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So you are in the market for a web site. How do you go about selecting a web designer?
Besides word-of-mouth, a company's portfolio speaks volumes about the quality of their work.
Most web designers charge an up-front fee of 25-50%. You must pay this before you even see a proof, and that could equate to a substantial loss if you are not happy with the designer's product. Therefore, it is essential that you preview their work to be sure they can deliver. And make sure they can produce not only the quality you require, but the style as well. A designer who excels in the classic, business style may not be what you require if you need a web site for a rock band. Get the picture?
Now visit the following sites and let our work speak for itself.
WE CARE SITES
We deeply care about the needy in our community and throughout the world and so each year we will either donate time to either create, update or maintain a web site for a non-profit organization that we feel most deserving. If you would like to be considered, please give us a call at 831-335-2152. Here are some of the past recipients:
SANTA CRUZ CARES
Our heart was moved to help this local organization in their efforts to acquire funding to build orphanages for AIDS orphans in Africa, so we built them a pro-bono site to advertise their fundraising event. They netted enough proceeds from the event to build a complete orphanage and are still taking donations online to build another. We feel very proud to have been able to assist in this effort.
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SRI RAM FOUNDATION
The Sri Ram Foundation provides schooling, medical care and housing for orphans in India. We felt they needed a nice Web site that would keep the public current of the wonderful work and attract donors, and so we gave them one entirely Pro Bono as part of our We Care services.
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MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY RESOURCES
This community outreach program provides a number of services to families in need throughout their local community. Since we created the Pro Bono site for them, they lost funding and services and so needed a new site which a new member of their staff, who also happened to be a Web designer, did for them. We provide a link here to their site so you can get an idea of the programs we support, but what you see is not our work.
OTHER CREATIONS
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 GEORGE WINSTON
George Winston needed a site to showcase his new Gulf Coast Blues CD for hurricane relief. We were happy to oblige and came up with a design that carried through the design of his new CD cover. We also converted the site to PHP in order to make future updates much easier for us and cheaper for the client.
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CARTWRIGHT, SCRUGGS, FULTON & WALTHER
Personal Injury Attorneys in Santa Cruz, California
 Harold Cartwright, Dana Scruggs, David Fulton, and Laura Walther decided to combine their resources to create Santa Cruz County's largest and most experienced personal injury law firm. As a result, they needed to update the website that served their previous partnership (cfainjurylaw.com) with a website that reflected their professionalism and level of expertise. In addition, they were equally concerned about getting good rank in the search engines for their keywords, so we put half our efforts into search engine optimization and developed the content and navigational structure with that in mind. We built individual pages for each of their areas of expertise to really target "Googlers" looking for Santa Cruz attorneys that handled cases like their own, areas such as auto accidents, child sexual abuse, back injuries, and more. But we didn't stop there. Not only did we make sure that we had copy that would attract search engines, we also made sure that the copy we presented was good marketable copy that would lead to new business for these expert attorneys. We also devoted time to submitting their website to appropriate portals, directories, and related websites to build up their link popularity. Because theirs is a new domain name, it will take some time to build rank in Google, but we are monitoring this site to make sure it reaches our goal to get them listed on the first page for their keywords.
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 RETURN OF THE CONDOR
Book site for author, John Moir
John Moir's Return of the Condor is a riveting account of one of the most dramatic attempts to save a species from extinction in the history of modern conservation. John needed a simple clean site to announce this new book, present information about the California condor, provide a way to communicate with his audience via an email newsletter, announce his book events, and link to Amazon.com for book sales.
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 PLANETARY FORMULAS & EAST WEST HERB COURSE
Michael Tierra of Planetary Formulas and East West Herb Course came to Kat & Mouse requesting not only a site redesign, but a site that worked! His ecommerce store did not even function and he was losing sales every day. We set him up with a new shopping cart, but more importantly, since his main focus was to be on his herbalist course and his training programs, we redesigned his site to include a student area where students could log in and participate in a private forum, chat room, and access students documents. As a result of our search engine optimization attempts, this site rates number one in Google on his keywords.
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 JUMP4HEALTH
Eliot Seal of Jump4Health walked into our office with what he said was his finished graphic file that we were to use to create his site. We took one look and knew instantly that the design in hand would not serve him well. Not only did it not include the branding he had developed, it would have failed him miserably in the search engines. So we recommended a redesign, and brought in a search engine specialist to optimize his content.
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WHAGAA SOFTWARE
Whagaa Software is a training software startup. We developed the logo and other branding for this new company and created their initial launch site. The first in their product line is personal fitness training software and will be expanding soon to include other products lines.
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 MACRONIX INTERNATIONAL
Macronix's original site was very cumbersome. Not only was it very slow to load (some pages taking up to a minute!), but it also suffered from poor navigation and layout which made it very difficult for visitors to find the information they were seeking amidst its over 100 pages. The slow load time was caused by their content management system, QuickPlace, which they would not give up, but we did manage to quicken the pace enough to make it tolerable. Fortunately, we worked with a very supportive and helpful team in Taiwan that faciliated the integration of the new pages into their QuickPlace system.
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BUCCI SUNGLASSES
It was a pleasure to work for this locally-owned sunglass company. Their former site suffered from poor usability and an antiquated design. We brightened it up and set up SITE-etc's estore to power the retail side of things. Bucci is also very happy about the ease of use in their back office admin.
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DANCING CAT RECORDS
Slack key guitar afficionados will love this site. Read bios on Dancing Cat recording artists. Learn about the history of slack key guitar. Find out if a Dancing Cat recording artist is playing in your area. This site is using SITEi-etc's eNews, eZstore, and Links etceteras.
