Iluminada, with one L: Spanish word for enlightened or illuminated. Can also mean “idea” or “epiphany”. Not to be confused with illuminati. Basically, it’s the spanish language version of an ‘ah-ha moment’.

Iluminada Design is a Santa Cruz web design studio specializing in custom web design, eCommerce solutions, logo/identity design and opensource web application development.

We believe elegant design and utilitarian function are one in the same. A good website looks as good as it works. Period. All the websites we build focus on a top-to-bottom total integration of form and function. When it comes to your business’ web presence, elegance of both function & style is everything.

Since 1999, we have taken pride in developing high-quality websites, shopping carts, logos, content management systems, print marketing materials and online communities for reasonable rates, while establishing strong, lasting, mutually beneficial, trust-based relationships with our clients and development team. While we specialize in eCommerce, we work with a variety of opensource software like Drupal, WordPress and Opencart for small businesses, as well as building custom web applications in the CakePHP framework for Fortune 500 companies.

We’re a local company with a national (and international) reach, serving businesses in Santa Cruz, the Silicon Valley and several states in the US.

Iluminada Design has an extensive web design portfolio ranging from high-end eCommerce websites to basic informational sites… with everything in-between.  Some featured projects include:

We do eCommerce, and we do it well.

We can work with any of the following web store packages to design and build a fully-customized web store for any business, from a small mom-and-pop to international enterprises.

The Shopify eCommerce platform is excellent for small businesses on a budget that still want a clean look and some professional eCommerce features.  We can make Shopify look like you spent tens of thousands of bucks on your website by designing your brand identity and website and then wrapping your custom theme around a hosted Shopify web store.  It comes with a nice, easy-to-use Content Management System for all your non-commerce pages, a blog manager and, of course the store software.  If you need more than Shopify offers out of the box, we can write custom plugins for you, adding enterprise-class features onto this small, friendly store software.

We sincerely believe that we are the very best option in the Santa Cruz area — and one of the best nationally — for any small to midsize business in need of a website and/or online shopping solution. Big words, we know… but you don’t have to take our word for it:

Just want to say a huge THANK YOU to you for hustling and resolving some of the major and minor issues we had with our site. You’ve been amazingly professional and pleasant to work with, and we look forward to working with you on an ongoing maintenance basis to keep up the optimization and health of our site.”
–Jeannie Choe, Alite Designs

I can’t thank you enough for the great site. It’s awesome looking and like I said earlier this Shopify stuff is so easy a cave man could do it.”
–Colin Herrick, Buell Wetsuits

We needed a web designer who was straight forward, honest and able to listen to our unique needs. We found those qualities and more in John Benedetti and Iluminada Design.”
–Devon Dabbs and Lori Butterworth, Children’s Hospice

Iluminada is the best thing that’s happened to my business.”
–Cathy Erwin, Walkabout Harnesses

“You folks do an awesome job and I always appreciate your human touch…”
— Eric Gil and Team Sockmith (Sockshop and Shoe Company)

Enterprise

When you need to leverage the skills of an experienced PHP developer for longterm enterprise application development, we can work with you to craft scalable, flexible web applications in the CakePHP framework.  Over the last several years we have worked very closely with a top Fortune 100 company in this capacity.  We offer contracts in 6 month and 1 year intervals, with California-based developers who can travel to your campus when required, at very competitive rates.

Small Business

For our smaller clients, we like to work with opensource web applications. That means the app was built by a core group who released the source code to the world so that the community at large can help them improve it. It also means that the app is portable– when you use it, you are not tied for life to any one web design firm… even though you might want to be, once you see how nicely we’ve designed and built your site. By working with a ready-made opensource app, you save money by leveraging years of development work that has already been done by the opensource community. The app is free, you just pay us to customize it.

We typically work with the following opensource web applications: WordPress, Drupal, OpenCart, Magento Commerce and Shopify.  If these apps don’t suit your needs, we can build plugins and/or build a custom CakePHP app to fill in the gaps.