Case Study
The Swinton Estate
The Project
The Swinton Estate was unhappy with the way its main page looked. There were many pictures, but almost no text. From an SEO point of view the lack of content was not beneficial. In order to attract the interest of visitors the menu and linking structure needed to be improved as well.
We were tasked with redesigning the homepage both visually and in terms of information. At the same time, we were commissioned to design and build three additional custom page templates on services that they wanted to highlight and make more accessible: celebration events, weddings, meetings.
They also needed a video page with a great presentation of the Swinton Estate, for better promotional opportunities. This had to be easily accessible from the header section of the main page.
Challenges
Previously, the Swinton Estate theme/templates were done by another developer a few years ago and since then a huge amount of information has been accumulated also because it is a WordPress Multisite. The website and its administrative interface was very slow also because of its complexity.
First we did a backup and started by downsizing the database and optimizing images on the live site. Then we cloned it all to do the development work on the copy. We had to be careful not to break code we hadn’t written and still implement the new features. The internal pages have different template and menu assigned, the megamenu had to be integrated so that it was only available on the main page; here the old menu had to be discarded.
Solutions
We created responsive wireframes for the homepage based on the submitted documentation. For the other three pages we skipped the wireframing process as we were starting from an existing template, with some tweaks. This was followed by designs for phone, tablet and desktop. Once these were approved, we built and styled the templates. In the meantime we installed, configured the necessary plugins (megamenu, tabs), and used shortcodes where needed. At the same time, we edited images and added content while also paying attention to easy after administration and SEO requirements. In addition we created the video page as well with a captivating presentation of Swinton Estate.
All above pages were tested again on all devices and after a final check the customizations were transferred to the live site with success.
