Mindspike recently launched a website design and redevelopment for one of our long time valued clients, Metro Eye of Milwaukee. Headed by optometrist Dr. Amy Jankowski, Metro Eye has built a reputation in the Milwaukee area for providing only the best in eye care services but recommending stylish eyewear unique to each customer. Being from a very competitive market, with pressure not only from other local small businesses, but from larger chain operations, Mindspike’s mission was to create a website that would not only complement the level of design and style their products are known for, but create a website presence that set themselves apart from the competition.
We started by choosing a design palette featuring bright, bold colors that are complimentary to their other branding elements, while also providing contrast from their products. Color theory is an important process for the designers at Mindspike and we take it very seriously. We also consider the latest trends in color, and felt the color coordination alone takes the website inline with fashionable tastes. All of our designs were approved by Metro Eye before we even started with the development of the website, which utilizes the popular WordPress website builder framework & content management system.
The home page design process took us to the main draw of the business – its amazing products. We understood the need to present the eyewear in a bold fashion. The homepage was designed to maximize the available space so the details of the eye wear themselves featured as prominent on the web site as they do in the show room. This ‘product first’ mentality works to simplify the user experience of the visitors – there’s absolute clarity as to why you are at Metro Eye’s website.
Full screen slideshows on a desktop are one thing, but how does that scale to personal devices? Tablets and phones are well covered with our design thanks to our developers. Part of our design was to consider ‘mobile first’ and that sentiment is echoed by allowing the same full screen presentation to ‘shrink’ to smaller viewport. Feel free to open the website in a new window and then shrink the window. That’s what’s called responsive design, and it’s becoming more important than ever that websites have a strategy for mobile devices. We made absolutely sure Metro Eye’s new site followed these guidelines so that visitors could easily access the website from anywhere, using any device.
The interior pages take advantage of the professional photography Mindspike Design did of Metro Eye’s amazing retail location in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. In fact, Mindspike did almost all of the photography for their website, including photos of the products, location, and staff. We find that doing our own photography for websites allows for a more complete design vision and it’s a service unfortunately more web designers don’t do themselves, instead relying heavily on stock imagery or a quick shot from a cel phone.
Finally, Metro Eye’s online marketing with Mindspike’s digital marketing partner, Mindbenders Media, continues to put them first place with Google’s search engine results for “eyewear milwaukee“. It certainly starts with the search engine optimization Mindspike’s web developers insert into the website’s markup, but it’s only effective if there’s a steady stream of content necessary to feed to Google’s content-hungry bots. Combine that with Mindbenders’ social media marketing service, which in itself that factors towards fantastic pagerank, and you have great first-page search results that convert eyes on the web into feet in showroom (and sales for our client).
We are particularly proud of this project – we feel it’s the complete picture of what Mindspike offers to clients in regards to our services, a complete build from concept to launch. We are always looking for new challenges to exceed expectations with. Contact us today to begin talking about your expectations in creating a website as unique as your business.