We know we’re good at what we do, and we were delighted by the increased site traffic to the newly launched 2.0 website we developed, designed, and optimized for renowned San Francisco-based Astrologer and Intuitive Counselor, Jessica Lanyadoo. The site had been stagnant for 5 years and since we built her site in Squarespace, she can now easily publish announcements and make updates herself.

What’s a website worth without site visitors? LoveLanyadoo.com numbers speak for themselves. We officially launched Jessica’s optimized website on January 4, 2011. Stats for launch week started at 862 views, and by the end of the month, traffic more than quadrupled. The search engine robots were catching on, also quadrupling in crawls by the end of the month. In its launch month, Jessica’s site accumulated over 4,000 views and 1,530 robot crawls with numbers increasing each week.

Optimizing the site for search engines had already been proven effective but at its fifth week, numbers multiplied by another 2.5! Jessica’s site has received over 10,000 page views and 3,000 robots hits.

Her Weekly Horoscope, Psychic Dream Astrology, once only available on San Francisco Bay Guardian’s website without an option to RSS or subscribe to Jessica’s column, now also lives at lovelanyadoo.com and allows her fans to get her weekly horoscopes delivered to their RSS of choice. Since January 16, she has received 26+ subscribers every single day, averaging 31 unique daily subscribers.

While we hope to refer business through this blog, we may have already done our duty with website design and search engine optimization. “I was overwhelmed the first month with almost 100 applications for new clients from my website. I am pretty much booked solid through July!” said Jessica Lanyadoo.

The Situation: A new line of pet safe, socially conscious, designer clothes for dogs were being prepared for mass production and distribution. Team Waghearted knew that they not only wanted to keep their Twitter followers and Facebook fans updated with newly designed products but they wanted to share great stories of good dogs doing good. The site needed to exude the love and energy that is Waghearted and be easy to update.

Switchblade Solution: Design a site that incorporates the core product line icons, a CMS that is easy to update/manage by the client, and 2.0 optimization.

The Results: A vibrant, interactive site complete with a blog and both “follow our profiles” and “share” links! Wonderfully fun accents that liven the site even on a limited budget – Notice the scrolling text and slideshow on the landing page; the mouse-over textual descriptions and on-click pop-up pictures on the product page; and the Twitter feed on all pages

What we learned from this experience: There were many potential design images associated with the product line. We were able to narrow down the images by incorporating icons onto the static portions whilst still providing a feature area to highlight seasonally changing products. Furthermore, the social network profiles have played a significant role in driving traffic and vice versa, the prominently placed icons to follow Waghearted have increased fans/followers thereto.

We’re excited to announce the launch of Waghearted.com featuring a vibrant line of pet safe, socially conscious, designer clothes for your favorite four legged friends!

The Situation: A new line of pet safe, socially conscious, designer clothes for dogs were being prepared for mass production and distribution. Team Waghearted knew that they not only wanted to keep their Twitter followers and Facebook fans updated with newly designed products but they wanted to share great stories of good dogs doing good. The site needed to exude the love and energy that is Waghearted and be easy to update.

Switchblade Solution: Design a site that incorporates the core product line icons, a CMS that is easy to update/manage by the client, and 2.0 optimization.

The Results: A vibrant, interactive site complete with a blog and both “follow our profiles” and “share” links! Wonderfully fun accents that liven the site even on a limited budget – Notice the scrolling text and slideshow on the landing page; the mouse-over textual descriptions and on-click pop-up pictures on the product page; and the Twitter feed on all pages

What we learned from this experience: There were many potential design images associated with the product line. We were able to narrow down the images by incorporating icons onto the static portions whilst still providing a feature area to highlight seasonally changing products. Furthermore, the social network profiles have played a significant role in driving traffic and vice versa, the prominently placed icons to follow Waghearted have increased fans/followers thereto.