Shamrock Music Shoppe, located in Purcellville, Virginia needed a new website design that demonstrated the small town charm offered by this unique establishment. Family owned, this full service music store features walls of hanging guitars, drums, brass instruments and all the musical accessories you could ever want. This shop truly stands out as a truly unique store in Loudoun County, unlike any other. In addition, they offer a full suite of music lessons that include nearly any type of musical instruction you may be interested in. These modern days of big box stores and franchise retailers, shops like this stand out and provide a meaningful shopping experience.
Part of Shamrock’s charm is the historic building that houses the store. The floors are wood, the ceiling is covered with classic tin and the second floor is accessed with a set of creaky stairs. Combine these warm, historic features with a friendly, knowledgeable staff and you have a meaningful shopping experience that harks back to childhood days (mine anyway).
The goal of this new website design was to provide the web visitor with these special qualities while helping to set the shop apart from others in the area. Using the colors of the Shamrock logo, the site was design to carry the palette and brand forward in a meaningful way.
Design began with a custom illustrated banner that presents the shape of a guitar at the top of the page, also known as the header. The guitar design was blended into the header background using several graphic design techniques (Photoshop is an amazing design tool). It was then surrounded by a white glow to make the faded design standout. Essentially, it needed to be visible but not overpowering. Layered on top of the guitar header design you the menu webpage choices, the logo and store information.
Below the header graphic appears a slideshow gallery of images reflecting the warmth and ambiance of the shop. This area of the website serves up a rotating selection of photos taken within the shop; Shamrock events and photographic portraits of the music instructors and various musical instruments for sale, whether new or offered on consignment.
Because Shamrock Music Shoppe is a full service store, the website needed to present all of their services in a clean and simple manner. Below the photo slideshow area is a grid of information boxes that each described various services offered. These include music lessons, specials, products, instrument rentals and an interactive calendar of events.
Each of these website information areas offer their own level of interactivity. Some feature small image galleries of photo in motion, while other offer video of events. This website design demonstrates that visitors can obtain a wide array of information about this Loudoun based music shop without leaving the main page. This encourages a high level of interactivity and exploration, which every website owner wants. The longer a web visitor reviews a website, the more likely they are to visit the store. The design helps to encourage this behavior in a fun and interesting way.
Along the left side of the site, you will find a set of guitar strings that run vertically. Also designed in Photoshop, they help to carry the eye down the site and reinforcing strong design. They were created only a few pixels high, and are duplicated in the Y direction (up and down). The advantage of using this technique (of copying) is that only a small image is required, which makes the loading of the website faster. In the end, the website visitor enjoys a fasted page loading experience.
Along the bottom of the design are the footer widgets. These are small modules of interactive information found at the bottom of all the pages. Again, offering a wealth of information in small places delivers a more enjoyable experience to the visitor. They are not required to drill into every page of the site to locate pertinent information.
Finally, Wicked Design developed ecommerce pages that allow the shop to sell their products directly through the website. Products are offered in three categories; Wimpy Kid autographed books (Jeff Kinney is the brother of the Shamrock store owner, Scott), instruments and branded apparel. All of the items listed on these purchasing pages can be bought online. Therefore, the new website delivers to Shamrock a terrific branding experience, access to products and valuable information to the business.
We thoroughly enjoyed designing and building this website for Shamrock Music. They allowed Wicked Design to have creative license in developing the site. The customer is happy, we’re happy and the website visitors are happy. It’s a win-win for all. If your business, or organization, seeks to develop a creative website experience such as this, then contact us for a free consultation. It’s our job to make you look good. Learn more about our web design services on this page: Wickedesign.com/website-design
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