Featured Projects :: Iron Horse Restaurant
Case Studies –Iron Horse Restaurant Redesign
Client Introduction: Iron Horse Restaurant offers fresh authentic Mexican and Southwestern food in a relaxed setting. The restaurant is located in Portland, Oregon, near Antique Row in the Sellwood District. Guests enjoy exceptional fare outdoors in the seasonal sidewalk café or the festive dining room. Iron Horse also offers banquet and catering services.
Project Overview: After having an original site built by Big B Creations almost ten years ago, Iron Horse desired a second generation site to maintain compatibility with current web browsers and improve search engine visibility. The goal for the site redesign was to create a more modern user experience. Iron Horse also wanted to highlight elements of the previous site that were not included in the initial design.
Challenge: Take a decade old website and turn out a newer version with improved navigation, new forms, and cleaner code, as well as the ability to monitor visitor traffic.
Responsibilities: Monthly Specials, gift certificates and menus were given high visibility and two forms were created for requesting the Banquet Room or Catering for an upcoming event. The pages were created to be print friendly in order to help customers keep a menu available for reference offline.
While cleaning up the front end, the back end code was also streamlined and optimized for search engines. Each page was hand-coded to ensure a clean, simple structure that reduced file sizes, and made for quick load time and easy maintenance. This new code was also designed to meet current web standards for accessibility and long-term viability. This clean coding allows the site to reach viewers on a range of electronic devices. The integration of Cascading Style Sheets ensured that the site appears consistent on different browsers and platforms. A monthly search engine marketing submission campaign was launched to promote the site to top search engines organic search results.
A custom integrated Google map on the directions page included a customized location marker and details window. A favorites icon and custom Error 404 page were included to maintain branding and identity.
Finally, to observe progress and monitor website visitor traffic, analytics were setup to interpret the server log files and provide reports that explain how many visitors came, where they came from, what pages they viewed, and what the entry and exit pages were. The ability to know what search terms and search engines drive traffic has been key to fine tuning Iron Horses search engine marketing effectiveness.
Launched: March 2007
