Recent Project: PetsInPractise.co.uk

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My latest website project was to create a redesign for the Pets in Practise website.  Pets in Practise is a company based in the North Hampshire and Berkshire area that specialises in giving advice on pet behaviour, training, and helping pets overcome behaviour problems.  The company's website was built a little over a year ago using the Joomla content management system for the employees to make updates, and the company wanted to refresh its design.

The redesign took two weeks, with the majority of the design and implementation completed at the weekend and in the evenings. This included a new design that was mocked up in Adobe Fireworks, colour correcting images to use for the slideshow, and development integration in Joomla Content Management System (CSS changes with some HTML changes). A screenshot of the new design is below.

petsinpractise-new.jpg

Despite never having had any experience with Joomla before this project, I found it to be quite easy to understand and work through. Some of the editing within the Content Management System can be fiddly, but it was otherwise fine, bearing in mind that all Content Management Systems have their own strengths and weaknesses. It seemed robust enough to make the changes, though sometimes it inputs some bad code, which needed to be cleaned up in order to fix a few of the pages.

Obviously, for those of you who are doing a similar project or any web redesign project, I cannot state how important it is to back up the data files and database before beginning any work (as well as backing up the files once the website has gone live). Nothing went wrong for me, but it's always important to back everything up, and it's such a simple step that could save a project for potentially going completely wrong and losing everything. Also, I've got friends in the same industry who have told stories about an old employer not backing up the data, but they fortunately had taken a backup, so they were able to retrieve some of the work.

Coming back to the website redesign, I've attached a screenshot of their old design below, and I analysed what could be changed and put these items in a list.
  • The website is text-oriented, and there's not much that really grabs the user to pull them into the website. There's no definition of a hierarchy to pull the user in, such as headings. Most visitors will skim over material, but if the website is visually engaging and the content is presented with visual cues (defined headings and a hierarchy), then visitors will take a little time to skim and read content more thoroughly.
  • A phone number or contact information is not displayed prominently. There is a phone number in the footer, but it's not noticeable. A smaller, local business should include more prominent contact information so a prospective client can easily get in touch and not have to search the website for this information.
  • The navigation could be broken down into sub-navigation as one mentions information about the company and the other mentions specific information about training and behaviour. The navigation menu itself also feels a bit 'lost'.
  • I felt that the services offered was slightly vague on the home page, and this could be improved with headings and graphical elements breaking up the flow of the page.
  • I didn't like the slideshow photographs blended together, and I felt the photographs were stronger on their own.
  • The company has a Facebook page and a Twitter page, and I felt that this could be advertised more prominently to keep regular clients collaborating and up-to-date as the owner of the business keeps the social media websites up-to-date.
  • I felt that testimonials on the home page is absolutely necessary for this type of business and it could get clients to use the service. The company has many testimonials from previous clients, and I felt that it was a shame for these to be hidden under a sub-menu.
  • I felt that it was important to mention the owner and her qualifications on the website more prominently than in the footer, where it gets 'lost'.

petsinpractise-old.jpg

Send me a message and let me know what you think of the new design.

Also, the owner is lovely, so if you have a problematic pet or need someone to speak about pets and are located in the area, then I am sure she could help. The website is http://www.petsinpractise.co.uk.

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