Bernhard Spencer’s Online Coursework Site Gets A Redesign
Bernhard Spencer was ready for an overhaul of his site, selfportraitsofgod.com. Redesigning means getting more than a new look. It’s about having an all-in-one solution that gives your website visitors exactly what they are asking for when they need it. The toughest step for site owners is frequently understanding the difference between what they want to say and what their visitors want to know.
Bernhard Spencer has long studied and taught religious doctrine, and used his website to hold his coursework and articles. He’s not much on images cluttering up his website; he wants a clean, clear, concise presentation that is very user-friendly and offers alternatives for reading online and downloading. He wanted his site to be responsive / mobile-friendly and to improve his Google rank.
Bernhard’s first step was to take a step back and look at the big picture, asking himself, “What are you trying to achieve?” A strong plan at the beginning makes for a smooth process along the way. Bernhard looked at every area of his site, cutting and adding information.
Next, he contacted us here at beachdog.com to discuss his goals, budget and options. We were able to scrape data from his then live site and drop it into a new site in a development location. This allowed for as much time as Bernhard wanted to review and tweak the new site before his followers would see it. Wendy worked with him to add new information while Keleigh and Faraz formatted the pages to Bernhard’s specifications, adding user-friendly icons and converting material previously only available by pdf into site pages for online reading. Keleigh gave it a once-over for search-engine optimization, ensuring the site would rank as organically well as possible in Google.
Just a few days later, with Bernhard happy with the new site in development, Faraz launched it, replacing the previous site. Over the next week or so, we watched the site in Google to see what effect the redesign would have. Making the site faster, responsive / mobile-friendly, and database-driven, while improving content, had the impact we expected. We saw improvement in search rank for the five top search terms targeted.
It’s important to talk with your web developer when you’re ready to embark on a project like this. We can help you meet your goals for the redesign, whether they be search rank, social integration, making a responsive / mobile-friendly site, or simply getting new or more visitors. Let us know your budget and goals and see what we can do to maximize one to get you to the other!
