My Perfect Bite | Craig Charlton
As fellow foodies, we were psyched when we first met Craig and he shared his vision for MyPerfectBite with us. As a first time blogger, Craig needed something simple that still had all the tools he would need to grow an email list, cultivate his community on social media, create and schedule regular posts and recipes and email his followers.
We opted to keep his branding super simple as we strongly believe that design is not the place to spend your money when you’re first getting started. While many food bloggers simply use customized themes (Foodie by Studiopress is a popular one), we opted to create his desired design directly in a customized Genesis child theme. Although this took very little extra time, it not only made his site beautifully mobile friendly (as all the Genesis based themes do), but it will allow Craig ultimate flexibility for design and page layouts, no matter what direction his business takes.
Then we set him up with a customized recipe plugin to make it easy for him to add recipes, and easy for readers to view, share and print them – it also ensures they’re properly coded so they’re recognized by search engines.
We included our curated plugin stack, including WP Bakery’s Visual Composer, Editorial Calendar and Popup Ally to make building pages, scheduling content and building his list natural functions of the site.
Finally, we set Craig up with some custom tutorial videos on how to use his site so he can reference them whenever he needs to as he gets started!
Solutions:
- Basic Branding | After an in-depth branding meeting where we brainstormed with Craig and discussed his aesthetic and preferences, we came up with a few options for basic logos typography and colors. After a couple of revisions, we hit on Craig’s “perfect branding bite”: clean and simple with a pop of color. And we were able to do it with all free fonts!
- Fresh Design + Content Strategy | We reviewed some of Craig’s favorite sites with him as inspiration for the clean, straightforward design he had in mind. We also helped him come up with a content outline and discussed essential content elements to help him write his site.
- Designed Email Optin + Email Service Provider Setup and Integration | We set Craig up with a free Mailchimp account and created a customized template for him with his branding and a basic email outline to make emailing his list easy. We used Popup Ally to create a branded email optin visible on every pages to make joining Craig’s community easy for his visitors. As he comes up with new optin offers and freebies, his optin can be easily updated to grow his list even faster.
- Custom Blog + Social Sharing| A custom blog design, with the blogroll on the home page and the newest post displayed in full allows visitors to get a good taste of Craig’s content as well as inspire them to explore. We integrated and customized the Social Warfare plugin to encourage social sharing for every post to a range of social networks. We also customized Craig’s blog with categories for his regular blog posts and a smaller “card style” for his recipes page.
Other custom project features:
- Custom contact forms + contact form database for inquiries so Craig and track and organize his incoming messages.
- Content strategy and final editing.
- Social Media art of consistent branding.
- Business + strategy consulting.
- Email setup and integration with Mailchimp.
- Ongoing maintenance and technical support.
“After meeting Chris & Shayna, I knew that I had made the right choice
I would definitely recommend Cultivar Designs. From beginning to end, they laid out the process, the costs, the timelines and made the entire process stress free.
Chris was able to nail down the branding I was looking for when 2 other designers were not able to “listen” or grasp the “feel” that I was looking for.
The entire feel of my site is exactly what I was looking for. The colors, the fonts and the formats. I have received so many compliments of the site.
I had a good friend that was also interested in the project. I felt an obligation to hire her to design my site but Shayna and Chris were much stronger in their process of learning what I wanted and needed. And they were more committed to helping me learn about the process.
The best part about working with Chris and Shayna was their patience, the quality of work, and understanding of my vision for the business.
The support since my site launched has been excellent, Shayna was very patient with my first few posts and encouraged me with suggestions and feedback. It was a bit intimidating and new for me but I am now comfortable posting on my own.
I am so happy with my decision I made. They exceeded my expectations and continue to support my business and my long term goals.”
CRAIG CHARLTON
– MyPerfectBite.com
