Today, ForFriends Inn achieves another milestone – the launch of a new website. As we look forward, it’s our custom to spend a minute looking back in appreciation for all that have brought us to this point. We hope you enjoy this short tour through our digital evolution.
THE EARLY YEARS
Untold millions have visited the website over the years. In late 2004, visitors were welcomed by then-owner, Larry Marino, with a beautiful rendering of the main house and water tower of what was known then as the Edison Street Inn.
In mid-2005, Larry refreshed the website with a new aesthetic, a new logo, and tons of new content in support of the narrative ‘Edison Street Inn as a throwback frontier hotel straight out of the old west’. It was apparent, however, that a better description might have been ‘Old west meets wine country’. Notice the addition of grapes to the new logo.
FORFRIENDS INN
In June of 2012, Katie & I, along with our old friends Jim & Debbie, purchased the inn from Larry and took over its operation. Shortly after, Edison Street Inn became ForFriends Inn. Jim established a new brand language still used today.
Jim & Debbie returned to Chicago in early 2017, leaving Katie and I behind to carry-on a legacy of wine, music, and fun. That spring, the website was refreshed with a subtle makeover to mark the occasion. We also took the opportunity to update our logo to acknowledge the tremendous growth of Santa Barbara Wine Country.
THE NEW SITE
This leads us to today with a completely revamped site built around today’s technology – beginning with our new drone-generated homepage image. The resulting site allows us to present information about the inn and wine country in ways that are intuitive, informative, and exciting. Many new room, site, and guest photos, links to pages and other sites, and a blog with news and social media feeds are a few examples of the exciting features to be found within. The new site also allows real time communication between visitors and the innkeepers via a live chat.
We hope that you enjoyed a short tour of our digital evolution. Our hope is that each of you finds this new site to be of value when planning your next memorable visit to Santa Barbara Wine Country. Please feel free to let us know what you think about it.
Cheers!
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