About the Project

A friend of mine mentioned that they were planning on restarting their business, but with a new spin. Part of the challenge was to remove a previous component of the business while increasing emphasis on the other component. While the site already was in a good state, a small amount of adjustment could improve usability, information architecture, SEO, and digital accessibility.

Theme

The website was previously built on Squarespace 7.1.

Method

Website Analysis

Upon first look at the website, it was clear there were opportunities to structure the layout of the content, add additional lead-in or descriptive text, and update the CSS for branding consistency. Upon further analysis (including building the sitemap), I was able to recommend the following tactics for simple improvement:

• URL Slug and Page Title synchronicity–ensure that pages match the URL slug to improve SEO and UX
• Standardize headings and buttons
• Rework existing business description text, break out themes and place them into distinctive areas.
• Build an About page to tell the story of the business.
• Create lead-in text for landing pages
• Utilize the excerpts and categories & tags for posts for better identification
• Archive or delete unused pages.

Wireframes and Mock-ups

Using Figma, wireframes were built to illustrate the proposed updates, while still keeping to the original theme and colors of the site. Each page in the wireframe was kept to a low-medium fidelity as to keep focus on the basic structure and layout.

Execution and Build

While my primary expertise is WordPress, navigating and updating the site in Squarespace wasn’t too difficult. It is extremely helpful to be able to utilize a “visual builder”. However, many concepts in the wireframes and our discussions had to be reworked due to Squarespace’s limitations.

Additionally, it was very helpful that the site owner had experience and confidence in working on the site, so that there was no bottleneck when it came to updating the website with content.