The ‘Upcycle’ of Website Development Projects
We were recently approached by the owner of The Accountsmith, who was in need of some help with a slow running website that wasn’t working for her like she’d hoped it would when she commissioned it’s build.
So we undertook an audit, this included running a speed test on the website and analysing which elements of each page were delaying loading, this revealed a number of plugins which were installed to speed up the build of the site where much more efficient alternatives were available. We also found in excess of 30 WordPress themes installed on the website which weren’t being used, along with lots of large and unnecessary images, links that weren’t set up properly and unnecessary external links which were built in to the open source software the site had been built on.
Once we’d completed the technical assessment, we looked at the site with a new perspective to complete a visitor review. From this we found that the tone of the wording across the site was confusing, we weren’t sure who we were talking to and the ‘calls to action’ on the home page didn’t enthuse us to complete an action nor inform us of available services. If we’d arrived as a new visitor, looking for information on how The Accountsmith’s bookkeeping services work, we would have left without the information, unless we’d wanted to send an email and wait for a response.
On a large screen, the homepage was lost in an ocean of white space and the menu was so tiny we nearly missed it!
The Solution
First things first! We couldn’t sit around and wait for this homepage to load any longer so we stripped out EVERYTHING that the website didn’t need and replaced the functioning plugins with the necessary javascript or developer code from the relevant platform.
Then we got to work on rebuilding the structure of the site to take a visitor’s potential journey and expectations into account, adding full screen imagery, user friendly navigation, step-ins displaying The Accountsmith’s most popular services and finally rewording the copy throughout the website to reflect the personal service provided by the owner of the company.
The result is beautiful and the owner of The Accountsmith is exactly as happy as we’d like her to be with her slick new online look!
Check out the before & after below:
