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Archive for client spotlight

client spotlight: The Rules of Life

05/30/18 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

Visit therulesoflifeseries.com

Client-Led WordPress Website Design: The Rules of Life Book Series Site

For many individuals or small businesses, one of the biggest challenges when building a website is identifying the correct approach for the development process. For each new project, the developer must understand the client’s needs including budget, the site’s expected lifespan, the client’s desired level of involvement, and especially the site’s intended audience and function. When a client isn’t involved in those choices and isn’t adequately educated on the site building process, there can be major problems before the development process even gets started. The development process may become a headache, and often the client will wind up dissatisfied with their website upon launch. It’s easy to understand why; after they’ve dropped a hefty sum on the site, it’s still not what they had envisioned, but at that point the client feels helpless to create change and achieve their vision.

At Berry Interesting, we believe in doing things differently. One of our goals is to make sure we understand the client’s priorities at the beginning of our relationship so we can create customized products and find tailored solutions that meet our clients’ needs.

Berry Interesting client Melissa Abbott-Cooke, author of The Rules of Life book series, is a great example of how our process works. Melissa needed a WordPress website to promote herself and her new book series to publishers. Unfortunately, a bad experience with another web development agency left her frustrated:

I hired a well-known web design company to create my site. Two months after launch, it was clear my site needed a makeover. The design process with the company was riddled with miscommunication and critical updates lost in a maze of conference calls and emails. This was my first website. I was relying on their expertise to guide me on design, but their advice was rare. My site was more important to me than to them; I was just another widget. Frustrated, I tried to update the site myself, but their coding made my changes impossible to make.


Click the thumbnails above to see Melissa’s ideas for site, composed in PowerPoint. You can also review the design elements used during design brainstorming (download the .pptx file).

Melissa’s original choice in a partner for helping bring her website to live backed her into a corner. Working with an agency that had their own goals in mind rather than with a team prepared to work closely with her to balance her design aesthetic against the practical demands of the job left her feeling dissatisfied with her site and frustrated at its limitations. She turned to Berry Interesting looking for a different kind of experience and found a new way of doing things that worked much better for her:

Commitment-shy but determined, I arrived at my meeting with D’nelle with a two-page PowerPoint mock-up of my site. Fairy godmother wand in hand, she spoke truths of website design that my lack of experience couldn’t articulate. A week later, D’nelle and her team at Berry Interesting took us by the hand and into the world of website design showing us just enough while they artfully managed the details.

In Melissa’s case, the design of her site, like the composition of her novels, was extremely important to her. Although she was limited in her ability to provide graphics and assets by her own knowledge of design tools, she was quite clear on what she wanted the site to look like and what she needed it to do. Thanks to careful listening combined with years of development experience, D’nelle and the Berry Interesting team were able to bring Melissa’s dream to life:

Their insights and expertise with WordPress created a website that’s not only engaging but easy to manage in the post-launch world. I was astounded by their project management, ahead of the game and never behind or losing a piece of information. Most importantly, it is their integrity and work ethic, so involved in the process of my site’s creation that they would tweak little details that made a huge difference in the user experience, running them by me to see what I thought. The whole process worked so quickly and so easily, I had to keep pinching myself. They went above and beyond in so many cases, pushing themselves and guiding me to what I couldn’t imagine my site could be, with the newest and brightest.


Click above to see screenshots of Melissa’s new site at launch, or visit the site directly.

Ultimately, this author’s story has a happy ending: Melissa got a new website that looked and worked the way she wanted it to and a positive web design experience, and Berry Interesting earned another satisfied client. If you’ve had an experience like Melissa’s before, don’t give up on your goal of having a beautiful, functional website and a development team that keeps your priorities top of mind.


The Rules of Life series website was built using the Divi Builder from Elegant Themes. If you’re curious about how Berry Interesting Productions can help your team build an outstanding website, we’re always happy to help! Drop us a line or book a consultation directly with our fearless leader, D’nelle. You can also sign up to get emails from Berry Interesting and we’ll keep you in the loop.

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Categories : client spotlight, web development, WordPress

client spotlight: Civilis Strategies

03/17/18 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

Civilis Strategies is the newest member of The Omni Family of brands owned by 3LS, Inc. Civilis is focused on government and non-profit civic engagement consulting. They knew that they wanted a WordPress site to remain consistent with the rest of 3LS’s web properties, and they chose to partner with Berry Interesting Productions for the design, copywriting, and development of their new brand’s first website.

