Site redesign and Joomla installation help attract and engage customers.

(June 9, 2009) – High-end glass manufacturer, Bel Pre Glassworks Inc, has partnered with the web design team at Blue Water Media to launch an updated website, www.belpreglassworks.com.  The new site boasts more extensive photo galleries, a login for wholesalers to submit orders online, and the award-winning Joomla content management system. These improvements enable Bel Pre Glass to better showcase their work, drive customer action, and expand their overall marketing reach.

The website’s increased aesthetic appeal gives Bel Pre Glassworks a fresh look online and engages user interest.  High quality photographs of Bel Pre Glassworks projects and a crisp blue and white color scheme endow the website with a clean professional feel and emphasize the company’s commitment to high quality craftsmanship.  The expanded photo gallery further solidifies the Bel Pre Glassworks reputation for producing beautiful high-end glass.  The restructured main tool bar, which includes links to the Homepage, About Us, Photo Gallery, Order Online, FAQ, Links, and Contact Us pages, gives the site a more streamlined look and makes it easy for potential customers to find the information they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Web design for Blue Water Media clients, Stanton Park Media and Coulter Companies, were recognized in ADA monthly contest

(March, 2010) — The talented web-designers at Blue Water Media have been recognized twice by the American Design Awards for work submitted to its March 2010 competition.  The American Design Awards, which judges thousands of websites each year, aims to provide a fair and ethical standard for web designers to showcase their talents by analyzing the creativity, effectiveness, practicality, and ethics of each site. Blue Water Media’s first honor was for the website launched for the full service production company, Stanton Park Media.  The second award was given for Blue Water Media’s website redesign for Coulter Companies, an organization that strives to increase the market relevance, brand power and sustainability of socially principled, high-potential nonprofit organizations and their corporate supporters. This recognition is an outstanding achievement for the Blue Water Media team.

Whenever I see my Father typing an email to somebody or struggling to watch a video on his computer, I wonder how he has gotten along until now. I’m sure others of my generation have felt similarly about their parents. We have at our fingertips a multitude of communication vehicles that are largely foreign to the previous generation. And watching the previous generation try to use them can be somewhat painful to watch.

Watching him ‘hunt and peck’ for the letters on the keyboard, carefully composing his email with correct grammar, spelling, and all the formality you might expect in an actual paper letter, I can’t help but wonder how different his life and work must have been. I mean, just the idea that that someone can go through life and a career without learning to type completely mystifies me.

Blue Water Media, a web design agency in Washington DC, has been selected as an Official Honoree for the Restaurant category in The 13th Annual Webby Awards. The Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement.  With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 states and over 60 countries, this is an outstanding accomplishment for the Blue Water Media team.

The recognition was awarded to Blue Water Media for work performed on the Tackle Box Restaurant website.  The website offers a unique design that captures the informal ambiance of the restaurant and breaks from the conventional columned web page layouts. Blue Water Media’s lead designer, Jen Koscielniak, had this to say about receiving the award, “It is really exciting and a great satisfaction to be honored in the most prestigious web awards competition.”

Joomla! (Yes, the official name has an exclamation point) is a content management system that Blue Water Media has embraced and began using for several projects and websites. Joomla! allows our clients to make updates to their site as easily and without advanced knowledge of HTML or programming. Being the resident expert and Joomla! trainer here at Blue Water Media, I would like to discuss a few tips that will help you get the most out of your installation of Joomla!. Listed below are some of the most useful resources, tips, plugins, and some advice from my experience using the content management system.