretty proud of this design and though the site hasn’t launched yet, I couldn’t wait to share it with you.
You’ve really got to head over to Sew Gaelic to experience the true beauty of it.
I like the framework, it’s just really a PITA to design with but I’m thinking I want to try a new design for After Bedtime Blog. Ya know, when I find the time.
SEO Disaster And V to the Rescue!
This project pretty much pissed me off.
Not the client. But the state of her blog.
And it’s cases like this that cause bloggers to want to run back to blogspot.
Cases where their move to WordPress just wasn’t done right.
The client is very cool and a really nice lady. she seriously didn’t deserve the grief.
Imagine you’ve been blogging for two years, decide to go a bit more pro and place the trust of your baby, your blog in someone’s hands and…
I don’t want to bash another designer, so I’ll just share the testimonial my client sent me last night.
July 30, 2012
I recently contacted Vanita Cyril to help me with some issues with my WordPress blog. I explained to her that I had recently paid someone to move my blog to WP, but they never finished the job. There were errors, issues I didn’t understand, and missing posts. She fixed them all!
She is an excellent communicator, explaining to me just how much it would cost upfront to assess the damage on my blog, and to repair it. She emailed me the details step by step about how she would go about it, and in very little time, she had my blog up and running again.
If you want someone you can trust, and be there for you, Vanita is the person to call. She’s professional, awesome, and tech-savvy. I plan on working with her again in the very near future.
Karen Hug-Nagy creator of:
Mommies In Orbit, Raising Kids, One Orbit At A Time.
Mommies in Orbit is a pretty damn cool blog and Karen’s been blogging for 2 years. She has a unique twist on sharing her mommy adventures that I love. You should definitely head over and say hi and connect. Here’s one of my recent favorites that I know moms of tweens can relate to.
And that’s it peeps!
Thank you all for having my back and promoting this blog while I work on these projects and don’t get to blog myself. I really do appreciate it. Your sharing has been making my work-from-home-be-my-own-boss dream come to life.
Thank you
Vanita, you are SUPER smart and talented. I love Kate to death, too
Waning Woman recently posted..Coffee after Weight Loss Surgery and Organo Gold Review
Thanks Sis! She’s a super lady. Love her to pieces. So happy to be working with her on this.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Tuesday’s Tear Sheet: New WordPress Design projects
Yep, you arehaving a terrific Tuesday! Well done!! Olympic gold medal for you!
IASoupMama recently posted..Mute
thanks girlfriend!
There you go. Did you ever considered wearing a ‘superwomen’ cape? Great job, Vanita.
JanB recently posted..Pole Dancing Olympic Sport
ok who told you i have one?
not cool blowing up my spot like that Jan.
Now if anyone actually reads the comments, they’ll know.
thanks big guy
I love that blog you made for her and you are wonderful to come to the rescue for so many of us!!!
PragmaticMom recently posted..Math Games For Kids Inspired by Olympics
lol thank you girl. i’m glad there’s a way i can help.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Tuesday’s Tear Sheet: WordPress Shop Design + SEO Disasters
You are awesome! I love the design of Sew Gaelic and am so proud of you!!
thank you Jessica! i am pretty damn proud too. i’d really really like to redesign here, just a little bit. that framework using a developer kit called Bootstrap and i really just want to try every crazy thing it has before offering to clients. oh wait! i can redesign the biz blog. but who would see it? lmao
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Tuesday’s Tear Sheet: WordPress Shop Design + SEO Disasters
You know I’m your biggest groupie, so there, I’ve said it.
The Sew Gaelic site is so pretty! (and from a non-pink-loving person, that’s huge for me to say hehe)
Alison recently posted..Online and Offline
awww thanks girl.
i was never a “pink person” either but for some reason since i added a bit of pink here, it’s grown on me.
and my pink is more mauve then pink i think. lol.
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Tuesday’s Tear Sheet: WordPress Shop Design + SEO Disasters
You are so talented. Love the design and you are right. One needs their own website for SEO. Etsy shops are great but it is not an either or thing like you said, but rather both compliment (and enhance).
Charlene recently posted..BlogHer Buzz
Charlene thanks so much. Tell me, did you actually get to see the live site? I just noticed there’s a server issue and the site is blank. trying to pin down when it happened.
Hey Van,
Proud of ya dear
I remember demo project you shared with us last time. I was wondering why design is quite different 
Now I get it and goes with theme. Not like demo one, after finishing it and revealing the design in your mind, it’s pretty awesome. I do like how navigation works, performance is good and oh… oh… isn’t that slideshow takes some time to load? 
Don’t slap me for asking that 
LOL… I think you will add more features on it and good job Van.
Cheers…
Mayura recently posted..How to Set Up Your Blogger Blog with a Custom Domain on GoDaddy
sometimes it takes some time to load, but…the fact is… i don’t care if the homepage ranks. it’s just a fancy store front. it’s the service pages that need to rank and you’ll find those load quickly. the product pages, when ready, will not have any fancy smancy sliders, so those will load quickly too!
And thank you for the support friend
Vanita Cyril recently posted..Interested in having PR firms and Google Love You?
Well… Not ranking
Let’s keep ranks aside. What about user experience dear? I did click on slider first as it grabs my attention rather than looking into other pages. it happens, right? 
Cheers…
Mayura recently posted..How to Set Up Your Blogger Blog with a Custom Domain on GoDaddy
Mayura I think you may have visited when we had server issues because the slider loads last and takes about 2 seconds and each image links to a page
Whoopsie Daisy… Really? :O Now I’m gonna blame the server. Where is he?
Glad to know that dear. 2 secs, impressive…
Cheers…
Mayura recently posted..How to Set Up Your Blogger Blog with a Custom Domain on GoDaddy
Wow, when the customer tells you they want pink, sparkly and feminine, you REALLY deliver!
I think that’s a fabulous business website; it really speaks volumes of Kate and her business without saying a word, which I think is so important when it comes to first impressions.
I’m really glad you can help out that blogger, too! If it were me who had all that trouble and you helped me out of it, I’d be singing you praises left and right as well
Kayla recently posted..Galstanberry #3 *Book Review*
Great testimonial, Vanita! & I love the logo concept!
Ann recently posted..Bird and Book: Mourning Dove
thank you thank you much appreciated girlfriend