Rick Whittington

Current

• President at Rick Whittington Consulting

Past

• Web Design Lead at United Network for Organ Sharing / Tii
• Manager of Site Design at Crutchfield
• Design Manager at Circuit City

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Education

• Virginia Tech

Recommended

12 people have recommended Rick

Connections

395 connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

• My Company
• My Blog
• Twitter

Rick Whittington’s Summary

Rick Whittington is a website effectiveness consultant and owner of Rick Whittington Consulting (http://www.rickwhittington.com), a web consulting firm based in Richmond, Virginia. So what is a website effectiveness consultant? Rick uses both qualitative data and quantitative data to make decisions about the design and content of websites. This strategic approach includes the disciplines of web design, usability, web analytics and marketing strategy.

Website effectiveness consulting usually leads to improved business results for websites, including better conversion rates for ecommerce sites and better results for non-ecommerce sites.

Rick was the website site design manager for CircuitCity.com's creative services team for five years, where he led the 2004 redesign of CircuitCity.com. Under his leadership, CircuitCity.com won multiple awards including Bizrate Circle of Excellence (4 years), an Internet Retailer Top 50 award, and recognition from customer experience firm Vividence and industry publication Twice Magazine.

Early in his tenure at Circuit City, he managed a $5 million online media plan for AOL, MSN and Yahoo. He also led an email marketing program, helped pilot an affiliate program and established a usability testing program.

Rick has also worked at Crutchfield Corporation and the United Network of Organ Sharing.

Rick Whittington’s Specialties:

High-end web design, XHTML, CSS, web standards, PHP, mySQL, interface design consulting, usability consulting, web analytics, search engine marketing

Rick Whittington’s Experience

• President

  Rick Whittington Consulting

  (Internet industry)

  May 2005 — Present (4 years 7 months)

  Own web site design, online marketing and strategic communications firm for small-to-medium sized businesses. Named one of Richmond, Virginia's top web development firm by Richmond.com and was featured in the July 2008 edition of WORK Magazine as a "technology innovator."
  
  We help companies effectively grow their businesses through web design, web usability, search engine marketing and strategic communications.

• Web Design Lead

  United Network for Organ Sharing / Tii

  (Non-Profit; Information Technology and Services industry)

  March 2005 — April 2007 (2 years 2 months)

  * Designed web interfaces that collect information and connect organ donors and transplant recipients
  * Designed web interfaces that help pharmaceutical companies collect valuable information on medicine usage
  * Performed business system analysis; wrote specification documents for web applications
  * Developed unos.org, transplantliving.org, donatelife.net web sites

• Manager of Site Design

  Crutchfield

  (Privately Held; Consumer Electronics industry)

  November 2004 — March 2005 (5 months)

  * Managed a design team of three, including hiring and personnel matters.
  * Designed and implemented Crutchfield.com's customer rating and review feature.
  * Designed site templates for Crutchfield.com.
  * Served as an art director for Crutchfield.com and CrutchfieldAdvisor.com.
  * Improved design and approval processes for weekly production and for long-term development projects.
  * Supervised e-mail marketing deployment for Crutchfield.com and CrutchfieldAdvisor.com.
  * Led organic search engine marketing efforts.

• Design Manager

  Circuit City

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; cc; Retail industry)

  May 2000 — November 2004 (4 years 7 months)

  * Lead the Circuit City site redesign, including forming objectives, guiding interaction and visual design, planning content deployment and participating in user acceptance testing.
  * Manage the web design and development program of circuitcity.com, ensuring the user experience was consistent between site sections. Also enforced a style guide sitewide.
  * Manage a design team of 5 web designers, 1 senior designer, one senior project coordinator and a team of freelancers.
  * Responsible for looking at web analytics and suggesting design revisions based on the analysis.
  * Direct the usability testing program for circuircity.com including task-based analysis, real-time web surveys and focus groups.
  * Manage creative aspects of the banner advertising, e-mail marketing programs and sweepstakes programs.
  * Responsible for creative production process improvements.

Rick Whittington’s Education

• Virginia Tech

  BA , Communication Studies, Marketing , August 1995 — May 1999

Additional Information

Rick Whittington’s Websites:

• My Company
• My Blog
• Twitter

Rick Whittington’s Groups:

Refresh Richmond

•    Inbound Marketers - For Marketing Professionals
•    Circuit City Alumni
•    Richmond Ad Club
•    Refresh Richmond
•    Virginia Tech Alumni Group
•    Ecommerce and Online Marketing Experts
•    HYPE Richmond
•    madison+main, the NEW MEDIA group
•    Richmond IT Professionals
•    Richmond VA Web Design & Development Group
•    Entrepreneurs in Central VA
•    innovation avenue
•    Magento Users Group
•    RichTech
•    Donate Life
•    Shop.org Members
•    Richmond VA Graphic & Web Design
•    Floricane's Next Steps Program
•    Job Search Online

Rick Whittington’s Honors:

Named a top web development firm in Richmond, Virginia by Richmond.com in 2006 and 2007; Featured in WORK Magazine in Summer 2008 as a business innovator; 4-time winner of the Bizrate Circle of Excellence for CircuitCity.com

Rick Whittington’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• consulting offers
• new ventures
• expertise requests
• business deals
• reference requests
• getting back in touch