Website Projects

Building you an effective & authentic online home

Your website is a vital tool to communicate your message and share your important work. We’ll work with you to create the perfect site — one that is functional for you and super-welcoming to your site visitors.

Jessica Yaeger & Christina Blust of Blustery Day Design

Our project process

A website project is a big job — but don’t worry, we’ve got a plan. Our clearly defined process and helpful project management will keep everyone on track and ensure the project goes smoothly.

See our website project process.

Together with you, we make the perfect team

Blustery Day Design is a women-owned design & development studio consisting of sisters Jessica Yaeger and Christina Blust. Whether we’re working with a non-profit, an individual, a business, or a community group, we become fierce champions of our clients’ goals and mission. In every website project, we strive to communicate and honor the important work you are doing.

Getting you un-stuck

With a wide range of skills encompassing both the creative and the technical, we often bring the “missing piece” to the table, whatever it may be.

Have a lot to say but aren’t sure how to share it? We take your disparate info and organize & design it to be clear, accessible and visually appealing.
Have tech smarts, but struggle with presenting yourselves professionally and beautifully? We bring visual design creativity and know-how.
Brimming with creativity but unsure about logistics? We provide knowledge of and experience with the technical things and process steps.

No matter what part of the process is keeping you up at night or is feeling insurmountable, Blustery Day Design has the skills and experience to help you.

“We needed to build a new website that will work into an unknown future involving a lot more collaboration within our organization. Blustery Day Design took on that challenge — and more than just building a website framework, they also helped us clarify our goals and messaging. Together we created something that our congregation can grow into.”
Kim Westerman
Communications Director, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Website projects that work

At Blustery Day Design, we listen to you. Instead of a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all project, we carefully construct a project package that includes everything you need (and nothing you don’t). Every website project is:

Custom

Every website contract starts with a base project full of the necessities for a functional, beautiful, accessible website. Then there’s plenty of room for any add-on features you may need, such as event calendar setup, advanced forms, and more. Additionally, your project can include a “bucket” of Blustery Day Design time if you’d like us to add some or all of your initial content into the new site for you. With a site built just for you, you’ll increase your administrative efficiency and visitor satisfaction.

monitor showing four people on a video conference call

Collaborative

For the duration of the website project, “your people” and “our people” are working together. We have regular virtual workshop & training meetings, plus homework we each do on our own in between. Blustery Day Design brings our warmth, compassion, empathy, and expertise to our time with your team. Clients tell us they appreciate the working relationship they form with us both — and we enjoy working with our clients, too.

Comprehensive

We know how important it is to get this right for you. Our clearly defined website project process generally takes between 5–9 months. From kick-off meeting to site launch, the project is thoughtful, thorough and comprehensive. A website project is a lot of work, and your investment and collaborative effort definitely pay off. With your new strategic, functional website, you’ll be ready to reach more people, spread your message, and accomplish more than you thought possible.

Empowering

It’s important to us to empower you to feel more capable of working towards your goals and reaching success. We build education & training into every part of the website project, including practical instructions for using your site and guidance about website best practices. Our clients often mention that we make complicated things clearer and less intimidating. After it launches, you’ll know how to utilize your site’s powerful capabilities so it keeps working for you.

Our approach

We know that website projects can feel overwhelming. But you can trust that we will bring our specific expertise, project management, and big ideas to every website project we work on. Together, we tackle content strategy, brand extension, site design & development for a beautiful and super-usable final website.

Each Blustery Day Design website project includes these four foundational disciplines:

Content strategy

Making intentional choices about the content on your website is worth the effort. We workshop with you to create content strategy foundations that are forward-thinking and authentically you. Then we guide you through a content audit of your existing site (if applicable). Finally, we help you organize your new website into a user-friendly site architecture.

Learn more about how we approach content strategy for websites

pencil pouch holding three pencils and ruler

Brand extension

Your logo or brand needs to work on your website. We adapt and expand your brand identity specifically for web use — always prioritizing accessibility and readability. To ensure clarity and information hierarchy, we carefully craft a beautiful, intentional expanded color palette. And we find the perfect legible typefaces that complement your brand and make reading on your site a breeze.

See what a Blustery Day Design brand extension can do for you

Web design

We make sure your website is both visually appealing and effective — meeting your goals and delivering positive experiences for your visitors. We design the site’s visual look & feel to be clear, welcoming, usable, and authentically you. Then, we create beautiful and comprehensive site layouts that are responsive and viewable on all device widths. Your site will be ready to make your content shine.

