Somewhere in the Southwest
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Accelerated Rebranding for Nonprofit Consulting Firm
A visual design refresh for Alford Group, a minority & woman owned firm that provides fundraising and strategy consulting to nonprofits.
Scope of work for the website refresh included:
a new logo, new typography, updated color palette with a bright orange accent; as well as other layout and style updates to coordinate with the updated brand identity (created by Advocate Creative).
Despite a homepage content slider, Google Lighthouse performance benchmarks remain impressive:
Accessibility: 96/100
Best Practices: 92/100
Mobile Optimization: 78/100
Desktop Optimization: 99/100
SEO: 83/100
Total Page Size: 948 Kb (In 2021, the average page size was ~ 2.4 Mb; median = ~2.1 Mb)
Empowering Nonprofit Clients. Strengthening Nonprofit Communities.
The latest custom-branded, mobile responsive WordPress redesign for Refugee Women’s Alliance. ReWA provides refugees and immigrants in the Puget Sound area with services to help them become independent.
Primary project objectives included:
- To improve ease of use: content management, information architecture, and site maintenance
- To improve page load performance
One of our first tasks was optimizing 10.5 Mb of full size images to load faster. Other performance optimization tasks included:
replacing homepage content sliders/carousels with more effective user interface elements – such as sitewide calls-to-action to drive conversions; reducing Javascript features; consolidating and removing Theme features; replacing theme-integrated features, such as custom event Post Types, with more appropriate Plugins to improve modular integration, long-term stability and maintenance.
Web Design + Development Team
Visual Design Consulting: Erik Fadiman
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow
ThemeForest vs. WordPress: Theme Comparison
Seattle Animal Shelter Foundation contacted me in fall 2021 about a website rebuild.
The organization was satisfied with their overall brand identity, as well as the look and feel of their existing site. However, the board of directors wanted to address concerns of very poor mobile page load speeds, often in excess of 12 seconds.
Scope of Work
My goal was to clone the site content and mimic the existing visual look and feel – while optimizing accessibility, performance, and search engine optimization.
- accessibility testing
- front-end web development
- performance optimization
- security hardening
- search engine optimization
- WordPress training and consulting
It was easy to identify the root cause of the performance issues: a template ThemeForest Theme, with too many Plugins. Overall page size was 3.6 Mb, well above the industry average of 2.4 Mb. However, the main contributor to page load latency is usually ‘web server file requests.’ Together, the Theme and Plugins generated 89 server requests – including 36 Javascript files. In addition to a rotating content carousel, the Visual Composer Plugin was generating significant code bloat. These poor development practices impacted usability, site engagement and conversions.
Below are screenshots during development. Do you notice significant changes in the look & feel?
Performance Analysis
By switching to a WordPress.org-approved Theme, _Underscores, and consolidating and removing Plugins – web server requests were reduced 64%, from 89 to 32; overall page size also decreased 71%, from 3.6 Mb to 1 Mb. Replacing the Visual Composer Plugin with WordPress’ native Gutenberg Block Editor significantly improved performance. These efforts improved page load speed to reasonable sub 3 seconds on mobile devices.
| Metric | ThemeForest (Anima) Theme | WordPress _Underscores Theme |
| Google Lighthouse: Accessibility | 88/100 | 96/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Best Practices | 80/100 | 92/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Mobile Speed | 31/100 | 85/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Desktop Speed | 64/100 | 99/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Search Engine Optimization | 70/100 | 86/100 |
| WebPageTest Speed Index | 7.523 | 3.267 |
| Homepage File Size | 3.6 Mb (1.9 Mb Images + 1.3 Mb Scripts + 199 Kb CSS + 305 Kb Fonts + 70 Kb HTML) | 1.05 Mb (720 Kb Images + 125 Kb Scripts + 68 Kb CSS + 120 Kb Fonts + 28 Kb HTML) |
| Web Server Requests | 89 (21 Images + 36 Scripts +15 CSS + 7 Font + 9 Other + 5 HTML) | 32 (9 Images + 11 Scripts + 7 CSS +3 Fonts + 2 Other + 1 HTML) |
| Estimated Homepage Load Time on mobile | ~7.5 seconds | ~3.3 seconds |
In 2021, the average page size = ~2.4 Mb and median page size = ~2.1 Mb.
Database-driven websites, like WordPress, are more performance optimized when server requests are < 40 – 60.
The final result is a simpler, faster, yet on-brand, website that is easier to maintain.
Site Credits
WordPress Theme Development by Scott Marlow
What Would Western Wildlife Outreach Do?
Western Wildlife Outreach (WWO) works with partners to provide science-based information to community groups about the ecology, biology, and behavior of grizzly bears, black bears, cougars, and gray wolves. By engaging communities in wildlife and habitat stewardship activities, WWO programs foster an appreciation for large carnivores’ niche in maintaining ecosystem health — providing critical context to environmental recovery efforts happening throughout the Pacific Northwest.
By fall 2021, WWO’s old website was becoming endangered. Page load speed was sluggish, above 5 seconds. Volunteers and new staff could not easily add and update content. Compounded by a clunky user interface that was difficult to navigate, visitors were not engaging with the science-based content.
WWWWOD?
WWO found my nonprofit website marketing services thru 501 Commons. Soon, we embarked to completely rebuild their existing WordPress site, using the native Block Editor to provide a rich, intuitive editing interface, which showcases their rich wildlife photography.
Project objectives included:
- To refresh and modernize the website based on WWO’s existing brand identity;
- To improve ease of use – content management, information architecture, readability, and site maintenance;
- To improve the mobile responsiveness of the site layout for displays from phones to tablets to desktops – including a collapsible navigation menu on mobile;
- To improve compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) level AA – including keyboard-navigable navigation, skip-to-content links, semantic HTML, and high color contrast [> 4.5:1 and > 3.5:1 for large text];
- To improve site security and performance.
Overall homepage size decreased 36% from 1.8 to 1.14 Mb, with another 36% decrease in web server requests – resulting in sub 2-3 second page load speeds.
Performance Analysis
| Performance Metric | Old website (November 2021) | New Website (February 2022) |
|---|---|---|
| Google Lighthouse: Accessibility | 90/100 | 98/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Best Practices | 80/100 | 92/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Mobile Speed | 74/100 | 94/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Desktop Speed | 97/100 | 97/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Search Engine Optimization | 83/100 | 98/100 |
| WebPageTest Speed Index | 1.595 | 2.029 |
| Total Homepage File Size | 1.8 Mb ( 1.3 Mb Images + 110 Kb Scripts + 36 Kb CSS + 12 Kb HTML) | 1.14 Mb (788 Kb Images + 241 Kb Scripts + 69 Kb CSS + 44 Kb Fonts + 22 Kb HTML) |
| Total Web Server Requests | 67 (32 Images + 24 Scripts + 9 CSS + 1 HTML) | 43 (11 Images + 17 Scripts + 11 CSS + 2 Fonts + 2 HTML) |
| Total Homepage Load Time | ~2.4 seconds | ~2 seconds |
In 2021, the average page size = ~2.4 Mb and median page size = ~2.1 Mb.
Database-driven websites, like WordPress, are more performance optimized when server requests are < 40 – 60.
Web Design + Development Team
Visual Design: Erik Fadiman
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow
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