Visit civilisstrategies.com

challenges in building a WordPress website for a brand new business

Copywriting for a new business website

The biggest unknown at the start of the project was a result of the newness of the Civilis brand. 3LS has been in operation since 2015, and the management team brings years of experience to the table… but it comes to Civilis, they are very much building a new business.

New businesses are nearly always a challenge when it comes to content. Standard things that site users expect to find – a portfolio of work, a list of clients, detailed service offerings, photos of the business, blog posts – are often still in the process of being created and refined.

The initial copywriting process for the Civilis Site, therefore, created a loosely defined structure that will allow the site to grow alongside the business. We made it our priority to focus on the future of the company and the potential work that the team hopes to accomplish, while providing a roadmap for content creation as the business grows.

Kimberly Bond led copywriting for this project and will handle future copy as needed, providing consistency going forward.

WordPress website accessibility on a budget

Since Civilis is working with clients in the government and non-profit sectors, we knew it was important to pay attention to the accessibility of the new site, but we also knew that the site would grow quickly, making accessibility work on the front end only the first step in Civilis’s ongoing efforts. Therefore, it was important to keep the initial efforts affordable. When it came to the Civilis site build, we were lucky to work with a client who also appreciates the need to pay attention to accessibility. Our development efforts focused on accessibility from the start.

First, we started with mobile-first, black-and-white wireframes, working with the client to identify the most important content. The Civilis site is built to offer a quality user experience, no matter what device a visitor is using to access the site.

Then, we used the WAVE browser extension to check our work. While no audit tool is perfect, WAVE is extremely helpful in identifying all manner of barriers to accessibility. While we certainly paid attention to accessibility during the build itself, WAVE caught things that we could not. The most helpful thing that WAVE did for us was allow us to focus on color use, so that users with color vision deficiencies would be able to access all of the site’s features.

Finally, we installed the WP Accessibilty plugin, which does some helpful work behind the scenes to make the site friendly to assistive technologies like screen readers. It also gives users the option to change the font size and the color contrast on the site themselves, in real time, just in case the rest of our efforts failed them.


If you’re interested in the whys and wherefores of website accessibility, click or tap to read more!


planning for growth with phased development

The direction established during copywriting gave our development team plenty to work with. At the time we wrote this post, it was only possible to see pieces of the overall structure of the site. While we launched with only two custom post types (Team and Services) alongside a few static pages visible to the public, we built two other custom post types (Success Stories and Clients) and customized the blog archive & single post presentations.

Although Civilis didn’t start out with content to flesh out those additional areas of the site, the functionality is live in the dashboard. The Civilis team can enter new content at any time until they reach a critical mass and are ready to push the new content live. With the bulk of the development work done, pushing new parts of the site live will require very few additional development hours.

Part of the benefit of this is that, when the business is old enough or large enough to warrant the additional content, it will be affordable and fast to activate those portions of the site (rather than waiting for content to build the infrastructure). The other reason we approached the project like this is to provide a structure for the Civilis team’s future content plans. With the functionality already in place, there are fewer imediments to actually creating and publishing that content. Now there’s no excuse for falling behind on writing those success stories or sharing the latest local news coverage – the structure is already built!

setting up for success and launching with lead capture in place

Neglecting the collection of basic information from potential clients or advocates who are interested in services is an common mistake to make, especially for new businesses. When you’re focused on building your business, it’s easy to have thoughts along the lines of “I couldn’t handle new clients right now, anyway!” or “I don’t even know what I’d do with an email list at this point.” However, collecting information from interested folks doesn’t mean you have to know what you’re going to do with that information, and the sooner you start collecting it, the larger your list will be when you do get around to figuring out your marketing strategy, email or otherwise.

For Civilis, we went ahead and installed a tool to collect names & email addresses using the slide-out panel option in the Elegant Themes’ Bloom plugin. We chose to use Bloom for several reasons:

  • built by the same folks behind the Divi Builder, so we expect minimal code conflicts
  • free to use, since we already acquired the license for Divi
  • lightweight and easy to use, with a low learning curve
  • easily connects to Constant Contact, 3LS’s email marketing platform of choice

Bloom isn’t the perfect solution for every site (in fact, it is somewhat thwarting our accessibility work), but in Civilis’s case, it took care of the biggest hurdle – getting lead capture in place upon launch with minimal effort for development and for the client. We expect that Bloom will be an adequate solution for 18-24 months of this site’s life. By that point, the Civilis team will have their marketing strategy well underway and will be ready to re-evaluate their lead capture needs.

