Who are they?
Big Role Media are an inclusive media company based in Los Angeles. Targeted largely at women, Big Role produces multimedia that ‘gives them a nudge to hold their head high, get out there, grab a hold of their dreams, and not let them escape‘. They are multi-talented and write, record and film their own work.
Their requirement
Having had a Squarespace site previously, they wanted to move onto a more capable platform, one that gave them more features, more options, more scope for growth and a greater ability to truly customise the sites to match their ‘brand’. This was their first experience of WordPress, and like most of us, that first experience was daunting.
WordPress does lots of good things but the “Dashboard” is not one of them. I still remember my first visit shortly after having installed a box-fresh copy of WP, it was overwhelming; I had no idea where to start, what was a Post vs a Page, where images had to go etc. Having spent 16 years successfully crafting sites in html by hand, WordPress’ dashboard seemed like it was more of a hindrance than a help.
Big Role Media wanted a ‘magazine’ style site where they could write articles, post video, share audio and generally connect with their audience (and demonstrate their multitude of talents).
What did QD Design do?
We ran an initial WordPress 101 session over Zoom to a) find out what they needed and b) give some pointers on navigating around the Dashboard.
As they began to create content, we suggested and added suitable plugins to offer the functionality they required and began to customise the site appearance by creating a child theme that removed some of the elements that were not needed. We advised them to streamline the dozens of Categories and hundreds of Tags to a more usable amount and then linked specific Post Categories to certain Pages making it quicker to find the content type or subject matter the visitor was after. We also connected the site to both Google Search Console and Google Analytics so traffic and search health could be monitored.
Lastly, we ran the site through a suite of tests to evaluate site speed, SEO and accessibility (all part of Google’s Core Web Vitals they use to measure user experience of a site). Where possible, issues that were flagged were addressed through opting in / out of different plugins, resizing media images and deploying a SEO tool. Frustratingly, as a wordpress.com (hosted by WordPress rather than the self hosted wordpress.org type of site), some of the built in and unavoidable tools and plugins were the cause of Core Web Vital problems. C’mon WordPress, why are you building in issues and problems?
The finished article
Whilst no website is ever finished (there is always new content to add, improvements to make and updates to apply), this is how the site looks right now.
A huge thank you to Bella at Big Role Media for asking QD Design to help with their site. We now have / have had customers in the Middle East, Australasia and now the USA. Where next?
Nick has web design experience spanning two centuries (well his first page was in 1998)! He is passionate about helping smaller businesses and new ventures make their mark on the web. As well as a web designer he has spent time as a management consultant and business coach and brings these skills to help customers excel. When not designing websites he is likely to be in the mountains be it skiing, climbing or just taking photos of awe inspiring scenery.