Category: Van West Media Clients

The Impact of Effective Digital Marketing Strategies on Business Growth: A Golden Door Case Study

October 19, 2023

At Van West Media, we’re passionate about helping our clients thrive in the digital realm. When we were given the opportunity to collaborate once again with Golden Door, the world’s premier luxury destination spa, we knew we were in for a remarkable project. Our goal was clear: to transform their website into a seamless, user-friendly experience befitting the #1 destination spa in the world.

Golden Door has long been synonymous with indulgence, relaxation, and rejuvenation. We believed that navigating their website should mirror the tranquil and seamless experience guests enjoy at the spa. So, we set out to re-engineer the site’s underlying architecture, and the results have been truly transformational.

Crafting User-Centric Excellence

Leveraging our expertise in user experience (UX) design, front-end development, and back-end content management, we embarked on a complete overhaul of the website. The project began with meticulous development specifications to ensure that the website looked stunning across all devices and screen sizes. Page-specific content was crafted and published to enhance search visibility, ensuring that anyone seeking the unparalleled luxury of Golden Door could effortlessly find it.

Elevating E-Commerce with Shopify Integration

Golden Door’s reach extends beyond their spa services; they also offer a range of products through their Boutique and Country Store. To make these offerings more accessible to their clientele, we seamlessly integrated Shopify stores. This transformation has made it effortless for Golden Door to reach their customers and showcase their extensive product catalog. Guests can now easily explore and purchase hundreds of offerings, enhancing their overall experience.

Aesthetic Refinement and Immersive Experience

Golden Door’s brand is a symbol of both luxury and well-being. To align with their brand identity, we carefully adjusted the site’s color palette, infusing it with the sense of healthful opulence that defines Golden Door. The navigation was revamped to provide an immersive experience, allowing guests to lose themselves in the world of rejuvenation that the spa offers.

Results that Speak Volumes

Since the launch of the new site, Golden Door’s staff has been delighted with the improvements, and the results are equally impressive. Web traffic has seen a significant increase, reflecting the enhanced user experience and accessibility of their products and services.

At Van West Media, we take immense pride in delivering transformative experiences to our clients. The Golden Door project is a shining example of how effective digital marketing strategies and a user-focused approach can drive business growth and customer engagement. It’s a testament to the positive impact of aligning a digital presence with the luxurious experience that Golden Door provides to its cherished guests.

Client Spotlight: Mayda Poc Coaching

March 23, 2018

Mayda Poc is a career and life ­­­­­coach in New York City.

Mayda started her practice in 2017 after a very successful fifteen-year career in the fast-paced world of investment banking. After immersing herself in private equities, corporate finance, and derivatives, she wanted, and needed, something new and she embarked on a new path as a life and career coach. A path that would more closely align with her ability to relate to people, listen to them, and help them find the right solutions. Because of her work in finance, she was very well aware of the need for this kind of coaching for people who were consumed by a frenetic and fevered work life.

After becoming certified by a host of coaching associations, Mayda had the necessary tools to be a successful career and life coach, now she just needed the clients. She knew she could access her Wall Street rolodex, but she had to find the right marketing agency that could help turn her vision into a reality. She chose to partner with Van West Media because of our deep experience in taking ideas and concepts and successfully transitioning them into effective online marketing solutions to build a business and drive leads.

What we did

Van West Media began by establishing a brand identity and positioning strategy following a deep-dive competitive analysis and multiple phone and in-person interviews with Mayda to fully understand her practice, her personality, and her needs and goals. We also looked closely at how other individuals in the coaching arena build their brands and positioned themselves online. After creating a name for her practice, as well as a corresponding logo and brand identity, the Van West Media team began a robust design process for the website and other collateral including business cards and email templates.

The Van West Media team worked closely with Mayda to flesh out and clearly understand her needs and goals for the website which included showcasing her skills, services, and coaching leadership for the purpose of attracting new business, newsletter signups, and visitor engagement with her blog. Because Mayda is fluent in French, and she has many French-speaking clients, the new site had to be in multiple languages. In addition, the site had to provide an excellent user experience on the frontend and an easy way for Mayda to update new content on the backend.