Services provided via this project: sitemapping, copywriting, user experience optimization, accessibility audit, theme customization, WordPress development, lead capture implementation

WordPress website design & development process gallery

Home Page
Site Navigation
Staff Archive Page – wireframe
Staff Archive Page – mobile

Staff Archive Page – desktop
Services Archive Page – wireframe
Services Archive Page – mobile
Services Archive Page – desktop

another happy berry interesting productions WordPress development client!

We were delighted to find, after the launch of the Civilis Strategies website, that 3LS, Inc. wanted to continue working together. Future business plans demand that 3LS, Inc. finally get a site for itself.

While we anticipate that the site architecture will be very similiar to the Civilis site, 3LS has been in business long enough that the copywriting process for its site will look substantially different. Luckily, Kimberly Bond is once again taking lead on copywriting. She’ll leverage the knowledge she gained during the Civilis site build while digging in deeper to the history and work products of a mature organization.

Check back here in a few months to find out more about the new 3LS, Inc. site, or sign up to get emails from Berry Interesting and we’ll keep you in the loop. If you’re curious about how Berry Interesing Productions can help your team build an outstanding website, we’re always happy to help! Drop us a line or book a consultation directly with our fearless leader, D’nelle.

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Categories : accessibility, client spotlight, copywriting, Nashville, WordPress

client spotlight: Avicenna Acupuncture Clinic

12/31/17 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

Igor Zielinski and Petra E. Schalk are a husband-wife team who own and operate Avicenna Acupuncture Clinic in the Wheat Ridge area of Denver, CO. Their original site, built in 2009 and maintained by Igor for 8 years, was written in HTML, using tables and internal CSS. Berry Interesting worked with Igor and Petra to revise their existing content and completely redesign the site using Divi Builder. The site now boasts true responsivity, is accessible across all devices, and is still maintained and updated by Igor.

Visit the new avicennadenver.com

Denver website redesign – conversion to a mobile-friendly WordPress site

What’s great about redesigning a site that already exists is that you can get to work without going through the content creation process first! Redesigns at any price point are some of our favorite projects; starting from scratch often results in “blank canvas paralysis”. Starting with an existing site means that there are already (whether the client knows it or not) weak points to address, clear problems to solve, and lots of opportunity for improvement.

Our approach to redesign for the Avicenna website

The original site had become somewhat of a frankenstein, as most sites do after about 3-5 years. We created a sitemap with the existing site content. From there, we reorganized the sitemap in such a way that took Avicenna’s business goals as well as the user experience into account. The existing content was fully repurposed during this build; however, we did swap out the old photography with more modern day stock images.

Keeping website redesign and maintenance affordable

We chose to use Divi Builder over a custom site design to keep the build affordable and keep the ongoing management as low-friction as possible. We’ve been using Divi on a number of sites this year specifically because of how pleased clients are during their individualized client training sessions.(Seriously – we’ve never seen clients so instantly happy editing the site via the WordPress Dashboard with Divi sitting on top of it!) While we don’t think Divi is appropriate for every website build we encounter, in a situation like Avicenna’s it was the right choice. Not only did it make the build a breeze, but it enables Igor and Petra to make changes to the site design, add new pages, and update/edit content without having to dive into PHP or load the site down with a ton of plugins.

Additionally, because of Igor and Petra’s skill levels, building on WordPress was a breeze. For clients who are committed to managing their own sites, it only takes a little bit of training to fully prepare them for 90% of what needs to be done to keep a WordPress site running smoothly. Igor and Petra are fully capable of handling the week-to-week maintenance that WordPress demands – and should anything ever go sideways they know they can reach out to Berry Interesting for help. (For clients that aren’t quite so experienced, or who have too much to do already, we offer WordPress Support Plans.)

Improving website user experience across devices

The other upside to Divi is that the visual builder is super easy to use in order to optimize pages for any device. Out of the box, we were already ahead of the game because Divi is built to present nicely on any device – older smartphones all the way up to big external displays. Divi’s tools let us put our brain power to work on improving how the user interacts with the site instead of spending time time figuring out the user experience based on device breakpoints and screen sizes. Buttons are easily clickable, no matter what device is being used to access the site, and content that’s irrelevant to smartphone users can be hidden with the click of a button. This functionality is easy for Igor and Petra to use when they create new pages, so the ongoing user interaction and experience will be consistent.

Additionally, thanks to WordPress’s out-of-the-box SEO-friendliness and the Yoast SEO plugin, we were able to quickly set up the site in such a way that it dovetails neatly with the off-site SEO efforts. Avicenna partners with Brian Duggan at Vivial for off-site SEO, working to drive leads on their behalf. Berry Interesting picks up where the off-site SEO work leaves off. We created a site that is professional and easy to access across all devices whenever a user makes their way to the site.

