Improve Your User Experience (UX)

User experience is critical to the success of your website. A good UX will help visitors navigate your website, find the most important content, and understand the actions they need to take. A poor user experience will frustrate your visitors by preventing them from seeing what they want and tripping them up when they submit a form or purchase. You can solve this problem by redesigning your website every five years.

Visitors who encounter an optimized user experience are more likely to engage with your content. Meanwhile, visitors who have a terrible experience will become frustrated and leave, never to return.

When redesigning your website, you can improve UX using modern, well-researched design principles. A well-designed website that is easy to navigate can increase engagement and conversions.

Achieve Better SEO Results

Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to driving traffic to your website. Websites that aren’t optimized for search engines are unlikely to appear in the top results for relevant search queries.

SEO is a field that’s constantly changing. If your website was optimized for search engines years ago, it might not achieve the same results today that it did in the past. Search engines like Google and Bing constantly tweak their algorithms, and website owners must keep up with those changes to stay relevant.

When you redesign your website every five years and keep SEO in mind, you help to improve your search rankings, increase traffic, and generate more leads and conversions.

Mitigate Costs

Are website redesigns cheap? No.

But it’s much costlier to redesign a 15-year-old website than a 5-year-old website.

Processes, such as a website redesign, require more labor and time on old interfaces. As software evolves, your old website gets further and further behind.

When a redevelopment project is underway, more of the website must be rebuilt from scratch. Here are some examples.

• Data Migrations: More work will need to be done to migrate old content into a new system because the old and new databases don’t match up.
• Old Code: Old technologies, plugins, and code libraries will no longer be applicable and must be replaced.
• Information Architecture: The website’s structure, such as its information architecture, URLs, and navigation, might need to be reworked entirely.
• More significant Design Project: A complete website redesign, rather than a facelift, will be necessary to refresh the look and feel.
• Editorial Experience: New systems must be implemented to meet your editorial needs, which will have evolved in the years since your last website development project.

You’re better off having a website redesign performed every few years rather than every 10-15 years. But suppose you get to the point where you haven’t redesigned your website in a long time. In that case, it’s an excellent opportunity to do a significant overhaul and rethink all aspects of its design and functionality.

Take Advantage of New Features and Technologies

If you haven’t redesigned your website in 10 or 15 years, you’re missing out on the latest developments in web technologies. Here are some examples of technologies you can take advantage of now that your old website isn’t capable of.

• Headless WordPress: You can use WordPress as backend software to manage your data and content while using other technologies for the frontend display of the website.
• React and other JavaScript Libraries/Frameworks: JavaScript has evolved at a breakneck pace over the past 10 years, and libraries like React are used to build interactive user interfaces and web applications quickly and efficiently.
• Blocks and Site Editing: WordPress is undergoing a significant shift and now includes a block editor that allows content to be easily arranged and edited in a whole new user experience.
• CSS3: The latest innovations in CSS give developers access to tools like media queries, CSS Grid, and Flexbox that significantly improve responsive layout and design. CSS is now capable of animations, which could previously only be done with JavaScript. Designers and developers can create interactive and visually appealing websites with less work.
• WordPress Plugins: You can accomplish much more with your WordPress plugins. In the last 10-15 years since you overhauled your website, new plugins will have been developed that solve your business needs, and existing plugins will have been updated with new features.

Updating your website more often will allow you to keep up with emerging technologies and trends in web development. You don’t have to keep up with everything, but you also don’t want to miss out on technologies that would benefit your business.

Move Away From Old Tech

As new technologies are developed, old technologies are discontinued, fall out of favor, and become security risks.

• Discontinued Code: Flash is an excellent example of a web technology no longer used. Flash was popular before JavaScript evolved enough to replace everything it offered, and it eventually reached an official End Of Life and is no longer supported.
• Discontinued Browsers: Internet Explorer was once frustrating for web designers and developers because it was so difficult to support. Microsoft has permanently disabled it and discontinued all support, so it’s no longer necessary for your website to keep it.
• Security Patches: Whether or not you completely redesign your website, keeping up with security updates is essential. WordPress themes, plugins, and WordPress itself regularly release security patches. You’re opening yourself up to many well-known security holes if your website is significantly outdated.

