Mac’s II was experiencing some challenges in realizing the full potential of their online presence (while trying to compete against the big national players with deep pockets), but they had a few natural strengths that contributed to a successful solution while working with us at Pixelpunk Creative:

1. They have over 75 years of local history with loyal and fanatically dedicated customers.
2. They have a knowledgeable, highly trained, and passionate staff that understands the value of their customers.
3. They have an impeccable reputation with a commitment to providing “raving-fan service”.

The original Mac’s II website was launched many years ago and that old design no longer effectively or accurately represented the current brand. It looked old and dated. And while the old site had performed marginally well for people who already knew who Mac’s II were (e.g. current loyal customers), improvements to the look-and-feel, user interface, and the underlying site architecture were made to improve brand equity, usability, and to better position the site in the search engine results in order to acquire NEW customers.

The original site was hard to keep to date without costly fees from their service provider, so we integrated a simple-to-use content management system for easy in-house updates & content additions.

The new site has been online for less than three months but already traffic is increasing at more than 7% month after month. More importantly, they are now ranked in the Google top-10 for almost a dozen competitive (automotive industry) keyword phrases on locally-based searches when they weren’t before.

After months of development, the website redesign for Monro Muffler & Brake is complete! Both the front-end user experience and the back-end business systems were completely re-architected for simplicity, usability, and productivity.

The redesign was a collaborative effort between the talented programming and development folks over at Innovative Solutions, the expert online business strategy and project management of Giraph Works, and Pixelpunk (that’s me!) developed the application user interface and handled all of the web design and XHTML/CSS coding.

The management team at Monro was wonderful to work with, too. We had direct access to both the President and the VP of Marketing of the company throughout the entire process. They are very creative folks and had super great ideas of their own to contribute. They are absolutely passionate about their business and about serving their customers in the best way possible. It was a privilege to work with them.

I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes last week. Man, I was absolutely floored when the doctor told me. I didn’t know the first thing about diabetes, so my first instinct was to Google “diabetes rochester ny” to try and find local people blogging about the disease. I came up empty, and that gave me an idea.

I had originally started the Contrary Cook to document my new (mis)adventures in cooking, but now I’m taking the blog in a new direction. Instead of learning how to cook to just improve my health at 40, I’m learning how to cook to save my own life at 40.

I designed & coded the website, and managed the online marketing for Transcat.com while I was employed by Innovative Solutions. In 2008, the website was named a Rochester Business Journal “Best of Web” finalist.

Jim Walker, Transcat’s Director of Sales and Marketing, had this to say about my contributions to the site:

“Results tell it all. With Mike’s combined expertise in both web design and online marketing, our online business tripled after one year. It was also a pleasure working with Mike.”

While I was at it, I gave her site a little face lift and re-coded the entire thing with standards-based XHTML and CSS. A complete separation of presentation from structure – design from data. Here’s the “Before” shot. This project was a soup-to-nuts website redesign and e-commerce implementation completed in just 28 hours. Not too shabby.

Update: An hour after I wrote this post, Skyblue2u, created this beautiful pattern based on my Windsor Cottage palette. Wow!

This is just a little personal project that provides me with an excuse to play with my new camera and spend as much time as possible on Canandaigua Lake. My family has owned one of these little boathouses for years and I thought it would be fun to document their history and allow others to submit photos and favorite memories. A fun way to relax and do something creative at the same time! ]]> http://blog.pixelpunk.com/canandaigua-boathouse-project/feed/ 0 http://blog.pixelpunk.com/responsible-new-york/ http://blog.pixelpunk.com/responsible-new-york/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:16:07 +0000 pixelpunk http://blog.pixelpunk.com/?p=112

The Responsible New York site went live this morning. I designed this one for Tom Golisano and his political reform committee. They are a really great bunch of people to work with. I am looking forward to adding more features and functionality in the upcoming weeks (like polls, discussion forums, video, and RSS feeds).