The goal and impact of this project are strengthening Graves Design Group’s online presence to promote the firm by building a modern, accessible, and sustainable website that the client can edit/update information independently. In order to accomplish this goal, the team used Wix to redesign the website in a more modern, visually appealing manner with improved navigation and updated information. Moreover, our platform of choice to build the website allowed for greater ease of access for our client and allowed him to edit and change it accordingly with several videos and a guide. In order to add more information we built 20+ new project pages and 5 more pages to consolidate other information in pages such as about us, an additional portfolio and services page etc. In order to improve the media presence of our client, we, also, changed the url-slugs and improved the overall SEO of the pages in relevance to the previous url-slugs. Finally, we provided our client with 16 new training videos to change specific parts for the website.
The original site had 50 pages and was written in raw HTML, CSS, and Javascript code, making it difficult for our client to edit and update the information because of the lack of technical skills. The website also had an outdated design and used unsupported tools like Adobe Flash Player. Lastly, the navigation was confusing due to the complex linking between many pages like the Service and Portfolio pages.
Our results were quantifiable by the number of new pages that were built while we made the new website compared to the old website used by Graves Design Group. We created a new portfolio page with 9 new sections for the projects. With 23 new project pages, our website had a greater display of projects for the users to view. Moreover, 3 about us pages to replace the previous about us pages new pages were built as well. The website can be found live at https://www.gravesdesigngroup.com/. The changes will hopefully lead to an increase in site traffic, decrease in bounce rate, and increase in lead generation.
For the solution, we built an accessible, modern-looking, and sustainable website using Wix, a no-code platform so our client can edit and update easily. We also reorganized, condensed, and added new pages so that they are less text-heavy and have a straightforward navigation. Since the SEO of the original website was already well-established, we only needed to match the old pages to new pages. To make sure this solution is sustainable, we gave our client weekly tasks to familiarize themself with the platform. Additionally, we put together a How To Guide which contains the answers to the most frequently asked questions, a maintenance schedule and checklists of necessary actions when updating a page. We also provided instruction videos and templates of major pages for easy edits. Lastly, during the client meetings, we went over with the client how to access the Wix community resources and how to utilize them.
When we first started, Nicole designed the website on Figma with a focus on the portfolio piece. Todd mentioned that he wanted a filter design but this would require custom coding on Wix. Instead, we opted for anchor links throughout the page and to feature a maximum of 6 projects per section. We explained to the client that this would be optimal for display. We would design a few pages and turn those pages into Wix pages the following week.
We chose to use Wix because our client, Todd, was not comfortable with coding. Wix is an affordable and intuitive, drag & drop platform. We designed on Figma, received feedback, and then turned designs into Wix pages directly. We did this for a couple pages at a time as opposed to the entire site. During development, we ran into a few issues including the fact that Wix does not have an accordion feature to hide information. We opted to use the built-in FAQ plug-in but it often displays erroneous information, and we opted to link back to the portfolio page instead and dropped heavy text pages. In addition, we struggled with frequent overriding when the client was doing his weekly training tasks and the team building out his site. We overcame this by setting an editing schedule with client editing during work hours and the team editing at night.
We got feedback from our client by presenting major changes with a recommendation each week. The client often deferred to us for our opinion in both design and functionality but had strong opinions about the color scheme and language for the copy used on the site. When asking for feedback, we were very specific about our questions which warranted specific feedback. We also conducted user testing with a few members of the firm, architecture graduate students, and friends and family that were unfamiliar with Graves Design Group. The firm members, we soon discovered, were too familiar with the firm and were able to answer questions without using the website. Through user testing, we found that the project types could be tailored to be more specific. In addition, we found some minor design flaws in how “clickable” certain sections of the site were, and updated the interactive ability. We shared major findings and pulled out common themes from our user tests. Then we discussed some recommendations on how to improve the site. If the changes were a content change, we deferred to the expertise of our client. Otherwise, we made the design changes based on best practices at the time. Finally, we shared our findings with our client who was very receptive to the changes that needed to be made.
We centered our training around what the client would be doing after we left. We knew that the client would need to make updates to the projects in the portfolio as well as staff members in the firm. We started our training there. We gave the client a checklist of everything that needed to be done every time he went on to maintain the site. Then, asked which parts he was unfamiliar with. We made step-by-step video tutorials of each part of the checklist. We went over this with our client every week and assigned him a small portion of the site to work on. Our client was very diligent with his training tasks, so he always came back to us the following week with questions or would email us if anything was unclear. We made a total of 16 training videos in tandem with a “Start Here” guide that links all the videos as well as defined any terms that were unclear for the client.