Gatorworks | Baton Rouge Web Design & Development

Last Fall our team, led by Creative Director David Link, developed an innovative flash-based web application targeted to children called Santa’s Online Wishlist. The Christmas website invites children to dress a snowman, read letters from other children in Santa’s mailroom, add toys to their wishlist in Santa’s Toy Factory, and best of all write emails to Santa Claus himself. The child’s experience of Santa’s Island can be guided by an elf if they so wish. The helpful elf gives pointers to the child on where to click and what can be done on each area of the site.

Here is a quick tour of the main areas of the site:

Once the child creates an account, he/she will be greeted by the elf and see this home page. This is Santa's Island where the child can begin their journey!

If the child clicks on the snowman, he/she will see a naked snowman with a box that contains various articles of clothing and accessories. The child can click and drag the items over to the snowman to create one of their own. If an article of clothing doesn’t look just right, then the child can drag the item over to the trash can to remove it.

We decided to make a cowboy, bowler Snowman!

If the child goes over to Santa’s Mailroom, he/she will see a very active room with letters being sucked down a pipeline and being dropped into a pile in the center of the room. A friendly elf is quickly sorting the letters into “naughty” or “nice” pipelines that go directly to Santa’s office. If the child clicks on the colored letters on the ground, he/she can read a letter written from other children to Santa.

The Elf in Santa's Mailroom quickly sorts letters from children across the world.

Santa’s Toy Factory is my favorite part of the website. This is where children can see the worker elves in action making plenty of toys. There’s a countdown to Christmas on the wall at the top right, and the child has the option to click on a toy of their choice on the conveyor belt. If the child clicks on a toy, a window will pop-up that pulls the actual image of the product from Amazon. Then, the child has the option to add the toy to his/her “wishlist.”

Toys are quickly being assembled by elves in Santa's Toy Factory.

The final component of the site allows the child to email Santa Claus, and the child has the option to include items in the email that they selected from Santa’s Toy Factory.

So, as you can see, this was a rather involved project that required a great deal of custom illustration and then custom animation (and action script) using Adobe Flash. We were very excited to win an ADDY for this project at the 2010 awards show this year.

I invite you to visit the actual site so you can see these screenshots come to life and hear the jolly Christmas music we have playing in the background. If you have children, I encourage you to let them visit the site and have some fun next Christmas!

Do you like this site? Check out some other completed projects by our award-winning team.

Visit NewsFifty.com!

Our team recently launched NewsFifty.com which aims to provide the best daily political, state, and breaking headline stories from all 50 states around the nation. You’ll notice the site uses a very lean design very similar to The Drudge Report or the local Dead Pelican; however, the competitive advantage with NewsFifty.com is the ability for the user to quickly and efficiently click from state to state to see the news that matters to them. Each state also has an extensive directory of links to blogs and media outlets.

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

We recently designed a website for a mobile marketing start-up company in New Orleans called Zymeaux. The new and innovative firm is owned by Eric Morgan and Damien LaManna of Morgan+Co. Zymeaux provides a quick and easy way for businesses to reach their customers via SMS text messages. Here is a quick way to explain their service (from their website):

Zymeaux gives advertisers a chance to create an immediate impact in a way no other medium can provide. Text messages hit the consumer wherever they are, which is mostly on the go. It becomes a small part of your customer’s daily life, not in an annoying bombastic way, but as if to say, “hey we know you’ve had a long day, why not stop by [insert your establishment’s name here] for half price appetizers just for our very special text message subscribers like you! Oh, and bring your friends.”

The end result is a dynamic cost effective communication system that is delivered instantly via a highly personable channel to a very specific audience at the most opportune moment.

We’re very excited to be working with Zymeaux, and we look forward to helping their company grow!