[wp-pro] Custom Wordpress Theme & Database / Widget Development Needed

Wed Mar 12 04:34:56 GMT 2008

We're looking for a new Wordpress site design for our website.  We
transitioned to the Wordpress platform a year ago, but our old static
design just doesn't do what we need it to.  With Wordpress 2.5 being
released and with us introducing a brand new chair line in June, it
seems like the perfect time to upgrade our site.  These are the main
goals of our site redesign:

1.             Get customers to the most convenient reseller to purchase
chairs, whether online or brick and mortar

2.             Inform customers about the benefits of our products,
especially since not many people know what bungee chairs are 

3.             Get news and press releases out about Seatability

We are planning on redoing almost everything on our site, including
organization and content.  The exact contents and organization will be
affected in large part by the design of the site and how it helps us to
meet our goals.  The basic ideas won't change, but this will be a
significant upgrade for us.

There is also a custom database programming portion of the project
involving moving our dealer and product information into a database that
we can then pull out and display in various widgets throughout the site.
Some custom widgets that pull that information may also be required.

We have sketched out a rough outline for overall layout for the home,
product and dealer pages.  You can view those here:

*         www.seatability.com/ftp/home-small.pdf 

*         www.seatability.com/ftp/product-small.pdf

*         www.seatability.com/ftp/dealer-small.pdf

We are not in a major rush to get this project completed.  We are
launching our product line in June, so we need to have everything
completed by the middle to end of May so we have time to transition and
create new content.

General Thoughts

I've attached some rough thoughts we have on site layout for some custom
pages.  As for color schemes, we are probably less interested in a light
on dark look.  As far as the old site goes, we're not tied to any colors
or themes.  The only thing that we're really tied to is our logo.  

For overall design, we're open to any ideas or suggestions that you
have.  We want to have a professional looking site, especially
attractive to the architect / interior designer crowd.  We do have an
'out there' product, so we'd like to have a little zing or flair that
keeps the site from being too blandly professional.

We have the bulk of our photos in the NextGen Gallery plugin, so we plan
on continuing to use that to power photos.

http://seatability.com/product/colorphotos/ 

We currently are not collecting email addresses, but one of my goals for
the website redesign is to set some conversion goals, including email
subscriptions, so that we can track the effectiveness of our site.  The
main conversion ratios I would be interested in are:

*           Signups for our email list

*           Clickthroughs to our dealers

*           Possibly have a contact form on all dealer pages

As for news and press releases, the main things that we will be
featuring are:

*           Product releases, changes and possibly availability updates

*           Getting word out about marketing events like trade shows

*           Reseller news when we sign new dealers and if / when dealers
do special promotions on Seatability chairs

These are very important for us and I want to make sure that they are
readily accessible and prominently available on the home page.

Home Page

I really like the functionality of the Options theme and I'd like to
have some of that same functionality replicated on our home page. 

http://justintadlock.com/archives/2008/02/24/options-wordpress-theme 

I'd like to have our blog content in the top right plugin sorted by
categories or something.  In the main section, I'd like to have the
option to rotate product, news and / or dealer information through a
rotating panel (similar to the options theme)

Product Page

I'd like these to be database driven.  The products will be showing up
on the home page, dealer pages and other places.  I don't know if this
needs to be custom coded or if we should integrate another plugin.  We
don't need to do any ecommerce on the site, but we want to figure out
the best and quickest way to get people to our resellers.

Dealer Page

I want to feature all of our resellers with their own pages and
information about them.  I've thought about using the techniques from
the article below so that I can style their information in the
author.php.  I also want to extract portions of that information to be
displayed in a random rotating dealer spotlight on our front page.  It
would be great if we could determine the location of our visitor based
on their IP address and then showing them the dealer closest and most
convenient to them.  If there is a better way to do this with some other
plugin or database method, I'm open to any suggestions.

http://www.wpdesigner.com/2008/03/01/how-to-use-wordpress-as-a-membershi
p-directory/ 

Sidebars & Widget Styling

We'd like different sidebars for our main, product and dealer pages, and
possibly blog posts too.  Some of the widgets may be tied into the
dealer / product databases, and so these may require custom styling and
programming.

Complementary CForms II CSS

We use the CForms II plugin for all of our forms on our site, including
contact, customer support, product registration and job applications.
We'd like for our those to complement the rest of the website.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cforms/ 

http://seatability.com/support/register/ 

http://seatability.com/support/customer-service/ 

Could you please let me know if you'd be interested in helping us with
our design, what it would cost and how long of a turnaround time it
would be?  If there is anything else that would help you to get a better
idea of what we are looking for, please email me at
derek at seatability.com. 

Thanks,

Derek

http://www.seatability.com/images/signatures/line.gif<http://www.seatabi
lity.com/images/signatures/line.gif> 

Derek Perkins - Chief Executive Officer 

422 North 1280 West
Provo, UT 84601
derek at seatability.com <mailto:derek at seatability.com> 

Seatability - Sit with us <http://www.seatability.com/> 

Tel: 1-800-715-3346 x500
Cell: (801) 358-2593
Fax: 1-888-412-2913 

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