New Site Design for EndGamePR.com

Posted: March 4th, 2010 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: EndGame PR News, EndGame PR Site News | No Comments

If you’ve been here before, you surely notice that I moved a few things around. Actually, I completely tore the place down and started over!

EndGamePR.com has a new design!

The last version of the site was more than a year-and-a-half old, and I was tiring of its limitations. Mind you, I’m still rather fond of it. I’ve never seen a layout quite like it. However, I never liked the look of the blog page, and a few other things with it were rather ponderous.

Here’s a quick nickel tour of the new design:

My favorite thing about it was a late addition. Just yesterday, I decided to add the social media tabs you see on the right side of every page except for the front page. If you slide your mouse over them, they pop out. Pretty cool, huh? I’d like to thank the Human 3rror Blog for the code used to make them. I made a number of modifications to the original design, including the addition of the white shadowed tabs.
Interior pages of the site actually have several layouts. There are two versions of the right sidebar layout (with different text in the sidebar), and one of the left sidebar layout. I made a page layout with only one sidebar, but so far I haven’t found a reason to use it.
The new blog layout is MUCH neater and easier to read than the previous iteration of the Social Media PR Blog. Despite the fact that I styled it myself, I never liked the way it turned out.

Last, but not least, one thing that remains the same: This site is built using my favorite software … Wordpress.

Have a look around, starting with the home page. Let me know in comments what you like and what you don’t like. If you find a bug, I’ll be happy to squash it :)

Tags: endgame pr, Web Design

Client Website Promotes Educational Travel

Posted: October 22nd, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Client News, Web Design | No Comments

I’ve been remiss in mentioning a brand new website I recently finished up for a client. I’ve done quite a bit of web work for the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), and the most recent work involved their international study program. It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that the community college system here in Virginia has a great student and faculty exchange program. It’s not the kind of thing you normally expect from a community college.

VCCS already had a section of their existing website that had information about exchange programs, but they wanted more. They asked me to build a relatively simple website that showed more images and had more information. I’m quite happy with the results!

You can see a screen shot of the site to the right (click for a larger version), or visit the actual site here.

Tags: Client News, Web Design

Web Marketing Turnoffs

Posted: June 4th, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Web Design, Web Marketing | No Comments

I happened upon a great article from Entrepreneur.com that charts their list of 13 top web site marketing turnoffs. In my view, they almost nailed this list. On it is at least a handful of my biggest online pet peeves. Here’s my favorite (or is that least favorite?) on the list:

Forcing immediate registration: Requiring a new user to register is a reasonable request-after you’ve sucked him in. The sites that require registration as the first step are putting a barrier in front of adoption.

I run into this frequently on blogs that make you register before commenting. Nothing will make me less likely to comment on your blog that forcing me to register before doing it.

The reason I said that they almost nailed this list is that I disagree with one of the points and would add two more. I think they dropped the ball in including this one:

>>Continue reading…

Tags: Web Design, website marketing

New Client Website Unveiled

Posted: February 18th, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Client News, Web Design | No Comments

I’m happy to announce another new EndGame PR client website! I’ve been doing quite a bit of work with the Richmond Association of REALTORS® (RAR). In December, I finished building their REALTORStore Online site, which is a magazine style design with a LOT of content on the front page and an e-commerce solution to help them implement their concierge service. This week I “handed over the keys” for that site’s sister! The site for The Real Estate School (TRES) features a design very similar to the REALTORStore … so similar in fact that I started calling the two “fraternal twins”.

The new TRES website features the same large amount of content as REALTORStore Online, and the addition of a podcast listening station on the front page for the shows I’m producing for them. With each site I not only designed and built the layout, but also assisted with the writing of the content.

Here’s a look at the new home of TRES on the day it launched:

Click the image to view a larger version.

I was very proud today in a meeting that client contacts couldn’t stop raving about how much better this site is than the one they had previously. That’s my goal!

Tags: Client News, Web Design

New Client Website Launch: VaHigherEd.com

Posted: January 21st, 2009 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: Client News, Social Media News | No Comments

EndGame PR’s web and blog design has launched yet another client website! This time it’s for the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). We’ve done work with VCCS in the past, and they were aware of previous work we’ve done for the Richmond Association of REALTORS® (RAR). They brought EndGame PR in to help them set up a new version of their VaHigherEd Blog, which provides information about Community Colleges in Virginia. They wanted to set up a similar design to what we’ve done for RAR, and we delivered. This was truly a partnership, as VCCS has some wonderful people inside the organization that know a good bit about blogging. What they needed from EndGame PR was knowledge of design and the ability to set up the architecture of the blog quickly. I set up the entire site, and also designed the header image. The work was described as “perfect”.

A screenshot of the site as it was when I finished it is posted below. Click on the image for a larger version.

>>Continue reading…

Tags: blogging, social media, Web Design