The recently launched website was designed and developed to closely mimic the kind of sophisticated and professional qualities that reflect Mayda’s coaching style and personality. The site was designed and developed to be easily accessible, responsive, and engaging, using industry best-practices and intuitive design features. Because of the new website and marketing initiatives, Mayda now has a defined brand voice and appropriate messaging as well as an effective and clear way to drive new and referral business to her practice. We look forward to working with Mayda as we continue to strengthen our partnership to help her to build out her practice.

Visit Mayda Poc Coaching

VWM is recognized as a top New York Branding Company on DesignRush

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NYC Law Firms Begin To Fully Embrace The Power Of Digital Marketing

August 24, 2017

How do you create a robust online marketing strategy for law firms?

It begins, like most marketing, with a strategy. Though law firms are increasingly looking at social media, newsletters, and even paid search, Van West Media’s strategy typically revolves around the intended epicenter of digital traffic for the firm, the website. Without a clear, clean, and concise website with intuitive navigation and obvious calls-to-action, existing and prospective clients as well as potential recruits will not stay on the site, and will certainly not be compelled to come back.

For law firms, the website must achieve several important goals.

  • It should look to differentiate that law firm from others in the industry and help to attract new clients (and new recruits out of law school);
  • It should build and strengthen that law firm’s reputation and promote a positive firm culture;
  • It should have intuitive and well-designed navigation on the front-end and a simple system on the back-end for content management.

It goes without saying that if your law firm’s website is not currently mobile friendly, you are losing potential clients. If your website is not mobile friendly, ask VWM how to help make this transition.

Every site that we build is custom designed and developed.

This brings a superior finished product to our clients for several reasons. Because the design is entirely customized, Van West Media can tailor every single aspect of the site to the precise needs of the client, focusing on the firm’s particular practice areas, and the differentiators that make each firm and its business culture unique. Each website that we design for our clients tells a different story, through visuals and content, so that a user can quickly identify what the law firm offers, the image they are trying to convey, and then funnel these users to the information they are seeking or to desired call-to-actions.

Additionally, while the focus is on making sure that the front-end design is exceptional, Van West Media purposefully develops sites in a way that gives our clients the ability to update copy and images on their own once the site is live, if they can accomplish the work in-house. This removes a potential layer of unnecessary site management from both a cost and time perspective. We also have many clients who prefer that we manage all their sites content for them. This content management is often in addition to our creating monthly or quarterly newsletters, social media profiles, reputation management, and regular website maintenance.

Van West Media recently launched two new sites for Law Firms in New York City.

Schwartz Sladkus Reich Greenberg Atlas LLP (SSRGA) is a young, hip and fast-growing law firm with a variety of practice areas including real estate, intellectual property, and healthcare. SSRGA partnered with us on a custom website update to better represent the quality and caliber of their law firm. Van West Media managed the complete process of designing, developing and publishing the new site. This process included logo modification, a video shoot, as well as a photo shoot, to capture images of all the attorneys at the firm and to help build image content for the site, newsletters, and social profiles. Van West Media also created a searchable index of attorneys, practice areas and more. The website is fully responsive to adjust to mobile, tablet and desktop views.

In mid-summer, we launched Seiden & Schein, P.C., a boutique NYC law firm with a reputation for skillfully representing New York City’s most sophisticated developers. The firm helps property owners, developers, lessees, investors, and lenders, meet the challenges of the new millennium. Seiden & Schein needed an updated, mobile-friendly website to better represent their unique capabilities. Van West Media managed the complete process of designing, developing and publishing a custom designed website built on WordPress CMS framework. Our process included a company rebranding, a searchable and filterable index of the company’s project portfolio by practice areas, a section for key attorney bios, an enhanced news and events area, and the establishment of a new company blog. The new website is fully responsive to adjust to mobile, tablet and desktop views. We designed the site as a one-page scroll that effectively uses modal windows to highlight key content while keeping the user focused on the main content of the site.

