A new Block Editor-enabled WordPress site for Washington State Council of the Emergency Nurses Association – a not-for-profit professional organization affiliated with the National Emergency Nurses Association. Washington ENA is dedicated to quality patient care, public safety, continuing education, nursing research and promotion of the nursing profession.
Scope of Work
Our web design team was selected as part of a formal RFP to clone a Ruby On Rails website into a standalone WordPress environment so that WA ENA would have more control over content management.
- Client discovery and needs assessment
- Accessibility conformance
- Content migration
- Performance optimization
- Visual Design & Layout
- WordPress theme development
The new site includes a dynamic events calendar, online contact forms, and a variety of member resources.
Overall homepage size decreased 58% to 1.227 Mb – 42% below the industry median; and reducing Javascript improved mobile page speed 3 fold, to ~1.7 seconds.
To improve conformance to WCAG Level AA – the new website features ‘skip to content’ links, keyboard-navigable navigation, high contrast colors (> 4.5:1), semantic HTML, and other best practices.
Benchmarks
| Performance Metric | Old Ruby On Rails Site | New WordPress Website |
|---|---|---|
| Google Lighthouse: Accessibility | 77/100 | 91/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Best Practices | 100/100 | 100/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Mobile Speed | 45/100 | 99/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Desktop Speed | 61/100 | 100/100 |
| Google Lighthouse: Search Engine Optimization | 92/100 | 92/100 |
| WebPageTest Speed Index | 4.716 | 1.746 |
| Total Homepage File Size | 2.912 Mb (666 Kb Images + 1.582 Mb Scripts + 222 Kb Fonts + 462 Kb CSS + 42 Kb HTML) | 1.227 Mb (760 Kb Images + 256 Kb Scripts + 117 Kb Fonts + 92 Kb CSS + 32 Kb HTML) |
| Total Web Server Requests | 28 (4 Images + 9 Scripts + 4 CSS + 5 Fonts + 3 Other + 3 HTML) | 71 (14 Images + 26 Scripts + 23 CSS + 4 Fonts + 3 Other + 1 HTML) |
| Estimated Mobile Homepage Load Time | ~4.7 seconds | ~1.7 seconds |
WebPageTest Speed Index: median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388
In 2024, 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.
Site Credits
Branding & Visual Design: Terri Nakamura
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow
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