Announcing 2nd Annual Big Website Makeover Contest!

It's back for a second year. . . The BIG Website Makeover Contest from LRS Web Solutions! We'll be offering a $10,000 website makeover to one lucky central Illinois nonprofit organization, and YOU will have the opportunity to nominate and vote for your favorite charity to win the big prize! Last year's winner, Crisis Nursery of Urbana, has already seen how a redesigned and more functional website can help further its mission. Check out the 2nd Annual Big Website Makeover website for all the details, and get ready to start nominating your favorite not-for-profits starting on September 15, 2011. Subscribe to our blog by email in the upper right-hand corner, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the contest. We hope our custom website design and development expertise will have a BIG impact on your community.

Meet the Team | Joe Shimkus

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Curious about just who that person is that designs & programs your website? Well, wonder no more! We hope our "Meet the Team" series will help you feel more comfortable and friendly when you walk through the Web Solutions' doors. We are a fun team with lots of talent and conversation to share... and not just about websites!

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Joe is the kind of guy that likes to stop & smell the roses.  Or any landscaping.

Fun facts about Joe:

• He really really likes the Illinois State Fair.  Really.
• You'll kinda want to hug him if you ever meet him.  He's just huggable.
• It drives Dan crazy when Joe says "I seen that".
• Joe likes to have meetings just for the sake of meetings.  Now that he has an office, he misses us here in the cubical maze.
• Cassandra & Joe are constantly battling over the cheez-its in the vending machine.
• He has a bookshelf in his office without a single book on it.  He does however, have more phone books than anyone should.  He just doesn't keep them on his bookshelf.
• Joe has been fixing up the same car since he was 16.  We won't tell you how old he is now.
• Everyone instantly feels relaxed when they are around Joe.  He simply doesn't stress about much, which is grounding for a project team!

Makeover With A Mission

By Jeff Enlow

An effective website has to be much more than just a pretty face … it has to work for you. It has to be a sales clerk, a help-desk support specialist, a customer service representative and your company’s ambassador to the world. It must answer questions, process orders, mine data and do it all with a smile. In other words, it must be a virtual extension of your organization, its brand, its processes, and … its mission.

In designing our new site, we strived to create a unique showcase of the strategic, web-based solutions at the heart of our business. We envisioned it to be the kind of place where visitors could see how we’ve leveraged the power of our web presence for growth, and how we could help them do the same. Like any other organization, our goals were to strengthen business processes, establish a stronger brand, and connect with our customers. Experience told us that a rich, interactive website could help us do all of those and much more.

The result … the new LRS Web Solutions site is working overtime for us. It helps us reach customers, tell our story and prove our value. It features informative case studies and real-world results powered by the same innovations we bring to each and every project. Here are just a few examples:

Our new website reflects our creativity, expertise and technical proficiency in the ever-evolving discipline of online business solutions. It lets visitors know who we are, what we do and, more importantly, what we can do for them. We invite you to check it out and let us know what you think!

Yes, We Do Websites!

By Lanae Smithers

We in the sales department hear it all the time . . . “So, what exactly do you do?” And it is funny to hear the various answers to that question. One of our street-facing buildings has a huge advertisement wrapped around the building with the phrase: “Yes, we do websites.”

This is a fair statement, but when we (the sales team) are asked what we do, we generally have about a 60 second blurb that follows after “We do websites...”  We might say a little something about custom web-based solutions, or we might mention our latest and greatest mobile site or QR code driven landing page, and yada yada. . .   Fact of the matter is, when you marry the creativity of our graphic design team with the smarts of our site construction and apps developers, we think we can do ANYTHING!

So, yes we do websites and can build anything web-related you can imagine.  And we love to find challenging projects that keep our team and our clients ahead of the curve!

Redesign for Bank Website Usability

The website for Prairie State Bank & Trust was recently redesigned to present a more professional appearance with better organization of information and services, providing a more user-friendly experience for customers of the central Illinois community bank. Custom-designed graphic buttons and a dedicated news page were created to highlight important aspects of the financial institution, and an easy administration area was built for in-house staff to manage dynamic financial rates to be displayed in various locations on the site.

Take a look at the clean layout and clear navigation of this website redesign project. Can you find all the online features you’d need from a bank here?

Just for Fun Friday: Cleverbot and Bacon Ipsum

Here are some cool things we’re playing around with this week. Take a look just for fun, and feel free to share some of your favorite online tools or destinations with us too!

Dan is fond of Cleverbot for the entertainment value. Cleverbot is a web application created back in 1988 that tries to mimic actual human conversation. It takes input from a user and selects previously entered phrases from its database of conversations to respond. Supposedly it’s like “talking with the collective community of the Internet.” Check it out and see what you think, but don’t expect any “deep” conversations.

Carnivorous staffer Eddie has a new favorite indulgence in Bacon Ipsum for meatier mockup filler text. If you’re a designer with a hankering for cuts of meat, Bacon Ipsum should satisfy your appetite. Not to discriminate against vegetarians though, there is also Veggie Ipsum on the menu.

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

Custom Web Applications: Webinar Library

A custom web application was recently developed and implemented for Springfield-based Prevention First, Illinois’ only nonprofit resource center specializing in the prevention of teen alcohol, tobacco and other drug use. A “Study Hall” webinar library was created as a continuing education tool for registered users to view courses, take tests and receive certificates based on performance, including a custom flash player to display course presentations. To allow Prevention First staff the capability to easily add, edit and delete course information and tests in-house, an administration area was also constructed.

This web solution successfully organizes and manages multimedia content for registered members within an organization. Do you have content that might lend itself to a similar web application?

August Desktop Wallpaper

Need something to challenge your imagination and provide inspiration to a rather tedious work-day? Hobbyist photographer Cassandra Pence Ostermeier, from the creative team at LRS Web Solutions, has created just the fix for you. For the time-conscious bunch, rest assured, we have a calendar included!

Not sure which size to download? Click here to check your monitor resolution.

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