This has been my biggest website redesign project to date. Both in terms of the amount of work involved but also in terms of the impact on the client.
I am a past student of the Irish Lifecoach Institute’s Diploma in Personal & Business Coaching. Having gone through the course I had experienced first-hand how UNuser-friendly the website was. It was a maze, incredibly difficult to navigate and you could forget visiting it on a mobile device. It just didn’t match the high quality of the course.
Coaching is in part about helping clients to align their actions with goals to be more authentic. I wanted to help the ILI bring their website into alignment with their quality courses.
I sent Adrian, ILI Owner, an email back in December with a link to a mock redesign of the existing ILI homepage. This got the conversation started. We decided to look closer at applying for the Trading Online Voucher, a government grant towards the upgrading or development of websites for small businesses. You can find out more info about the voucher on my Trading Online Voucher page here. Adrian submitted an application and in January he got confirmation of acceptance.
We set out the deliverables of the redesign project – what would be necessary. Over the coming months I built a totally new website for him that is centred around a cleaner and smoother user experience.
Cleaner smooter User Experience
I did this by removing clunky unnecessary elements, replacing them with cleaner and more consistent styling of colour, structure and navigation of the site.
Login/Logout button
I also added a login/logout button to the main header area of the site that is visible on all pages allowing users a quick way of logging in or out.
My Account Area
I added a My Account page for students to be able to see what payments they have made, update their details and get an overview of their course progress.
eCommerce Sales Process
I added an eCommerce online store as an upgrade from the existing one page with PayPal buttons. This upgrade is a very clean and clear process for the customers. Using the WooCommerce plugin I created a custom shop, a custom product page and added Cart and Checkout pages. This gives a professional feel to the site and is a widely used process for payments on sites. I combined the existing separate pages for products and another for courses into the one Store page where customers can see all of the available purchases in one place
Courses page
There was no dedicated page to listing all of the courses on offer. I added one in with a feature that enables Adrian to add an ‘Enrolling’ ribbon to the courses he is currently enrolling for. This allows customers to quickly scan through the courses the ILI offers and see which ones they are currently enrolling for.
Resource Centre
This was a key element of the website redesign. The resource centre is a student-only portal where they can access the material from the course and submit assignments. The original resource centre was very plain and unstructured. I looked at a few options and decided on an LMS most suitable for Adrian and his students. I set this up and copied over the material from the existing resource centres pasting it into the new structured and user-friendly LMS.
These are just a few changes that were made to the site. Already Adrian has passed on some positive feedback from his students about the new layout and design.
If you’re interested in learning more about working with me please contact me through the contact form below or email me at oisinhoy@gmail.com. To see more of my work go to my Portfolio.
Thanks for reading. See you next time.