Building a website for future growth

Running a website on WordPress means that future growth – no matter what shape it takes – is easy to accommodate on your website. For Igor and Petra, the growth of their practice may mean they need better solutions for scheduling, hiring, selling herbs or advertising on-site events. Their site is now ready to easily accommodate the addition of functionality like online scheduling, posting job openings, selling herbs online, or adding an event calendar with registration capabilities. These things can be accomplished via plugins that already exist out there in the WordPress ecosystem, or they can be custom built, depending on what Avicenna needs.

Services provided via this project: sitemapping, user experience optimization, theme customization, WordPress development, lead generation optimization, onsite SEO

Before & After website redesign gallery

sitemap for redesign of avicennadenver.com, showcasing the reorganization of the existing site content
screenshot of the old homepage of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the old acupuncture page of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the old lead capture page of avicennadenver.com

screenshot of the old FAQ page of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the old blogger blog of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the new homepage of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the new acupuncture detail page of avicennadenver.com

screenshot of the new services landing page of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the new lead capture page of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the new FAQ page of avicennadenver.com
screenshot of the new blog of avicennadenver.com

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Categories : client spotlight, web development, WordPress

client spotlight: Haas Regen & The Immediate Family

06/01/16 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

website development • digital portfolio design • social media integrations •
podcast publishing

Visit Haas Regen's website to see the digital marketing consulting and coaching work by Berry Interesting Productions, Inc.For actor, playwright & critic Haas Regen, completing his MFA from Brown/Trinity meant that it was time to take control of his website. Previously developed for free on MSN, BIPI helped Haas wrest ownership of his domain, haasregen.com, away from the previous registrar and register it under his ownership on GoDaddy. We then developed a simple WordPress website to showcase Regen’s work as an actor, playwright and critic.

Shortly after we completed development, Regen joined forces with 3 other artists to form a troupe – The Immediate Family, and they immediately needed a web presence to compliment a performance of their play as a part of a festival.

A quick initial development was followed by branding consultation and additional development to showcase the troupe members and their work. BIPI added a photo gallery, customized the site color palate & header to better represent the troupe, and added Facebook and MailChimp connectivity to unite their marketing efforts.Visit The Immediate Family's website to see the digital marketing consulting and coaching work by Berry Interesting Productions, Inc.

Most recently, Haas created a podcast – The Monthly Report with Emmet W. Jones – and needed help getting it to feed properly onto iTunes without having to use a 3rd party website. After much trial-and-error, we landed on a solution that involved creating another WordPress site on his existing servers so that each new episode could be stored on Amazon Web Services, loaded as a post, and then automatically be submitted to iTunes.

BIPI continues to provide maintenance & sanitation support for all 3 sites through our WordPress Care Plan.

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Categories : client spotlight

client spotlight: Laura Curtis Music

01/01/16 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

email marketing consultation • logo development • album cover design • WordPress website development • search engine optimization • ecommerce consultation

Laura Curtis album art

Laura Curtis spent 9 months in Nashville birthing a new EP before heading home to Oregon. Luckily, BIPI was still on her mind although she was hundreds of miles away when it came time to publish her music.

Starting with designing a logotype and mark that could be used on the album cover as well as promotional materials that could outlive the album itself, we worked closely with Curtis to create a look that would represent her homegrown, Americana sound and fit with the photography she had done for the cover.

After working with a black-and-white version of the logotype and mark, we set about incorporating them, along with her chosen photographs, into a disc jacket that could be used for digital promotions as well as on physical copies of her EP.

We are currently working with her to create a new WordPress website (moving from the limited design capabilities of HostBaby) that will give her more control over the visual presentation of the site across devices, allow her to update the site content herself from the Dashboard, and eventually sell her own tracks and merchandise through a self-hosted online store.

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Categories : client spotlight

client spotlight: fluid glass movements

11/01/15 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

HTML website development • search engine optimization

Berry Interesting Productions built and maintans a template-based, responsive HTML5 website for Mike Allison, glassblowerWhen glassblower Michael Allison first came to us, he was in crisis. He and his previous web developer had a disagreement that left him with no website at all.

Working with his hosting provider, we rescued his HTML site and secured his hosting account so that his online portfolio was accessible and representing his art and philosophy.

Over the past couple of years, we helped him add new work to his portfolio, edited the contact form on his site, and edited various bits of information. His site required very minimal upkeep; we made updates probably a total of 4 times a year.

