Soon after Glenn Hill of Mountain Glen Harps had me convert his extensive html website to WordPress, his wife, Laurie Nielsen, asked if I could do the same for hers. The perfect companion to her husband’s harp building business, Markwood Heavenly Strings & Cases provides Standard and custom harp strings sets, harp restringing services, soft harp cases and elegant harp covers, and economical harp kits. The timing was important, as after two difficult years during the economic implosion that began in 2007-2008, Glenn and Laurie were going to exhibit at a large harp show and wanted their sites to be refreshed, mobile-friendly, and ready to be part of their presentation. The markwoodstrings.com conversion from html to WordPress went very quickly and efficiently. Laurie’s site did not have as many pages as Glenn’s, and she was happy with the content as it was. Therefore, no updating was necessary, just reorganizing and styling the existing content to look its best using the Divi theme. Though the images have not been cached, you can see what the Markwood Heavenly Strings & Harp Cases home page used to look like at the Internet Archive. Here is how it looks now—sleek, minimalist, and fully responsive to various sized mobile devices:
Harp Strings page after the markwoodstrings.com conversion from html to WordPress
Since this is the core of Laurie’s business, I felt the Harp Strings page needed special attention to the design. She has numerous testimonials pointing out the care and quality she puts into each order, so these needed to be included. The result was a professional, clean and attractive page with all the information from the previous version of her site, with a few additional images. The page includes pricing for individual strings, a description of her custom harp string design service and computerized harp stringing analysis, testimonials, a list of the harp string sets she carries, a link to her free harp string installation guide for harpists, and a contact form at the bottom of the page so visitors can place an order or make an inquiry without having to navigate to another page. You can click this screenshot to see a larger version or download it to closely review the details, but for the best view please visit http://markwoodstrings.com/harp-strings/
markwoodstrings.com Conversion : Harp Cases page
As with her Harp Strings page, Laurie’s Harp Cases page represents a significant portion of her business and deserved special care. She also has many glowing testimonials for her harp cases, and these needed to be called out on the page. With pricing information and instructions on how to measure one’s harp for the best fit for its new case or cover, Laurie’s new Harp Cases page design was complete, and Laurie was happy. “I love what you did with the string page. Much better!!!!”
Once the content was completed, Laurie felt that closing the project by adding security and search engine optimization were priorities. This was a great call, and the site has performed well ever since! In the end, Laurie was pleased with my work and the bottom line, and received many favorable comments on her Facebook page about the new design. But it was her own testimonial that means the most to me:
Hannah, it is Glorious. Thank you so very much!!!
~Laurie
