Established in 2009, the Bodrum Bulletin is primarily a newsletter which is emailed monthly to around 1,500 readers; the website is designed to support the newsletter by providing access to online resources.

Bodrum Bulletin project features include;

• Custom HTML designed newsletter to be compliant with newsletter CSS standards
• Multiple graphic design elements –all done in-house
• Website features;
  • Joomla based CMS website, using heavily customised templates
  • Secure area for paying members
  • self-managing classifieds section
  • interactive calendar
  • directory service
  • Facebook interaction (with Facebook page)
  • multiple online interactive calculators
  • online surveys

The Y-AWG (Yalikavak Animal Welfare Group), are a small team of volunteers working for free in a village on the beautiful Bodrum peninsula in Turkey. Their main goal is to maintain and reduce the population of street animals – primarily (but not exclusively) – dogs, through a neuter, capture and release program.

They were in need of a website to act as a central location for providing information to interested parties. The site needed to be in Turkish and English, and needed to be quickly implemented, with a simple but robust design.

We were happy to take on a challenge, and the next day, a multiple language, custom HTML and CSS website was delivered to the group.

What initially started as a small project, quickly grew into a multi-page, layered website, with dual languages, email to blog capability and social media interaction. Many design companies would be put-off by such a fluid, dynamic approach from the client, but dm³ embraced the challenge and adapted the site as it matured.

Thankfully WordPress was chosen as the CMS, with customisations to a flexible template – this allowed us to mould the design to meet the requirements of the client, but at the same time allowed an easy-to-edit back end which allowed the client to maintain and add content. A win-win solution, with plenty of room to expand the design further into the future.

We presented the client with a few design options, all based on Joomla as the CMS backend, which allowed us to quickly demonstrate the flow and look of the website. Following on feedback, we tweaked and customised fonts, colours, and background images until we had the final design, which was delivered within a couple of weeks.

With a limited budget, and a fairly simple content requirement, and strong emphasis on the visual, we chose WordPress as the best fit for the site. By using WordPress, this would allow us to use take advantage of some nifty premium templates, and quickly produce a robust visual website in a short timeframe and within budget.

The site was delivered to the client within a week, with full dual-language support, contact/estimate form, image gallery, and glossy visual effects. dm³ also provided their usual full documentation and support.

After initial virtual meetings, we discussed various features essential to the website;

• Ability to search or filter the restaurants by reader defined criteria
• Ability to locate each – and all – restaurants on an interactive map
• Ability for anonymous guests to comment and vote on each restaurant
• Ability to easily add restaurants in a set format
• Ability to have hidden online restaurant submission forms
• Integration with Facebook page

Usually with these specific requests we’d start to look at a fully custom solution, however recent advancements with the WordPress CMS, together with some clever HTML coding and other tools meant that we felt confident in the ability to do with within the WordPress system.

The finished site and final client approval was turned around in under two weeks, and dm³ were able to meet and exceed the clients’ needs and expectations.

Site features

A custom splash graphic was created to draw the visitor to the fact that the application had Apple Staff Pick status. The remaining menus explained both the technical features and business benefits.  Price lists and a fully working demo were also included.

Blog

Blogs and articles are good ways to generate search engine traffic. Using quality keywords within a number of articles can generate several visitors per day per article. Over time these can be increased to provide a continuous stream of visitors and business.

Summary

If you have an idea for a business and would like to test the market then dm³ can build you a brochure website very quickly. You can then promote it with some advertising and see the demand. We can also include pre-order e-commerce allowing you to test payment interest.

Logo Design

As a new organisation, the academy needed a logo which brought in the groups influences and portrayed a professional image. After consultation, we went through a 3 stage design process. First we presented a number of element options, fonts and colours, which was reviewed by the group. These preferred designs were optimised and presented, before a final design was chosen.

Website Design

Clarity of Design

It was an important aspect of the design that the website content could be easily read by those with poor eyesight and that the site was easy to navigate by those unfamiliar with computers. The final design therefore used simple contrasting colours, and simple, uncluttered menus.

Ability to edit, add and do general maintain of the site

It was also important to the Herodotus Academy that they were able to add and edit website content by themselves. This made our choice of CMS system easy – WordPress. WordPress is by far the easiest to use CMS system and is used by millions of websites around the world, and allowed us to provide a robust system which their team would be able to manage for many years to come.

The process

After an initial meeting with the group, a process was quickly mapped out. For their requirements, WordPress was a perfect fit; and they chose to proceed with a slightly customised WordPress template. Overall, 5 different designs were presented, and the chosen design was optimised and customised to their needs. Once final approval was met, customised WordPress documentation was provided, along with several training courses.

Location map

An interactive Google map was embedded within the contact page making it easy for visitors to find the exact location.

Interactive menu

Visitors to the site can browse the food menu online just like being in store.

Loyalty card design

Included with the website design package was the design and print of the customer loyalty card. An ink stamp is used each time a customer buys a coffee so the card needed to a porous, allowing the ink to be absorbed.

The porous cards where also made from recycled material helping to promote an ethical business.

The back of the card was used for advertising, allowing Delicious by FT to generate additional revenue and providing the sponsors an item that is kept in wallets and purses for many months.

E-commerce store

In addition to being an information site, Delicious by FT includes a store that sells their unique Fascinating Fruit Flowers. These are fruits and chocolate designed in a way to look like flowers. The store used Paypal for payment processing with the customer selected the design, size and pick up time.

Summary

Get in touch with dm³ and tell us your website and design requirements.

Binaryincome was made to provide finance calculators for day to day people and the traffic can then be used for high paying adverts.

Bespoke mortgage calculators were developed with pie charts and graphs. All of this used standard HTML to work on any browser, no flash was used like most systems that produce real time charts.

The adverts for finance can be worth over £1 per click and Binaryincome returns many top 10 Google® search terms.

About 300 people visit the site each day from search results. You could expect to pay £1000 per day to reach this traffic level by paying for adverts.

A finance site has to be designed for search terms to return as good profit.