Probably One of My Biggest Sites!

This project started as early as September of 2019 for a client located in Hartville, Ohio. I worked with Nick Cipollo of Studio 23 Group in Wickliffe, Ohio on this project. He is the one who has really helped them stay on top of things in terms of search engine, so they were in good hands on that side. They just needed that touch up cosmetically on the website. Hartville Outdoor Products runs in conjunction with their other company, Kids World right next door. Hartville Outdoor Products sells Storage Barns, Cabins, Garages, Structures of all Kinds, Outdoor Furniture and Amenities. Meanwhile, their counterpart, Kids World sells Playgrounds, Swing Sets and Basketball Hoops and Courts. The business has been highly successful with only one problem. Their website. Their website was loading at slower speeds and on an old layout that has not been updated in years. Going into the meeting, I knew that a new website was needed. When I went into the old website, there were many updates to do and a lot of code needed to be changed. Let alone they were on an older PHP version than 5.6! Rest assured, I had a lot of work to do.

We got right to work on a new design and the focus was a challenge as the client wanted something a little out of the box and fun with the industry. Kind of a mix-twist with the fun in their other business, Kids World. The challenge was to design and develop a site that had fun colors, fonts and interactivity, but still laid out maturity based on the average viewers and buyers for the company. We got a few rounds of design meetings done and we were off to a good start. 

A Careful Build and a Successful Launch

The build was a careful and long one as there were over 40 normal pages and over 480 Product Pages to build. The Product Pages took me a few manned days to build because I wanted to have these Product Pages built like Custom Landing Pages that you would see on paid advertisements so you had that futuristic and cool approach you see there on those pages. For this build, we needed to be careful and we needed to ensure that we have a smooth transition for meetings for the client for website changes or revisions from the initial build. We only went through one round of changes which took awhile.  We got to a liking and we have come to agreement with continuous update post-launch so we get some more photos of the actual product and have better displays later through time! Despite that, it was a pretty successful build despite being 500+ pages for me to build and monitor on my own.

The launch commenced on February 15th, 2020 in the night time, early morning in the 16th after I had gone out as traffic on the site was very slow and average viewership on the site is usually over 120 people per day at bare minimum. The launch was a success and as we went down for post-launch add-ons and preparations for more projects, we all celebrated with a new and good looking website for a great business located right in the heart of Hartville, Ohio! Cheers to the team down there! This was certainly a fun and entertaining build and am looking forward to continued partnership!