Since 1999 we’ve done a lot of web development and online marketing work for a lot of different clients, and we’ve become more experienced in certain industries than others, namely; self storage, venture capital, and law firms. While we can certainly design a great site or provide SEO for any type of company (although there are some types of companies we won’t do work for…), we have some special expertise when it comes to these three industries. We just launched a website for Price Self Storage in San Diego which is a good example. There’s not much we haven’t done for this company. We reworked their brand just slightly, designed a new website, built a content management system, integrated the site with Centershift’s self-storage management software, and we’re providing ongoing PPC management and SEO services. Oh, and we designed and built an awesome Flash piece that allows users to choose the right size storage unit.

When it comes to venture capital, we’ve worked with almost every venture capital firm in Utah, and some outside the state as well. Plus I’ve had plenty of dealings as an entrepreneur with VC firms and angel investors and when I was a college student at BYU I won the business plan competition there, so I know a bit about the industry.

In the legal industry we’ve worked with several law firms providing everything from website design to SEO to content management. We’ve created micro-sites to bring in leads for a specific class-action lawsuit, and we’ve done overall marketing for firms like Strong & Hanni and Siegfried & Jensen.

Due to our experience in these three areas, we’ve created three new pages on our site to promote our experience and show off our work in those industries.

• Self Storage
• Venture Capital
• Law Firms

Once again, this doesn’t mean we’re only focusing on these industries and don’t want clients from other industries, it just means we have something additional we can offer these niches beyond the normal and phenomenal services we provide everyone else.

I’m not sure the last time I was so emotionally invested in the launch of a website, so I’m quite proud to unveil the new Price Self-Storage website. This site has got it all. A slight re-work of the brand, a new website design, Flash size chooser (check it out from the graphic link on the homepage, it’s pretty neat), content management system (still being finished up, actually), and integration with Centershift’s software for managing self-storage facilities. Price Self Storage has several locations in Southern California and one in the Bay Area, and now that the site’s launched we’ll be doing ongoing search engine optimization and marketing work to drive traffic and get as many customers signed up as possible.

Although we’re still ironing out a few kinks, it’s probably done enough that we can announce the launch of a new ecommerce site for one of our clients, TIW Jewelry, who is selling tungsten rings online under the simple brand “Tungsten”. We developed the branding elements, the website design, and coordinated the ecommerce integration for the website. The website, at TungstenRingsforMen.com, uses Magento for ecommerce.

I’m not 100% sold on Magento, but I have to admit I’m fairly impressed with it so far, especially since we’ve had some horrible experiences with other ecommerce platforms in the past. Magento was relatively inexpensive to implement, and is fairly simple to administer. It also includes a decent set of features to aid with SEO efforts, which is critical for this client.

We’ll also be doing ongoing SEO work for this client. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have a domain with some good keywords in it. We just barely started and their site is already #9 in Google for “tungsten rings for men”. Of course we really want to get the rankings for “tungsten rings” which they only rank at #85 for, but give it a month or two and we’ll see where things are at.

How’s that saying go about how the cobbler’s children have no shoes? And web design firms rarely have time to update their own website. A few months ago we updated some of the case studies (although we still sorely need to update more of them, especially the SEO/SEM case studies) and we put some goldfish on the homepage, but it was left feeling pretty stark and naked.

In this round of updates we trade gray for a rich blue and made the main marketing banner a solid color background rather than a white background so that the messaging pops a bit more and the site doesn’t feel so empty. We also added a new footer to every page which is where the blog updates are shown, as well as contact info, the copyright statement, and a small “about MWI” blurb so that no matter what page of the site people hit, they’ll know we’re an SEO and web design firm. You’d think that might be obvious, but with so many other companies out there named “MWI” we get all sorts of emails and phone calls. I just got one today from a lady wanting to order some hospital supplies. I have no idea what company she was trying to reach. Apparently she didn’t either, because when I asked her she sounded confused and said “I’m not sure…they just gave me this number.”

Let me know if you have any comments on the new site. We’re always open to constructive criticism, although getting around to doing anything about it is another thing.

Oh, and our XHTML/CSS code finally validates. Yee-ha.

Many, if not most of our clients are using blogs these days to help them communicate with their customers but also to boost the results of their search engine optimization efforts. Search engines love blogs, and it’s one of the easiest ways clients can boost their SEO visibility.

We recently launched a blog for an eating disorder treatment center called Avalon Hills. The blog uses Wordpress, and we installed and configured several Wordpress plugins including the All-in-One SEO plugin and the Post Notification plugin.

We’ve been managing search engine optimization and search engine marketing efforts for Workforce Solutions for a number of years now and we just recently launched a new blog focused on the HR outsourcing market for them.

The blog uses Wordpress, and we took advantage of several Wordpress plugins including the All-in-One SEO plugin and the Post Notification plugin.

More important than anything we did is the fact that our client is actually using the blog and posting on it regularly. While we can build a great blog, if our clients don’t use it then it’s like having a nice car that stays in your garage. Or what’s that quote? “Ships in a harbor are safe but that is not what ships are for.” I suppose that applies somewhat.

There are a few “catches” but not what you would expect. The #1 “catch” is that you have to have a high profile company and/or website. Other than that, we really are giving away free websites for which we would normally charge $15,000. Visit MyFreeWebsiteDesign.com for details.

I’m not a huge fan of the orange/white/gray color scheme, and yet here we are. The MWI website has been updated and if you don’t like the colors then you can blame the goldfish and stock photographers. I wanted to create a new homepage marketing image that had something to do with the concept of being left behind, but when you do a search for images under the keywords “left behind” you get all sorts of stuff, none of which was suitable for our purposes.

I was thinking I’d like to have a photo of somebody who had been left by the side of the road with a suitcase while a car drives off, or something like that, but I could not find any such photo or anything remotely similar on any stock photography site. Which is surprising to me since I think the concept would be fairly useful to a lot of people out there. So goldfish were the best I could come up with.

Let me know what you think. But bear in mind we’ll probably be too busy with client work to do anything about it.

Some new web design case studies have been added to the site. Most of these have been done for some time, but it’s hard to get around to updating your own website, you know? We’ve added case studies for Unishippers, Poems Art, Price Self Storage, AEEC, and Artscape.

Price Self Storage is the most recent work and in fact the new site hasn’t launched yet, although the design phase is complete. We hope to launch the new site within a few days. If you think Artscape and Poems Art are curiously similar, there’s no mistake to that. We completed Poems Art and acquired Artscape as a client as a result of the Poems Art site.

To join the Boston web designers group on Linkedin click here. The group is for anyone who provides web design services or who work for a web design firm in the greater Boston area, or anyone with ties to the Boston area who involved in web design. In other words, it’s pretty open.