New Site Launch for Export Solutions, Inc.

Export Solutions, Inc. is a consulting firm that specializes in helping their clients understand the numerous challenges and complications of U.S. export regulations. They offer both “boxed” products that can be downloaded for a very affordable price and customized services that are uniquely tailored to each of their customer’s needs.

Export Solutions tasked our team with updating their Web presence. This required a new front-end design, a new back-end Content Management System, and integration with a third party e-commerce system. After completing our recent launch, we’d like to share the results of our team’s hard work.

Design

One of the challenges was educating visitors on exactly what Export Solutions does. The company has always contended with a certain level of confusion from prospective customers on exactly what they offer. We aimed to – upon first arriving at the site – immediately answer 3 very important questions as clearly as possible:

1. In general, what do you do (the big picture)?
2. Specifically, what products and services do you offer?
3. What companies have you helped in the past (to communicate credibility)?

Careful consideration had to be made to type of imagery chosen to not confuse the message of what their core competencies are and what they offer.

For the design, we wanted to show the client a few concepts – each with a very different look and feel – to gauge which direction best spoke into their business. We showed the client two initial concepts to kick things off:

Concept 1

Concept 2

After review and discussion, we discovered the client preferred more of a light-on-light color scheme, and a layout that was more traditionally corporate. We returned to the drawing board to produce the following, which we offered with a variety of accent color options:

Concept 3

With some minor tweaks, the client was extremely happy with the results and we received an enthusiastic approval to move forward with development.

Site Development

There are several key areas of the site that are custom designed and developed for Export Solutions needs. Here are a few highlights of what we built:

Products are presented in a list/detail view. Details include description, technical specs, sample pages, and pricing and purchase information. All are client managed and tie into a third party e-commerce system.

A full list of clients that have worked with Export Solutions is maintained in the CMS and presented in a visually pleasing format.

Industry news: this is built automatically using various industry RSS feeds, as well as any articles the client wishes to add manually themselves.

Content Management

For content management, Caxiam Group turned to the excellent Contao CMS. In addition to its well-written core, solid development framework, and great performance, the Contao CMS also allows us to create a highly-customized back-end user experience without the cost of a fully-customized solution. With each site we roll out, we discover more and more ways to tailor it to our specific needs. Here are a few of the customized features we built for Export Solutions:

As opposed to wrestling with a cumbersome, all-encompassing WYSIWYG editor or shoehorning everything into a customized “blog post” format,  a series of custom-built modules gives the client direct access to manage various site features, each with a uniquely tailored interface.

An example of editing a custom module. Here, the client is able to manage the clients that appear on their website, choosing a name, link, logo, a toggling visibility options to control appearance on various areas of the site. On the frontend, this information is automatically formatted and images are resized on the fly to maintain a consistent look and feel.

Conclusion

We really enjoy working with Export Solutions and appreciate their business. We hope the results of our collaboration reflect our fruitful relationship.