Non-Retail Business Sites

Excuse the mess. We just redesigned our web site over the holidays and we're still putting up content for our portfolio. If you need to see samples of our work, please e-mail seanrice@rasadesign.com

Non-Retail Business Sites are similar to eCommerce sites in that they depend on achieving certain, quantifiable objectives. The intangible, "We just want a web site" is something we quickly discourage. The following is a list of web sites that do not fall in the category of eCommerce because the products offered are not shipped or downloadable. We reserve another page for businesses in the 'Service' sector.

If you need to sell your house fast, and your property is in Washington, DC, Virginia or Maryland, our latest client, CMDI Logic may be able to help. CMDI Logic was officially launched today after a brief beta launch to test the forms used in the application as well as to prep Google for post-launch marketing. This site is a tableless site using XHTML / CSS for all layout and graphics.

Designed to attract potential sellers of houses and commercial properties, Rasa Design Studio concentrated on the ease with which visitors might be able to convert by contacting CMDI. Both the front and back ends of the site were made for one purpose: Provide the right information, make it easy to contact the company.

The site is connected to hitslink.com for statistics and, after a brief period, we'll begin with the creation of landing pages, each designed to target one particular keyword string. Rasa Design Studio incorporates its custom "Landing Page Manager" to accomplish this.

Additional features include vTiger CRM, an easy-to-expand static, info and landing-page manager, XML integration of the database with the CRM, etc.

This site is very easy to duplicate with all the functionality, yet have an entirely new design and page structure. If you're interested in a similar site, please contact Sean Rice to make it happen. A site like this goes for $1,200 - $1,800 depending on your needs.

AdvertusMedia.com: For some businesses, 'SEO' isn't a big issue so much as the ability to show visitors (such as from a business card) that one's site is, indeed, unique. In the world of media buyer's, the idea is to promote the individuality and the concept more than attracting stray search visitors. Advertus Media's concept is 'being able to make a company stand out.' Rasa Design Studio envisioned a field of uniform 'spheres' as far as the eye could see. Featureless, plain, common. Among them, one sphere 'stands out' in dramatic fashion... lighting up with an inner blue light.

The page is divided into a Flash and a non-flash version of the site. This is NOT recommended for sites who depend on Search Engine traffic, but when visuality is a factor for conversion, Flash is useful. Because a huge number of people would prefer not to deal with a Flash site, a 'second' non-Flash version is offered. Stats show that it is nearly 50:50 the number of visitors that prefer the one over the other.

We used Bryce, Carrara, Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks and some custom scripts for the visual effects. BBEdit was used for the coding. The screen size accommodates older monitors as the demographic is often non-technologically savvy corporate types where 12% still use 800x400 screens.

FX Trading + 371 related web sites: FXTrading.com is the core of about 371 related web sites all owned by www.interbankgroup.com (which we also maintain. Rasa Design Studio was hired to design this sites along with a single admin that would allow non-technical stall to edit the content. For the most part, all 371 sites have similar content with links leading back to FX Trading. However, it was designed so that any one or more of the sites could be 'divorced' from the mySQL hosted content to deliver its own content.

The main architecture of www.fxtrading.com has the bulk of each page's content hosted as 'unique' content on the mySQL database. The structural parts of the pages that were common across all the sites are also kept on the mySQL server: Top Header, Left Column, Right Column, Footer, Header Tags, etc. Finally, A single mySQL table with 371 rows delivers the main, body content, meta tag data and other individualized content. Admin control uses TinyMCE for ease in editing.

Why? Well, for marketing. Each of the 371 web sites concentrates on a different keyword string. The trick is, though, to make sure that each site comes from a different IP block... even though the sites are all hosted on the same web host at WebSiteSource.com. ;)

Schenkel Stegman: Designing for a design firm's own web site is an exercise in communication that every design firm dreads. Translating the designs of another firm -- one that specializes in print -- to the web is an exercise in translation: Print and web are revealed as distant languages that uses the same words, but with completely different meanings and focuses.

To be fair, the original designs that Schenkel and Stegman handed Rasa Design Studio were gorgeous. Translating the graphics-heavy backgrounds into web pages that would not overwhelm 56kb modems... that was the hard part. The subtle colors could not mix GIF with JPEG without the rectangles of the slices appearing. Re-using slices had to be carefully considered and tested across different monitors. Jpeg 'black', it was discovered, comes in as many hues as there are hues: None of them truly black.

Today, the site would be easy to knock out as file sizes simply do not matter as much as they did. However, the site remains on the portfolio for no other reason than to remind us: The web is not print; Print is not the web. [As a note, Rasa Design Studio did NOT do the Flash intro that is now on the site]