Industries across all spectrums are looking to maximize growth and visibility through digital marketing.

Whether it be website optimization, social media strategies, paid search, email marketing, blogging, A/B testing, etc., companies are building customer visibility, loyalty, and engagement at unprecedented rates by harnessing the collective power of digital marketing. Some industries like music, television, and fashion were quick to embrace digital strategies. Others, like the law industry, are only now tapping into the full power of the digital marketing landscape. We have seen a marked increase in law firms interested in building or strengthening their online presence.

If you are interested in learning more about our website design and development capabilities when it comes to marketing law firms or if you are in another industry and would like to see what kind of digital marketing strategies we can offer to you or your company, just give us a call.

Client Spotlight: Club Fit Launches Their New Website

March 27, 2017

Club Fit offers comprehensive health and fitness facilities and programming to enhance the quality of life and physical well-being for Westchester community members of all ages.

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Founded in Westchester in 1973, Club Fit operates fitness clubs in Briarcliff and Jefferson Valley, serving more than 14,000 members and their guests.

VWM has been working with Club Fit for the last five years helping them with paid advertising, social media strategy, ongoing development and updates, text alerts and promotions, lead generation, and web hosting.

Two website revamps later, we are now releasing the third and most versatile Club Fit website yet. New features include a custom WordPress web platform, a custom calendar scheduling feature, a streamlined user interface, and dynamic form routing and database integration.

Club Fit Launch Photo
Club Fit’s Bill and Ellen are all smiles as they get ready to launch their newly designed website. Via @ClubFitNY

Van West Media’s Social Media Manager, Stephanie Cowan, recently sat down for an interview with Jacquie Giannico, the Marketing Manager at Club Fit to talk about the launch of Club Fit’s new website, the effect it will have on the business, and how important it is to find, and develop a relationship with a digital agency that you can trust.

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What part of your business will the new website have the most effect on?

“Everyone is really looking forward to the calendar. Having everything we have to offer all in one place really gives our members the one-stop-shop experience. There is so much to do at our club that sometimes it seems overwhelming to choose where to begin. We really see ourselves as a lifestyle club. We take someone from a single membership to a couples membership when they get married, and then they become a family membership, and finally a senior membership. Because of that, they have children of different ages and likes so we have created a calendar that will lay out clearly all of the classes offered at a given time. This will really be of benefit to our members.”

What has been your experience working with Van West Media?

“You have been great! I look at Van West Media as not an outside business partner but as an inside business partner and that’s important. It’s that trust factor. And it takes a while to develop that trust and we have worked with Van West Media for five years now. I also know when you say you are going to do something, you are going to do it and that is really important. And I know that if we need help on a weekend, someone always answers. The confidence and the quality of your employees is key.”

What is the hardest part of being in the membership business?

“Retention and new members. We need to make sure we are grabbing them as new members and obviously to retain them. I know the new website will draw new members and continue to provide useful tools to get the most out of their Club Fit experience.”

What makes Club Fit such a unique health and fitness club? 

“From a customer perspective, we have so much to offer. We are a health club that cares about our members well being. We offer so many activities for our members to participate in. The fact that you can swim in two different indoor pools, play on any of our tennis quarts, or participate in over 130 group classes is a testament to the range of opportunity here at Club Fit. We think of a company that gives back to our community most of our employees live in the area so it gives them an opportunity to serve their community as well. Our main focus is to keep people healthy and allow them to live longer.”

Success Board at Club Fit

What is the most exciting thing in Club Fit’s near future?

“Every month there is a new surprise. Like our March Matters and April Refer a Friend. We try to be very engaging with our members by creating unique events and content throughout the year. Come check us out!”

 

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Van West Media Client Spotlight: Twin Parks

March 14, 2017

Twin Parks Montessori School is the largest accredited Montessori program in Manhattan with three premier preschool campuses in New York City.

Guided by the Montessori philosophy, Twin Parks helps children learn in a secure, prepared environment, laying a firm foundation for them as they grow older.