Explore what is included in our website design process

Web development

You need a strong, functional site that works for you, with the right specs for your project. First we set you up securely on a trusted host with the WordPress CMS framework. Then we build a structural site setup that follows accessibility guidelines and that is optimized for search engines (SEO). Because we pay attention to your exact requirements, we can craft you a strategic tool with the functionality you need to get down to business.

Learn more about our approach to website development.

Some of the great folks we’ve helped with website projects

Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods

Adorers of the Blood of Christ, United States Region

Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary Eastern America

“Jessica and Christina are phenomenal. They took a systematic approach that guided me through every phase: from initial design to the post-launch punch list. They are flexible, creative, beyond helpful, and know their stuff. I couldn’t be happier with how great the site looks and am blown away at how easy it is to manage.”
Heather Hollick
Teacher, writer & coach

“If you choose to work with Blustery Day Design, you will not only be provided a beautiful and functional site to meet the needs of your organization, you will gain the confidence and skillset to maintain and grow your site in the future!”
Sara P. Marks
Executive Director, Franciscan Federation

“Blustery Day Design was a godsend. They were easy to work with, created a beautiful website, and helped us suss out all our content and strategy in a lasting way. Our new site is true to who we are and a beautiful representation of our organization.”
Molly McKinstry
Communications Associate, Adorers of the Blood of Christ, United States Region

“Blustery Day Design far exceeded any expectations that I could have had. Not coming from the communications or marketing field, my colleagues and I learned a great deal about the development and design process, and maintenance of a successful site. Blustery Day Design empowers their clients to be learners and doers in their own journey. I feel confident and excited for the future of our website as it continues to play a crucial role in the success of our organization.”
Cara McMahon
Executive Director, St. Joseph Educational Ministries

“We are SO delighted with the website that BDD designed for us. It is distinctive, colorful, welcoming, and responsive, and has grown with us as we’ve grown our web traffic! We also have a support agreement with BDD for the site, so we can feel confident about our web security and maintenance. The website is one of our primary Communications tools and the ease of updating it has made a big difference in how, and how much, we utilize it.”
Rebecca H.
Webmaestra, Loretto Community

“It was a great experience having Blustery Day Design build my website. They were focused on my specific needs as a working musician.”
Jimmy Rinehart
Guitarist, instructor, and singer-songwriter

“I wanted a website that would showcase my writing and publishing projects. I also wanted a streamlined platform that would aggregate my various activities into a cohesive identity. I couldn’t be more pleased as the site accomplishes all that I hoped it would, and more.”
Susan Snodgrass
Art critic, writer & editor

“Jessica and Christina have a wealth of experience, and after working with them a short time, I found them very easy to trust. They are thorough, thoughtful, extremely organized and fun too! We now have a beautiful, engaging website that automatically populates new information we add in multiple places, updating the website with very little effort.”
Caroline Martien
Manager of Donor Relations, Felician Sisters of North America

“Christina and Jess brought incredible skill, design aesthetic, organization, patience and good humor to our project. They were our perfect partner, guide, teacher and companion for building two web sites we are now so happy to share.”
Cheryl Wittenauer
Communications Director, Adorers of the Blood of Christ, United States Region

“Blustery Day Design helped us start with the big picture and think through the purpose and goals of every piece we built and populated. Together, we thought through what would be useful and manageable for us, and then they made it beautiful!”
Kim Westerman
Communications Director, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Building on our guiding principles

We take our Blustery Day Design guiding principles seriously, and we’re lucky to work with many clients who share our people-focused, ethical, and justice-minded values. For website projects, we are always working hard to ensure that your new website is:

Accessible

We filter all creative decisions through the lenses of accessibility, inclusion and justice. From technical decisions to typeface choices, we optimize your website for users with varied visibility and usability needs. We work to ensure that all of your site’s visitors, no matter their particular restrictions, abilities or circumstances, feel welcome and are able to access your carefully crafted content.

three diverse people with shared speech bubble

Inclusive

Following inclusive design principles and intentional content strategy, we take care to create websites that recognize and welcome the full spectrum of human diversity. Throughout each project, we strive to consider the many factors that may define the potential audience and ensure no one is excluded or harmed. We guide and educate you in inclusive content best practices, too.

Eco-conscious

We prioritize sustainable, responsible stewardship of Earth’s resources. In a website project, we make “green” choices whenever possible, choosing vendors & tools that take environmental concerns into account, that maximize efficient processing, and that minimize energy usage. And we build technical foundations that optimize load time and energy needs for each visitor’s interaction with the site.

Fiscally responsible

When making decisions with financial impact, we are intentionally conscious of our clients’ financial resources. We avoid expensive or custom solutions when a less expensive one would suffice. Through solid project management and transparency, we aim to respect your time and provide clarity about any costs involved.