Case Study Custom Boat Repairs

Date
June 2018
Client
Bill Nowicki, owner

Brand new website built from scratch for a local boat repair business. Though Custom Boat Repairs had an existing website, it was old, unfriendly for mobile users, and heavily dependant on Flash. The redesign changed all that, while remaining faithful to the original site's appearance.

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Tech Stack

  • HTML icon HTML
  • CSS icon CSS
  • JavaScript icon JavaScript
  • PHP icon PHP
The website was made entirely from scratch. The backend runs PHP with Twig as the template engine, while the frontend is written in pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I avoided large frameworks to keep the overhead low and the load times fast.
Side-by-side comparison of the old homepage design to the new homepage design.
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Overhauled Design

The client, Bill, wanted the new website to be straight-forward and readable - without flashy graphics, or other gimmics. We therefore decided on a design that resembled the old site, but without its many problems. For example, the narrow, fixed-width layout was replaced by a responsive layout that adjusted to the size of the user's screen, and the numerous image slideshow sections, which were written in Flash and no longer supported by many browsers, were re-written in JavaScript.

Website layout displayed on a mobile screen.
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Mobile navigational menu.
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Fully Responsive and Mobile-Friendly

Bill was aware that his website's lack of support for mobile devices was hurting his SEO rating, and turning away potential clients (many of whom viewed the website on their phones). I therefore ensured that every aspect of the new website would make for a pleasant experience for all users, regardless of their device. For example, in addition to making the layout responsive, I also rebuilt the main navigation so that it would shift into a togglable, slide-in menu on mobile screens.