MRM Project Feature: Train Up a Child Publishing Website Redesign

Sitemap Planning and Organization

Quite common for websites of the same age, Dana’s sitemap had become a bit cluttered with extra pages, resources, products and categories that were out of date or no longer needed. The first step in our work together was to closely analyze all that was in the sitemap and database and determine what could be removed, replaced, or redirected. Dana and Mandy worked closely together for the months leading up to the new site design to eliminate the added bulk and reorganize the content that would stay in the site.

Once all of this pre-work was complete, we focused our attention on the Home page, About page, and Start Here page of the new site, creating highly functional and conversion-ready “landing pages” to help site visitors easily navigate through key areas of the website. We offered prompts to help Dana create conversion copy and calls to action for each of these pages, as well as determining category hierarchies for her products and her blog posts which then provided easy roadmaps for potential customers to follow throughout the site.

Website Design

Dana is more than happy with her current branding and does a great job of keeping her presence consistent and identifiable online, so we simply integrated that into our design work for the website. Given her audience base, it was necessary that the website design feel vibrant and appealing to home educators with students of all ages. We also wanted to balance the “school house” feel with a design that represented Train Up a Child Publishing as the professional and thriving business that it is.

After reviewing several competitor or similar websites and discussing Dana’s priorities for the design, Carol used wireframes to ensure proper placement for the copy and elements on each page. Once all wireframes were approved, she moved to the high-fidelity mockups included in the design, to offer Dana pixel-perfect iterations of the new pages for approval.

Mandy and Maria then implemented these designs in the development portion of the project, using a custom Kadence child theme and the block builder to amplify the design, add longevity to the unique pages, and ensure that Dana can edit and maintain each one on her own. When the key pages were complete, the team focused on updating the WooCommerce products so all of Kadence’s Shop Kit features were available and all products were easy to navigate via categories and archive pages. The blog area of Dana’s website was also optimized to offer additional buttons and customized opt-ins or resources based on the categories assigned.

After all developmental tasks were complete, Randi and Mandy added Affi.ai’s Sitestripe Converter and worked through all of Dana’s Amazon affiliate embeds and product recommendations. Per Amazon’s recent changes, the product iframe codes embedded on Dana’s site were no longer functional or displaying the product images. The Affi.ai plugin helped import those images so they will display properly and be clickable again for site visitors. This plugin also adds additional blocks to the editor in WordPress so Dana will have many new features and options available to her going forward.

With the final step of a thorough database cleanup once the new design was moved into place, we were happy to launch this impressive and beautiful new online home for the Train Up a Child Publishing eStore. Dana was equipped with a library of Loom videos and WordPress tutorials to offer hours of training and education for best website practices and navigating the Gutenberg block editor, and we look forward to watching all that she’ll accomplish in this new, healthy site!

What Dana had to say…

“Thank you for EVERYTHING. It has been a pleasure working with you and your team as well, and I appreciated your [patience and] understanding [of my] other responsibilities. Thank you again for your professional, thoughtful, and competent handling of my project! Another job well done!“