Security is critically important to keep on top of, and developing your website using new features can also eliminate old headaches and streamline your development processes.

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Finally, redesigning your website every five years can help you stay ahead of the competition. If your competitors have recently redesigned their websites and you haven’t, you could be falling behind.

A website developed recently with a modern design and updated technologies will look and operate noticeably differently than a website from 15 years ago. You can either be the business with the current website or the business left in the dust.

A redesign can help you stay on top of the latest trends and technologies and ensure that your website meets your customers’ needs. Now that you know contact WebDevStudios. Let’s chat about your new website redesign.

The post Why You Should Redesign Your Website Every Five Years appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Teamwork Makes the Website Redesign Dream Work

Throughout the project, our team was emotionally invested in the work because we understood the importance of the final product to The Toy Insider team. There were undoubtedly many challenges along the way. Still, our engineers approached each positively, drawing on their expertise and experience to craft customized solutions that best achieved this website redesign’s success.

Developed in collaboration with the Adventure Publishing Group, The Toy Insider project was ambitious. The goal was to combine three separate websites into one cohesive, user-friendly platform for editors.

Considering this challenge, the strategy, design, and development teams worked diligently to create a WordPress Multisite project to meet client expectations. Here are a few of the features we developed for The Toy Insider.

Page Building Flexibility with ACF Gutenberg Blocks

The Toy Insider team is not your typical client who gets a website built and forgets about it for five years. This publishing group comprises an ensemble of writers and editors who create daily content.

If you are familiar with writing content or creating pages, you know that not every page has the same needs. Yes, templates are great, but having the flexibility to add new or remove unnecessary sections is priceless.

Our development team created a list of 25+ blocks. These functions gave The Toy Insider team the flexibility to create different pages precisely as needed without a developer’s assistance.

This, combined with the latest WordPress features such as theme.json file and new block pattern templating, has given the team more control over Gutenberg’s default and custom blocks. As a result, creating content has become faster and more customizable.

And the excitement from The Toy Insider team was loud and clear.

They can now create a page using WP Core Blocks and combine them with the custom-made blocks we made for them using their brand guidelines and colors.

All Import Export Pro to Bulk Upload Products

The Toy Insider provides reviews and articles about, you guessed it, toys. This means their database is humongous. Managing such a large amount of data can be a considerable challenge. So they relied on a plugin to import and update their toys database on their old site.

However, with the updated functionalities of their new site, The Toy Insider needed a plugin that could support advanced features, including ACF. We recommended using All Import Pro, a trusted plugin WebDevStudios (WDS) uses with various clients to handle migration needs.

Our team met with Adventure Media’s Operations Manager, Bill Reese, to discuss the data structure required. Together, we created a template allowing the Toy Insider team to easily bulk upload products, including essential information such as product name, image, taxonomies, price, age range, and more.

With this database management solution in place, The Toy Insider could seamlessly manage their extensive collection of toys and make updating their database more efficient.

Gift Guide Taxonomies

The gift guide sections are another element of The Toy Insider website crucial to editors and readers. Every year, the Toy Insider editors curate gift guides for the different seasons their readers eagerly await.

On their old website, building each gift guide was an activity that required a lot of work—outside of selecting the toys that would be featured. WDS engineers crafted an architecture with taxonomies that allow the Toy Insider editors to easily choose the taxonomies they want to feature on each gift guide and tag the products to be featured. This, combined with the Gutenberg blocks I mentioned earlier, means that creating a gift guide can be done with a few easy clicks.

Data Migration and Mapping

Data migration was a critical aspect of the Toy Insider project, given the team’s extensive content catalog that included hundreds of articles per year with multiple authors, tags, images, and other related elements. Our data architects did their magic, utilizing their vast experience and expertise to ensure seamless migration to the new website.

