Stereoland
Client info
Stereoland offers high-end home theater components (main focus), 2-channel audio, and custom installation services. They only have one brick&mortar location (no online sales), and the owners happen to be my uncle and grandfather. They have needed a new site for quite some time, and I was happy to oblige.
The need for change
The previous site was a bit of a mess (see: before screen shots to the right). Case-in-point, my uncle updated content by uploading large images as-the-content, not actual text, because he was frustrated with the content editor of the proprietary home-brewed CMS (maintained by their previous design/development team). I set out to change this, as it made me very sad that he had to deal with it for so long. Ideally, a client should love managing their site. It should be something exciting, and as efficient as possible.
Goals I set out to achieve:
- Move the site away from the current CMS and into Drupal (7)
- Simplify design and content - I restructured their content into manageable "content types" with intuitive input fields
- Easy for the client to update and maintain
- Make their brand more upscale, sleek, and somewhat sexy - the use of black/gray over the previous blue/tan scheme worked well, in my opinion. Blue is used across the site for links. A subtle tan is used for taxonomy term descriptions.
- Go minimal and iterate with feature updates, or new content types.
Bonuses
In addition to redesigning and rebuilding the website, I got the opportunity to photograph some of the equipment for the site. I lust over the turntable in the home page slideshow. Overall, I'm very pleased with the end result. I look forward to adding new features and refinements.
