Sergey and Eleni, the owners of Roseville Dance, had a great studio with bamboo floors, a nice location, and classy decor. Being in business for only a couple years but experiencing high demand for their studio and award winning instructors, they decided it was time to expand. With the expansion came talks to fix issues with their website and add some wish list items (from a multimedia gallery, to drawing more traffic via online advertising). One major issue that the legacy site suffered from was that it its Content Management System (Wordpress) wasn’t “smart”, which meant that it was difficult to keep related and intertwined sections up-to-date and accurate. For example, if a new class was added it didn’t allow for the content editor to assign teachers to it to allow the end user to know who will be teaching the class. The calender on the legacy site wasn’t even really part of the site, but rather a Google Calendar which needed to be updated by the content editor by logging into google and updating it there. When a class was removed the content editor would have to manually remove the class from the google calendar and the class list section. We can go on and on, but needless to say the legacy suffered from more than just aesthetic issues, but rather platform issues as well.
Amarantcreative was approached by Roseville Dance after a professional reference mentioned us to them. After some initial project scope gathering, amarantcreative proposed two options, the first to fix issues and enhance the current site but still be on the same wordpress blogging platform or second to do a ground up build from design to coding and integration with Expression Engine (the world’s best and most flexible CMS in our opinion). The best option was clear, a ground up build (although a little more expensive) meant Roseville Dance would have a site that is rock solid, supported by amarantcreative 24/7, hosted on our super fast grid servers, and can be designed to match their solidified identity.
The design concept that was decided upon was to create an online ambiance that reflected the same ambiance a visitor would get when they walk into the Roseville Dance Studio. The legacy site has a stark white (almost hospital like) deep red and white color palette. With the introduction of browns (to pickup the wall colors and bamboo floors) to the color palette, the palette became much more warmer and inviting. The actual inspiration for the finalized color palette was a colorful bench located in the dance studios main lobby. The dance studio had a major decor detail which was carried over to the site to further integrate the look and feel from studio to web, all the trim in the studio was painted black (from doors to trim molding). This framing using black was reflected in the site’s main content wrapper by utilizing an opaque black border. The end result of the look and feel was a site that reinforced the already established Roseville Dance Identity and created a user experience on the web mimicking the experience the a visitor would get if they would walk into the studio.
Once the look and feel was approved came the coding and integration of the xhtml/css table-less code into our CMS of choice, Expression Engine. Some of the most significant improvements from the legacy website was the simplicity of the navigation (reduced from 12 sections to only 6 in the new site). A concern voiced by client regarding the more simplified navigation was that the user will not know what to exactly find in each of the 6 sections of the website. In order to remedy this amarantcreative suggested the use of a box over script which provides the user with additional details about what each section contains. Another significant feature of the new site was the integration of 3 major sections of the site: Instructors, Classes, and Calendar. The Calendar section of the site was designed to be a central place to find all classes and events, with full details about each of them (who teaches the class and when and where the event will be). Leveraging Expression Engines ability to force the content editor to provide consistent information for each section entry and integrating related sections, the Calendar Section of the site automatically pulls information from the classes section (based on recurrence of class), event information from the events section of the homepage, and Instructor profile information from the About section of the website to create a easy to browse user experience which effectively delivers a large amount of information in a simple yet powerful interface. What does this all mean? This means Roseville Dance has to spend less time maintaining their site to ensure accuracy, effectively reducing the chance of incorrect/outdated information on their site and the end user gets an experience which allows them to easily get the information they need and builds their confidence in the professionalism and high quality of the Roseville Dance brand.
On top of design, coding/integration of the new Roseville Dance site, amarantcreative provides Support, Hosting, and Business Class email, ac:MAIL (amarantcreative’s hosted Micosoft Exchange killer) so that Eleni and Sergey can focus on what they love, dance, rather than worry about technology issues (that is what amarantcreative is here for). In the end Roseville Dance announced the go-live of their site on the same day as their Grand Opening/Expansion Party, as planned. In fact, they were so happy with the final site and the whole process, amarantcreative was announced as a valued-partner in the studio’s success! Making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