The migration process was complex, but our team worked diligently to ensure that all the valuable data was transferred accurately and with the utmost care. The data architects carefully mapped out the new structure for the Toy Insider site and created a plan for moving the data according to that structure. They also worked closely with the Toy Insider team to identify any required modifications to the data import process, ensuring that nothing was lost or altered due to the migration.

Once the plan was in place, our team worked tirelessly to execute the migration, handling each element with the utmost care and attention to detail. Ultimately, our data architects’ magic touch ensured the migration was a complete success, and all the valuable data was migrated to the new website without any hitches. At WebDevStudios, we take data migration very seriously and have extensive experience handling even the most challenging projects.

Reliable Partners for Website Redesign and Rebuild Projects

As a project manager at WebDevStudios, I take pride in seeing a project through from start to launch. The recent development of Toy Insider’s website was no exception. Our team worked diligently to create a platform that would make the everyday activities of the editors easier.

We developed features such as flexible page building with ACF Gutenberg Blocks, the use of All Import Pro for bulk uploading products, and gift guide taxonomies to streamline the process for the Toy Insider team.

WebDevStudios becomes your partner when we work on your website project. From our strategists, designers, and project managers to engineers, we like to understand the ‘why’ behind what we’re trying to accomplish to provide the best solution to solve your problem.

If you’re looking for a reliable and experienced team to partner with, don’t hesitate to contact WebDevStudios to achieve your dreams of website redesign success.

The post Client Success Story: The Toy Insider Website Redesign appeared first on WebDevStudios.

It’s not every day I get to work on a project for someone who isn’t just known by me but is also beloved throughout the WordPress community. When I found out I would be working on the rebrand for Do the Woo, I was naturally excited, albeit a little nervous.

That’s because Do the Woo is a WooCommerce builder community run by Bob Dunn, aka BobWP on Twitter. The goal of the website is to help WooCommerce builders across the globe by elevating, connecting and guiding them, while helping to grow their skills and businesses. This is done through podcasts, blog posts, and a membership community of Friends.

Logo and Branding

The first step of this website redesign project was to create a new logo. From there, a new brand identity for Do the Woo was born.

Bob provided some general insight into his visual desires. Then Jennifer Cooley, our talented UX Designer, set to work. First up: pinning down the look and feel for the brand with color and typography. This enabled Jennifer to ideate on several designs to really hone in a logo that distinctly represents Do the Woo.

Many people are familiar with the Do the Woo podcast, but Do the Woo is more than that. It’s about community. The new brand is clean, modern, vibrant, and fun, just like the WooCommerce community it serves!

“Working on the branding for Do the Woo was a really fun challenge,” says Jennifer. “The audience is so wonderfully varied, with designers and developers alike. Keeping all of that in mind when choosing colors and styles was both demanding and a neat exercise in creative thinking.”

With the new logo and branding established, Jennifer created various designs to ensure a cohesive look for Do the Woo across the web, including:

• Poster artwork for the podcasts
• Style elements used on the website to pull it together
• Creative assets used for other future design elements

Website Redesign

With branding ready to go, the website redesign and development began. As part of the discovery process, Bob walked me through the different parts of his current website and explained what he was hoping for with the new site.

There were different categories of podcasts, blogs, and Friends (the community). These categories were used in a variety of ways on the site pages.

It was my responsibility to determine efficient ways of integrating all of these features, in addition to creating a new visual design. I considered the functionality of the whole site and found ways we could improve editorial workflows for Bob.

Leveraging Post Categories and Other Post Meta

Looking at the podcast as an example, there is the main podcast and WooBits, which is a shorter episode specifically about WooCommerce news. Within the main podcast, there are a variety of categories an episode might fall under, like Roundtable or DevChat. These subcategories indicate the type of content. The categories Site Builder or Product Builder reference the guest’s role in the WooCommerce community.

We used the Advanced Posts module by Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder to display podcast episodes in different ways throughout the site by modifying options like the category and other variables. On the Podcast page, the first row is the most recent episode of the main podcast; the second row is specifically selected episodes, and the remaining rows are each pulling in episodes from a specific category.

