Tinking Turtle | Fibre Arts Blogger, Designer and Intructor
Jennifer of Tinking Turtle had been managing her blog and running the online portion of her business through the Blogger platform since 2010.
She had established an email list and loyal following, had a steady finishing business and schedule of local classes and workshops, and was blogging regularly. She also had an established profile and reputation on Ravelry.
When we connected in early 2015, Tinking Turtle had not only outgrown the technology Jennifer was using, but was in need of a design refresh as well. She needed something up-to-date and professional that also reflected her fun, quirky style. Her business goals included booking more classes, actively promoting her patterns, growing her email list, streamlining her finishing business, and landing more national opportunities.
After in depth discussions about her needs, wishlist items, current roadblocks, technical ability, aesthetic and budget, we were able to come up with a custom strategy and solution to help Jennifer take her business to the next level.
Solutions:
- Finishing Forms | Initially Google forms served their purpose well as a free solution for her finishing business. As the business grew, they had become cumbersome, clunky and time consuming. A customized Gravity Forms solution now gives Jennifer the flexibility to edit her intake form as needed and streamline her finishing business so she spend less time on admin and has more time to dedicate to other income-generating activities.
- Events Calendar | Her calendar solution for posting local classes and workshops was presenting many limitations, making difficult to engage users and paint a picture of what to expect from her lively, effective and fun classes. Customized Time.ly events calendar integration takes advantage of a free solution that allows Jennifer to easily post and share new classes with plenty of information to ensure her classes book up!
- Pattern Gallery | Jennifer wanted a place on her new site to feature her patterns and direct people to Ravelry to purchase the patterns. Using Visual Composer we created a custom gallery page. With a little one-on-one training, Jennifer now has a place she can update and edit as she desires to generate more traffic and sales of her patterns on Ravelry.
Other custom project features:
- Responsive custom child theme built on the Genesis framework.
- Website Redesign based on her original logo and brand colors.
- Content Strategy, Consulting, Editing (and a small amount of copywriting).
- Blog migration from Blogger.
- Dynamic home page slider that Jennifer can update herself.
- Custom Gallery Integration featuring some of her post popular patterns on Ravelry to guide users toward purchase.
- Social Feed Integration.
- New comments platform setup and integration for easier comment management.
- Renewed focus on featuring her unique and extensive collection of professional patterns.
- Visual Composer for easy, custom page layouts.
Before and after the Blogger.com migration.
JENNIFER RAYMOND
– TinkingTurtle.com, Owner
“Now I’m comfortable in a class to mention that people can go look at my website – and many of them go look at it on their phones! I love that I can have people signup for my newsletter easily right on the website!
I liked that you knew to ask the questions I didn’t know how to ask. I also liked that you “got” my sense of style, and really managed to create a website that has coherence to my brand! I loved the innovative little “tweaks” that Shayna and Chris added throughout the process.
Michael’s loving that he can have more control over the back-end of things. I love that the new website response form is working REALLY well.
I have and will recommend Cultivar Designs! The focus you both have on giving a great a quality product makes you meticulous and thorough, which is really appreciated. And I love how you guys allowed me to be independent, and quite flexible with wanting to have my hands in the entirety of the pie.”
“I think it’s [the new website] been phenomenal in expanding our brand and reach. Just the other week we were contacted out of the blue via the Finishing form by someone in Knoxville, TN, a state and metro area where we have no connection and had done no branding, to do some finishing work.
Additionally, I think this has helped Jennifer land a couple of gigs to teach at some more exclusive retreats in the industry, as I think the much more polished and professional site helps give weight to her reputation.
I appreciate your attention to detail and follow through, for example with the Social Media feeds even after the site launch, which was very helpful.
From a technical approach, I appreciate the level of documentation that you guys provided, and the handoff process, as that has made taking over the ownership and maintenance of the site extremely easy, and I personally love the ease of use the site and all of the plugins provide from an administrative perspective.
MICHAEL RAYMOND (Mr. Turtle)
– TinkingTurtle.com, IT Manager
I think that right here has enabled our business to become more efficient in not only our outreach and marketing, but how we can respond to inquiries and opportunities that come about because of these things, to enable us to better strategically position ourselves in our industry.
I absolutely would and have [recommended Cultivar Designs] once already.
I think the most important aspect of you guys that people should be aware of is your flexibility in design. While you have a particular design aesthetic that you trend towards and skillset/background, you are both very open and ask some very solid questions to understand what it is your customers’ needs are, and also what is important to them vs. what may be a decision brought about by a lack of knowledge. You then work with this to adapt and develop a resulting product that blends your creativity with the core needs of the customer, to not only meet but exceed their expectations.”
