Halter Ranch Winery Site Design
Creative Web Design, Flash, Site Production, Content Management
Quinn Interactive produced both the artistic and technological design for Halter Ranch’s website. Halter Ranch, a new winery located at the center of California’s celebrated Central Coast wine region, needed a bright, attractive communication tool for the vineyard. Quinn Interactive also built a straightforward, easy-to-use content management tool into the site’s framework, allowing easy site maintenance and ready scalability for Halter Ranch site administrators.
“I knew Phil Quinn before we contacted him to do this job,” said Leslie Wyss of Halter Ranch. “I didn’t just want to hire a web producer who knew how to use technology. I wanted someone with a more holistic knowledge of the web and all that that entails. I knew Phil had the design background, the technical expertise and the people on staff to handle everything I needed. That’s why I chose Quinn Interactive. I was confident that they would be able to cover every aspect of the job.”
Artistic Design
Since Halter Ranch is a relatively new winery launching its first website, it was crucial that Quinn Interactive create a web design that would adequately reflect the Halter Ranch philosophies, encompassing the excellence of their wines, the beauty of their historic buildings, grounds and vineyards, and the sincerity with which they practice environmentally conscious sustainable farming. Working with photographer Faith Echtermeyer and copywriter Stan Hock of Words on Wine, the web artists of Quinn Interactive fashioned a bright and welcoming website that tells the story of the winery and welcomes viewers to spend some relaxing “get away from it all” time at Halter Ranch, whether through a visit to the winery itself or simply through an exploration of the website.
While straightforward and easy to navigate, the site offers a comprehensive description of Halter Ranch wines, their winemaking process, and their business and production values. Viewers are afforded lovely views of the winery grounds and the historic Halter Ranch House, and learn of the history of the farmland on which the winery was developed. A “What’s New” page keeps readers up to date on the winery’s recent releases, achievements and awards.
“The Quinn Interactive team was very much in tune with what we were trying to express and how we wanted the site to look,” Wyss says. “They weren’t just trying to create their own design. They were focused on what we were trying to say.”
Technology and Project Management
Quinn Interactive built the precise site Halter Ranch needed—with a straightforward, even elegant, organization that is clean and easy to navigate. Incorporated into the site is an efficient content management system, created using Macromedia’s powerful Contribute, that allows the non-technical site administrators to easily update content and photographs, and quickly add new pages. In addition, Quinn Interactive created the site to be fully scalable, and plans are already in place to add more technology-heavy eCommerce features, including online wine sales and online registration for the Halter Ranch Wine Club.
In addition, Phil Quinn and his team took an active role in managing progress of the web development project as it unfolded, helping to keep all stakeholders on schedule and advising on a variety of administration issues.
“Quinn Interactive’s project management system is another one of their strengths,” Wyss says. “No matter how busy their client might be with other things, they’re very good at keeping everyone on track and on deadline. That was very helpful. And another important reason I picked them is that I knew that once we did get to the point that we needed the technical expertise to do things like online sales, I would be all set up with Quinn Interactive to do that work, because they definitely have the expertise.”