However, in 2015, thanks to a change in GoDaddy’s hosting product, Allison’s contact form stopped working, and he decided to take that opportunity to recreate the site so that it would both have a more modern look as well as be device-responsive and work on smartphones, tablets and desktop computers alike. He had no desire to update the site himself but keeping the site affordable was a must – as a self-supporting glass artist, keeping his overhead low is a priority!

Still, he needed more than a landing page to showcase his work and maintain his online presence. By customizing an HTML5 bootstrap template, BIPI moved his portfolio to a much sleeker interface that allows for more of his work to be shown and for the user to choose which works to view more closely. His biography, artist statement and contact page all got a much needed overhaul that allowed for greater user accessibility. We also added a “Press” section that uses a blog-like format to feature Allison’s press-mentions as either links or as individual pages, depending on the depth of the article.

His new site represents him in a much more professional way while still keeping his costs low so that he can focus on creating even more of his beautiful glass & metal art using his proprietary “liquid light” method.

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Categories : client spotlight

Client Spotlight: sprclldr

09/01/15 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

project management • client communications • WordPress management • site map development

site map creation
project management
content management
client communication & content management
client training

Kenneth White’s WordPress development agency sprclldr partnered with us in 2014 for our unique combination of WordPress knowledge and client/project management skills, and we’ve had a long and happy relationship ever since.

It’s not easy speaking both geek and layperson, but that’s our specialty.

While sprclldr works on projects that are much larger than the ones that BIPI chooses to take on, those projects still benefit from the handholding that we’re so very good at! So far we’ve worked on four projects together, with BIPI doing such tasks as client communication management & training (just call us the “client happiness liaison”!), site map development, WordPress Dashboard content & SEO management and wireframe development.

We’ve also been lucky enough to get to use sprclldr’s higher-level development knowledge for several BIPI projects, secure in the knowledge that if a project takes us beyond our in-house skill-sets, we can still provide an excellent final project for our clients.

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Categories : client spotlight

client spotlight: Rutledge Development, LLC

08/30/15 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

HTML website development • landing page creation • search engine optimization •
social media management • marketing consultation

If you hadn’t already heard (or burst into tears after driving by a block you no longer recognize), Nashville is quite the “it” city, and the real estate market reflects it.

Berry Interesting developed and maintains an HTML5 bootstrap landing page for City Lights, a luxury condominium development in Nashville, TNRutledge Development, LLC, a new real estate development firm, approached us in 2014 to help establish their web presence for several projects, including The Poston at the Park and City Lights Nashville.

We started with very simple landing page customizations for the projects, with the primary goal of collecting emails from those interested in the development projects, and the secondary objective of connecting with those people on social media.

While the City Lights development is still in the planning stages (with the intention of building a WordPress website that will connect with RealTracs for live-updating of available units), The Poston at the Park project moved much faster. With only 27 units, The Poston was extremely exclusive. Before moving ahead with pre-sales, the team needed a full site launched that would offer potential buyers more information than a property rendering & countdown clock.

Berry Interesting developed and maintains an HTML5 bootstrap landing page for The Poston at the Park, a Nashville Luxury Condominium DevelopmentUsing an HTML 5 template, we created an easily-navigable, responsive site that made the most of the limited information and visual assets the team had. Once the site was launched, the main concerns were keeping the available units document up-to-date and making it easy to contact the sales team. Using a downloadable .pdf, a very simple contact form and AT&T’s “RingMe” feature was all that was required. The Poston nearly sold out before ground was even broken.

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Categories : client spotlight

client spotlight: Nashville Basket Brigade

05/31/15 D'nelle Dowis Comments (0)

website development • ecommerce UX & support • emma email marketing

Nashville Basket Brigade WordPress website developed and maintained by Berry Interesting ProductionsThe Nashville Basket Brigade started out with a website built in HTML & CSS by founder Ben Enos but quickly grew beyond the confines of code-editing.

BIPI started by customizing a WordPress website to be visually identical to the old hand-coded site, and the NBB Board Members were able to update the site using the WordPress dashboard, making life much easier for them all.

In 2014, the board decided to revamp the design of the site as well as add an ecommerce component that would allow them to sell branded merchandise as well as take recurring donations.

BIPI customized a new theme based on the PSD file created by Enos and configured the online store using the iThemes exchange plugin. The board members now have the ability to take event registrations via online forms, track donations through the WordPress dashboard, and use the main content area on the home page to promote their latest auctions held through Charity Buzz.

Nashville Basket Brigade WordPress eCommerce store developed and maintained by Berry Interesting ProductionsThe Brigade also uses Emma email marketing. While we can take credit for the design of their template, we’re not sure we can take credit for their email performance, which is among the highest of all BIPI clients, with open/click rates regularly around 40%/25%.

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