Van West Media began working with Twin Parks nearly a decade ago. This partnership began with initial branding and a website build and has evolved into Van West Media’s coordination and implementation of a robust marketing strategy revolving around the website, marketing materials, paid search, and social media. Most recently, we launched a custom website for Twin Park’s exciting new program for infants and toddlers, The Nurture Center. This strategy focused on driving visibility of Twin Parks and served as an initiative to welcome younger children into the Montessori philosophy.

Working with Van West Media has not only provided a framework for all of our branding and social media context but has taught our administrative team how to think and respond to social media. We are all a team and enjoy our brainstorming sessions together. Van West Media’s level of communication is top notch.

– Kathy Roemer, Executive Director of Twin Parks Montessori Schools

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The Website:

Van West Media built a custom website for Twin Parks that clearly and effectively showcases the three different preschool campuses, provides accreditation and financial aid information, and allows easy access to an online admissions application. From a visibility and SEO perspective, Van West Media created “Kathy’s Insights”, a personal blog from the Executive Director that builds and reinforces the school’s identity, leadership position, and mission, as well as a constant stream of custom content that helps optimize Twin Park’s search rankings with Google.

Paid Search:

When developing a paid search campaign for Twin Parks, Van West Media identified three specific opportunities: targeting families within the New York City Metro area searching for preschools, targeting families outside of New York City searching for preschools in New York City, and re-marketing to families who visited the website but did not complete a conversion. Our team began by creating campaigns targeting key neighborhoods in New York City and location-based keywords across the globe.

Our team also developed a display re-marketing campaign that excluded bouncing visitors and existing students’ parents, who visit the site to read blog posts and log into their child’s classroom details. These strategies led to a month over month performance increase of 36% during peak enrollment months. Additionally January 2017 saw the lowest Cost Per Acquisition in six months, and a record 95% increase to a 12-month record for paid assisted conversions.

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Social Media:

Van West Media recently overhauled the Twin Parks social media profiles and implemented a best-practice strategy that is both engaging and visually appealing. This strategy focuses on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and is used to provide information about the school, build visibility and online engagement, and to drive new leads to the school.

New Program Launch:

In 2016, Twin Parks approached Van West Media with the idea of creating a new program for infants and toddlers that would complement their existing offerings, just to a younger audience. It would also allow parents to try the Montessori Method in a very comfortable and relaxed setting. Van West Media created the new program’s name, logo, and branding, and also built a custom mini-site that would allow perspective parents to learn about the new program and apply online. In late 2016, The Nurture Center launched.

We receive weekly updates and immediate replies to any question we put to their team. We feel we are in a partnership with Van West Media to share the story of Twin Parks Montessori Schools to our community.

– Kathy Roemer, Executive Director of Twin Parks Montessori Schools

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Twin Parks is an extremely valued client of Van West Media. But, more than a client, Kathy and her whole Twin Parks’ team have become partners with us. Together, we work extremely hard to bring visibility to this incredible school and its amazing teaching environment that has been carefully and thoughtfully created at all of Twin Parks’ campuses. Because of our services, Twin Parks has greatly expanded their online visibility, created greater social engagement, and increased the number of applicants to the school. Our team at Van West Media looks forward to our ongoing work with Kathy and her top-notch team of educators and all of the amazing work they are doing for the next generation of children.

Law Firm, SSRGA, Launches New Website by Van West Media

September 13, 2016

Schwartz, Sladkus, Reich, Greenburg, Atlas, LLP (SSRGA) is a dynamic New York City law firm with deep experience and a passionate commitment to providing smart, efficacious solutions to their clients. Their mission is to serve clients with loyalty and integrity and to help their clients leverage opportunities and surmount challenges while also maintaining a culture characterized by hard work, respect and dignity for all, “non-egotism, fairness and a sense of humor.” Their practice areas include litigation, health care, business & corporate, trusts & estates, and-for-profit.

