Decor Scene was a smaller, simpler project I worked on. Mike from Decor Scene tasked me with creating a simple, user-friendly website that gave Decor Scene, a family run DIY store, a web presence. For the main design I approached a company I had recently worked with Webslash to design a simple, elegant and modern website that made an impact on any user who visited. After a few drafts we were there and it was down to me to slice the design and code it. As the site itself is rather simple I wanted to use the most efficient methods available and so split the website into three parts:

• Header – Template
• Content – Custom for each page
• Footer – Template

By making the header and footer both templates it saved greatly on development times and served to make the website easier to update in the future.

A problem I encountered with this however arrived when it came to adding Google Maps to make it easier for potential customers to find the shop. Google Maps code is usually added to the head parts of the HTML and then an onload function is added to the body, so when the body is fully loaded Google Maps loads. It would be very inefficient to include the code on each page and could potentially generate errors so I simply included a check to see if it exists. I could then create this function just on the “Find Us” page and then use a small bit of javascript that checks if “runjavascript()” is defined, if it is, it runs it:

if(typeof window.runjavascript == 'function') {
runjavascript();
}

I think this is the more efficient or at least simplest way to do this, if anyone has a better way then let me know!

Some SEO work was also done on the website to ensure it hit page 1 on Google on some terms such as “DIY Store Rickmansworth”, “Decor Scene”, “Decor Scene Rickmansworth”, “DIY Shop Rickmansworth”; part of this was adding the business to Google Maps which benefits both customers and the business.

On final presentation to the client the response was very positive and whilst the website is fairly simple at the moment it certainly has left room for expansion in the future!

Related posts:

1. City Coupons
2. Jokepants
3. Amersham Dec