All of these rows are using the same module, but with different options selected to display the correct content. When a new episode is added to the site, the corresponding sections will automatically update to include it.

Dynamic Templates

Themer is a really powerful and useful Beaver Builder tool. We made good use of it on Do The Woo.

Using Themer allows us to create dynamic templates and connect them with specific post types to ensure there is design consistency from one post to the next within a specific category. Podcasts, Profiles in Woo, and the blog all have different layouts, with different content in each.

By setting up one Themer template for Podcasts, another for Profiles in Woo, and so on, all Bob has to do is choose the appropriate category and add the content. He doesn’t need to get bogged down in remembering which layout is needed or have to create it from scratch. More efficient content management means Bob can spend more of his time doing the things he loves.

Reusable Elements

Beaver Builder makes it really easy to set up clients for continued success. Newly created pages, rows, or modules are saved as reusable elements and used on any page or post—new or existing.

I set up numerous reusable elements while building the site, which were just as handy while I was developing the site as they will be for Bob when he has develops new types of content.

Rather than starting with a blank page, he can apply a saved template and add or remove elements as needed. Or, he can create a new template by starting with the saved Page Header and Call To Action (CTA) rows and adding some other modules in between.

The Page Header row will automatically add the textured blue background image and the page title, complete with font size, color, etc. Bob can edit the title or add a line of text if he wants to customize it a bit more. The CTA row is similar in concept to the Page Header row, with an added bonus of being a global element.

This means that any customizations that might be done to it would affect every instance of the CTA row across the site, which is helpful for keeping messaging consistent without having to remember every page that includes it.

Editable Friends Pages

The Do The Woo membership consists of three levels of Friend: Builder, Community, and Pod. Community and Pod Friends get their own profile page which includes information about their company and products/services. Before the website redesign, new Friends filled out an intake form with their information and then Bob manually transferred that information to their associated profile page.

With the new site, Bob wanted to allow Friends add and update their profiles themselves. With the help of Frontend Engineer, Adam Bates, we created customizations to allow for this.

Our team considered options and decided on using Advanced Custom Fields, paired with a dynamic template created specifically for these Friends. The template contains the style and layout elements. The information supplied from Friends feeds content.

Now, these Friends are able to log into the website, navigate to the Public Profile section of their account, and easily add or update their details, including:

• Logo
• Company description
• Product/service information
• Social media links and other URLs
• Blog feed URL to show up to five of their most recent posts

Bob still has full control over these profile fields. However, now there’s one less manual step for him to complete when a new Friend joins the community.

A Success Story

In the end, it turns out I had no reason to be nervous. Working on this project was as fun as I anticipated, and Bob has been a pure delight to collaborate with.

Most importantly, we delivered a great product for Bob. In his own words, Bob says:

When I needed a major rebranding and website redesign, I chose WebDevStudios as they are an iconic agency in the WordPress space that brings experience, talent and a commitment to their clients. Not only did they deliver a final product that exceeded my expectations, but working with their team members was an absolute joy. They brought a combination of professionalism and creativity to the project, with the perfect human touch.

I count that as a win!

New Sites and Website Redesigns

WebDevStudios considers every project to be unique. We take time to understand the goals of your website and build your customized website with the appropriate solutions.

Do you need a new website? Maybe it’s time for a fresh new design. Contact the WordPress experts. Reach out to WebDevStudios and let’s start the conversation.

The post Client Success Story: Do The Woo Website Redesign appeared first on WebDevStudios.

“After having been a part of their website project over eight years ago, it was a treat and a compliment to have them return to us for a new redesign,” says Brad Williams, WDS CEO and Co-Founder. The project itself was a heavy one that included a multi-network data migration, global elements, content modules, and a new, modernized look.

“We did a bit of CSS magic,” reports JC Palmes, WDS Frontend Engineer. “The design called for layering images as a part of the background, as well as intricate details, such as texture and transparent imagery.”

