Web Design
Case Study
WF Education
WF Education are a US company with a large presence in the UK and France supplying schools and other educational institutions with equipment.
CMS
WordPress
URL
DESIGN PROCESS
The European operations of WF operate separately from its US owners. The project was multifaceted with a new shop/e-commerce side to the business and their brochure site, which the case study refers to.
1. Time Management
The wider team were already using Trello and Click-Up for task tracking. Stakeholders were located in the UK and France. Again, you had to manage expectations of key stakeholders and be clear.
2. Research
Hundreds of schools use the site and feedback was that it was cluttered and not particulay enaging or eye-catching. Users found it hard to locate downloads and user guides and the orginal site wasn’t mobile/tablet friendly.
3. User Testing
From the feedback, a wireframe was designed how the new site should function and the user journey. From this, several pages were mocked-up and sent out to internal and external users for feeback. This was done on a sub-domain.
4. Team Management
Several stakeholders were involved: the web-team, IT and an external agency. They were located throughout the UK and France. Regular, set Teams calls were made througout the week for status updates. Ownership of tasks from the individuals was pramount but also the team needed to flex if someone was stuck on a task.
OUTCOME
The final redesign was a website that was built using Elementor built on the WordPress CMS. Much more interaction with the site was included in the design from the feedback received and searching for downloads was made such easier. The ‘mega-nav’ also has built-in images when you hover over it for greater visual impact.
My thinking behind this design is to ensure users are not overwhelmed with too much information at once. The main audience of the site will be schools and teachers – but not students.
The site needed to be optimised for that audience so voulme checks on key search terms was undertaken to ensure the site came up in the correct areas for a Google search.
For such a site, using anything other than WordPress would have been overkill. Magento 2 would be arguably better if sales were going to be made from it, but this is purely a brochure site that promotes the business.
OLD SITE DESIGN
As a comparison, the old site built using Dreamweaver is quite cluttered and not particularly mobile-friendly with text running off the screen.
In terms of design, the user interface was cluttered and as was the menu system.