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BOOKKEEPING AND TAX ANYWHERE
A quick and easy site for our very own bookkeeper, Karen Noel. Karen requested something clean and professional that would most accurately represent her own professionalism.
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SMARTY PANTS UNDERWEAR
This site was designed primarily as a showcase for attracting resellers and distributors for the Smarty Pants Underwear line. An online purchase option was also incorporated using Miva Merchant, the ecommerce solution offered by this client's host provider.
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 TECHWIRE INTERNATIONAL
TechWire is a public relations service for electronics industries worldwide. They already had a web site when they first approached me. It was one they created themselves, but as their business expanded they saw the need for a more professional presentation. See if you don't agree this fits the bill.
While you are at it, check out the database integration.
 NEW TEACHER CENTER OF UCSC
This constantly expanding organization that supports new teachers needed a site that can easily expand, so we used PHP to facilitate the process. Because the main content area of each page is simply a text file that PHP pieces together with HTML headers and footers, in-house staff can now update their own site and save on maintenance costs.
DIENTES!
Dientes provides dental services to the under-privileged in Santa Cruz County, and needed an online presence to attract donors and to keep the community informed about their services. This site is now maintained in-house.
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VANILLA.COMpany
Creating the Vanilla.COMpany's Web site was one of our greatest joys. It's not often you actually get to work with a queen - the Vanilla Queen, that is. This is a socially conscious ecommerce site using SITE-etc's SITE-sMart, eNews, automated FAQs, Tell-a-Friend, Forum, Members Only! (for it's wholesale buyers), Mini-sMart (used in a password-protected area for wholesale buying).
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BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR
The owner of this eNewsletter site needed some complex programming behind the scenes to manage subscription purchases, donations, renewals, e-News blasts, and more.
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KENDALL & POTTER
Rita Law of Kendall & Potter Vacation Rentals said she wanted her office staff to be able to update their online listings themselves, so we came to the rescue with plenty of automation in this SITE-etceterized site.
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VIVA la VINTAGE
This vintage clothing and accessories store carries hard-to-find one-of-a-kind items. Using SITE-etc's SITE-sMart shopping cart, we made simple modifications so that this vendor could continue to show "Sold" and "On Hold" items for a time. Chesna Blasick, the store owner, created the design mockup for this site.
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MARTI SOMERS, ARTIST
It was a real privilege to work with this amazing artist, and what a joy to be able to incorporate her wonderful images into the site. Things to see – her portfolio of prints and our favorite, the Bio Landscape. In fact, so impressed were we with her Bio Landscape paintings that we traded the site for a painting of our very own.
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JINGLE BELLE
It was quite a privilege to design this site for Paul Dini, an emmy award winning cartoonist. (You may be familiar with Tiny Toons and Batman, his most famous work.) Not much needs to be said here, just step on in and enjoy the animation, fun graphics, and clever copy that Paul is famous for. Oh, yes. This is an Open Directory Cool Site.
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CELEBRATION SCHOOLS
Celebration Christian Preschool came to us for a simple brochure site, not knowing that they could get automated feature built in for the same price with SITE-etc's ready-made applications. They walked away with their brochure, but also now have the ability to update their school calendar and resource links all by themselves within their browser. In the future, they will be adding SITE-etc's eNews and possibly holiday eCards that will be created by the children.
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CLOUD NINE HAWAII
Shawna was unhappy with her previous site which "never quite seemed to work right," so we fixed her up with her dream site, and she is now, shall we say it, on cloud nine. This site uses the SITE-sMart etcetera from SITE-etc and the Tell-a-Friend etcetera to help with its viral marketing.
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EXPANDING UNIVERSE
This is a perfect example of how much you can get on a low budget. Since Nancy came to us with graphics already created for her CD, we were able to modify them for her Web site, thus cutting development time and cost drastically.
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 TIME-WARP
Step into the time machine and travel back in time to see the progression of technology as it develops through the century. This database-driven site invites you to submit technology items to its museum. And, if you happen to be auctioning any of them off at eBay, it will let its visitors know so they can then make a beeline over and place a bid.
NOTE: This site is not yet optimized for Netscape 6.
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 HEDGEHOG BOOKS
This site provided us with the challenge of integrating a store with a drop-ship distributor. Each evening orders are compiled from the Hedghog Book transaction database and uploaded onto the distributor's server where they are then integrated into their database. Before returning, we then retrieve the results from the orders the day before and send appropriate emails to customers, notifying them that their orders are on their way. Each day scripts are also run to update the availability file for the entire inventory. But, this is much more than your ordinary ecommerce site. We also provided its owners with the means to submit book reviews in their own web-based control panel, accept and post book reviews from children, and update and maintain a list of recommended books, among other things.
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MILLION AIR MONTEREY
With services offered in major cities around the nation and a name like Million Air, this private jet charter and air terminal company needed an elegant and upscale presentation to appeal to its privileged clientele.
This site, developed in conjunction with Astrum III, a web site content developer located in Carmel, California, has been receiving rave reviews from the general public, as well as Silicon Valley newspapers.
 STARPAK INTERNATIONAL
StarPak specializes in e-commerce fulfillment and distribution, and with a client base that includes such big names as Hewlett Packard, they needed a redesign that would reflect their own professional goals. Ayersoft, a Kat & Mouse programming partner, designed the backend scripts that handle purchases and track and manage shipments of HP's software line.
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JAMES D. HOUSTON
Author James Houston wanted a simple way to display his prolific portfolio of works, and Web sites are an exceptional way to do just that.
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 PUKOO HALE
Vacation Rental
Occasionally, we get requests for small 2 or 3 page atypical business sites, like this one for a vacation rental on Molokai. Theme sites such as this often unleash our creative juices.
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