Founded in 1921, Rockbrook Camp provides a supportive community of kindness, respect, and care. It is a place for girls to explore nature, develop their confidence, forge friendships, and learn new skills.

“We love our new site,” Jeff Carter, Rockbrook Camp Owner and Director, states. “We’re now proud of its design, and very happy with the flawless technical transition. The site loads fast, generates zero errors, and looks fantastic.”

Data Migration

While every data migration is important and complex, the migration for Rockbrook Camp was especially heavy because it included the migration of a multisite network to a single site installation. Previously, there were three websites as a part of the camp’s WordPress Multisite (WPMU) network: main, staff, alumni.

Our WordPress agency created a custom script to migrate all necessary data from the existing WPMU install into the new WordPress single-site install. This included:

• 1626 blog posts
• 150 pages
• 767 tags, 33 categories
• 13 plugins
• 23 users
• Media
• Post types

Website Redesign

The objective of the website redesign for Rockbrook Camp was to balance a new, modern design with sprinkles of fun and tradition to appeal to both kids and adults. We relied on content modules and global elements to create a system that would be simple for Rockbrook Camp to sustain.

Content Modules

The new Rockbrook Camp website features content modules, which can easily be populated dynamically, with little or no user input required, or manually managed by the site administrators, allowing for content flexibility and ease. These modules included:

• Hero
• Title and text
• Video
• Image and text
• Testimonial
• Category
• “From the Blog”
• Single post
• Newsletter signup
• Related posts
• Image gallery
• Camp sessions
• And more!

The “From the Blog” module was particularly interesting to build because it is a WDS-custom Gutenberg block that gives the admin the power to customize subtitle (displayed as “Latest”), title (displayed as “From the Blog”), and the last three blog posts (ordered from newest to oldest).

Global Elements

The most beneficial aspect of global elements is they can be reused across the website. So, when you edit a global element, those changes are made site-wide at very point where that global element is being used. Basically, global elements allow for the power of efficiency.

Rockbrook Camp required easy configuration of global elements. Specifically, the client needed the following:

• Site header and site header logo
• Top navigation menu
• Search form
• Primary navigation menu
• Global footer and global footer logo
• Global footer countdown
• Fallback hero image
• People post form submission
• And others

The global footer countdown was an interesting global element to implement because its purpose serves as a literal countdown to the first day of camp. With this element, the website admin can easily enter that upcoming, important date in the customizer and the countdown element will be displayed in the bottom right corner of the footer.

Additionally, the people post form submission was another standout feature because it involves user-submitted content. With this global element, users submit a form via Gravity Forms containing fields for post content and post meta. Upon submission, the post will immediately be published to the “people” custom post type created specifically for Rockbrook Camp. There is no moderation process, however, site admin has been given the ability to edit or delete posts in order to keep the content up-to-date and accurate.

Ongoing Maintenance

After launch, Rockbrook Camp transitioned over to Maintainn for ongoing maintenance under the company’s Standard Maintenance Plan. Maintainn is the WordPress support and maintenance arm of WebDevStudios; so should Rockbrook Camp find themselves in need of small development projects here and there, they will have access to the WebDevStudios team, as our partnership continues to grow and flourish.

Success!

“Our experience throughout this project was outstanding,” Jeff says, describing what it was like to have WebDevStudios work on Rockbrook Camp’s website redesign and data migration. “Our every expectation was met or exceeded, with the tricky technical issues handled with assurance and the design work pleasing everyone on our team. We appreciated the attention to detail at each step in the process and were happy to see timely progress unfold according to the estimated schedule.”

Contact the Website Redesign and Data Migration Experts

WebDevStudios treats each website project as its own unique experience. No two clients are alike, and our WordPress agency respects and understands that by customizing every single website design and development project to specifically meet the needs of each individual brand.

Do you require a full website redesign and data migration? Contact the experts. Reach out to WebDevStudios and let’s talk about it.

The post Website Redesign and Data Migration:<br>A Client Success Story appeared first on WebDevStudios.