SSRGA was looking for a complete refresh of their website. They felt their website lacked energy, did not properly convey their corporate ethos and that it was missing a certain wow-factor. At the time, SSRGA felt the website did not effectively differentiate them from the many law firms in and around NYC. They wanted a new site that would set them apart from the competition, so SSRGA turned to Van West Media (VWM) to help them reach their goal.

From the start, Van West Media’s design team worked closely with the Partners at SSRGA to help them define what a “wow” direction would look like from a design perspective. Historically, Law has been a somewhat staid field in terms of online presentation, so the new site had to be edgy and hip without feeling forced or over-the-top. Van West Media’s design team used several creative techniques and elements to differentiate the new site including the use of bright, but familiar colors, engaging micro-animations, and a host of interactive in-page effects that allowed the visitor to explore information in a manner that was fresh, entertaining, and most importantly, informative.

mail_image_preview-2After interviewing numerous companies, my law firm ultimately retained Van West Media to redesign our website and assist in marketing strategy. We are thrilled with the level of services Van West has provided. They hit a grand slam home run with our new website and have supplied us with valuable marketing guidance. Van West exceeded our expectations and we are proud to be one of their clients.” – Steven Sladkus, Partner, SSRGA

It was important for the homepage to make a very strong first impression to the user. With this goal in mind, Van West Media’s production team shot and edited a very carefully crafted video campaign to quickly illustrate some key elements of SSRGA’s culture. The video successfully and tactfully expresses that SSRGA’s law firm is thoughtful, dynamic, professional, and client-focused. It also clearly showcases they are located in the heart of Manhattan. The video was a great way to convey visually and quickly the ethos of SSRGA. Other effects that are utilized on the homepage include micro-animations and in-page interactive effects, easy to read typography, and the use of a bright and inviting color palette.

Because SSRGA wanted their lawyers to be a primary focus of the new site, Van West Media spent two days on-site to capture headshots of every member of the team. These were used to create an effective section to showcase the firm’s attorneys with quick and easy access to lawyer bios, LinkedIn profiles, and contact information. Each attorney is also connected to a robust on-site search mechanism.

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How Single Page Applications (SPA’s) Can Enhance User Experience

August 18, 2016

What Are Single Page Applications?

You may have heard someone refer to Single Page Applications recently, it’s kind of a buzz phrase right now. But what is  Single Page App, or SPA, and why would you use it? A Single Page Application is a web app that can fit on one HTML page and it provides users with a more fluid and responsive experience. The page updates, but never reloads throughout the whole process, and control never transfers to a separate page.

These web apps load all of the page information at once onto a single HTML page that can dynamically update as the user interacts with the app. Just because it is a web app, doesn’t mean that the scale can’t be enormous; both Gmail and Netflix use a SPA framework.

SPA Example – The Golden Door Program Calendar

Van West Media chose to use a SPA for, naturally, a Spa – Golden Door Resort and Spa to be exact. Golden Door recently received the 2015 “World’s Best Destination Spa” award from Travel + Leisure Magazine and has a comprehensive annual program calendar. The VWM design and development team worked closely with Golden Door to create a beautiful and highly functional SPA that allows users to sort, filter and select from a variety of program types.


There were several important reasons why Van West Media chose to use a SPA when developing the Golden Door Program Calendar. One of the biggest factors was page speed and user experience benefits. To the user, the calendar works and feels more like an application than a web page. As users filter or browse through different months and program types, only data is being transmitted back and forth to the server since all the initial HTML, CSS, Scripts pages only need the initial load. This makes for fast interactions on the page, particularly on mobile, tablet or cellular networks.

Another advantage in developing the page with a SPA framework was the ability to keep the data and the user interface separate. This allowed for streamline testing when developing the page and also provided an advantage when working with Golden Door’s booking engine. Future integrations or potential changes to how program data either comes into the SPA framework or goes out to other systems can be managed more effectively without having major implications on the interface.

You can view the Golden Door Program Calendar here

Why Use Single Page Applications?

Let’s backtrack for a second. Why would single page apps be used over other web applications? Well, single page applications try to solve 3 main problems that web apps are often faced with, which are:

  • Bad user experience – Continuous page rendering negatively impacts user experience because network delay is clearly visible.
  • Poor performance – Every time the page completely reloads, unnecessary re-transmission of data occurs.
  • Lack of offline support – A web application continues to function as long as there is a server connectivity. If that connectivity drops, the web app is essentially useless.

SPA’s require no page reload from the browser, and all user interaction and changes of the application state are handled within a single Web document.

What Other Advantages Do Single Page Apps Have?

With no page reloads, comes no extra wait time. The following are some more advantages of SPA’s:

  • SPA’s minimize response time by moving working data and processing it from the server to the browser.
  • SPA’s can go offline if the connectivity to the server drops. When the connection returns, SPA’s synchronize the local data with the server.
  • SPA’s instantly update like a website. Users don’t need to take any action, they can just reload the browser and it works.

Contact us to learn more about Single Page Application and how  Van West Media can improve your digital strategy.

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Farming Goes Vertical: AeroFarms Launches New Site By Van West Media

March 3, 2016

Aerofarms-logoVertical farming is the next big thing in AgTech and AeroFarms, a company headquartered in New Jersey, has spent the last ten years positioning itself to be at the forefront of the vertical farming movement. With significant funding in place and having broken ground on a 70,000 square foot Newark facility in 2015, AeroFarms is on a mission to combat the global food crisis by leveraging patented technology and farming locally. AeroFarms builds, owns and operates indoor vertical farms that grow safe, nutritious food in a way that is respectful to the planet and the communities in which they grow.

As pioneers in this space, and ready to launch their core products into the marketplace, AeroFarms wanted to find an agency to partner with that could clearly convey a multi-faceted story for its corporate website redesign. This story needed to speak to a divergent audience exactly what differentiates AeroFarms from the many new players beginning to crowd the vertical farming space.

Success metrics were focused on three core audiences that AeroFarms wanted to attract moving forward. These included potential investors/partners, new employees, and the media. Working closely with the AeroFarms team, Van West Media defined several main goals for brand positioning and how to incorporate these goals into the website redesign.

Our Goal: AeroFarms needed to convey the company’s proprietary technology in an engaging manner without allowing the story and visuals to become too techy or inscrutable for general audiences.

Our Solution: Highlight and showcase the rich visuals without impeding on the extensive company narrative and story. We used colors that are bright and inviting as well as colorful imagery set against clean crisp white pages. We complimented this with easy-to-read texts, allowing for very digestible chunks of content with built-in “scan-ability”. Subtle scroll animations respond to user interactions allowing for increased engagement and user synergy.Image1_AeroFarms

Our Goal: The website redesign had to clearly and concisely tell AeroFarms’ multi-faceted story. This story includes providing a possible solution to help solve the global food crisis, explaining the nutritious benefits of sustainable and socially responsible food production, and the benefits of being respectful to the planet and local communities. All without being heavy handed.

Our Solution: Create a system of communication that appeals to a broad audience, but also speaks to those who are interested in a deeper dive into the company’s technology and environmental benefits. We worked closely with AeroFarms to weave the proprietary technology and the environmental story throughout the site. This allowed curious users to explore AeroFarms accomplishments to date as well as the rich story behind the AeroFarms concept.Image2_aero-farms-responsivev2

Our Goal: Differentiate an established company like AeroFarms from the many new players entering the indoor farming space.

Our Solution: Create a website that functions in the cleanest, clearest and most seamless way possible in order to showcase AeroFarms’ unique story and value composition. This includes the existing patent, partners, investors, the physical space, future plans, leadership and the very strong media mentions that AeroFarms has already received. Van West Media designed an extremely accessible interface, clean, clear and intuitive navigation, and a site that was designed using today’s best practices so that the incredible story behind AeroFarms could clearly and effectively resonate throughout the entire site.Image3_AeroFarms - In the News

Van West Media looks forward to the next chapter in our exciting partnership with AeroFarms. Stay tuned…