van den Berg Design

Joan van den BergJoan van den Berg is a graphic design professional in Bothell, Washington, with over 20 years of experience. Her crisp design and attention to detail result in effective marketing materials that achieve solid results.

By partnering with marketing professionals and web developers, she offers clients a full range of creative services, transforming innovative ideas into solid marketing solutions. VandenBergDesign.com

WordPress Training, Education, and Support

An accessible, performance-optimized site rebuild for Forefront Suicide Prevention, a program of the University of Washington School of Social Work.

Forefront website screenshot
Forefront Suicide Prevention offers training, education and program support for suicide prevention – using a public health approach to support community-based suicide prevention work.

Forefront needed to update its outdated WordPress site, which was running PHP version 7.4 (deprecated in November 2022). Unfortunately, the site had not been properly maintained for years, so Plugins and WordPress software could no longer be updated. As a result, significant bugs were impacting site features and visitor usability, as well as content editing.

Scope of Work

  • Accessibility consulting, training and remediation
  • Performance Optimization
  • Security Hardening
  • Visual Layout & Design
  • WordPress Theme Development
  • WordPress CMS training

Performance

The new homepage size, at 889 Kb, is 62% below the median industry size of ~2.4 Mb, and web server requests have been reduced 51%, from 80 to 39.

Accessibility

To conform with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA – site features include keyboard-navigable navigation; skip-to-content links; form field labels; semantic HTML; mobile-friendly ‘click-to-call’ phone numbers; and a high color contrast palette.

Performance Metric Old WordPress Website New WordPress Website
Google Lighthouse: Accessibility 80/100 100/100
Google Lighthouse: Best Practices 96/100 96/100
Google Lighthouse: Mobile Speed 67/100 81/100
Google Lighthouse: Desktop Speed 65/100 81/100
Google Lighthouse: Search Engine Optimization 92/100 85/100
WebPageTest Speed Index 3.442 2.960
Total Homepage File Size 3.246 Mb ( 1.6 Mb Images + 1.1 Mb Scripts + 130 Kb CSS + + 320 Kb Fonts + 129 Kb HTML) 889 Kb (357 Kb Images + 161 Kb Scripts + 106 Kb CSS + 270 Kb Fonts + 16 Kb HTML)
Total Web Server Requests 80 (23 Images + 37 Scripts + 9 CSS + 3 Fonts + 4 Other + 4 HTML) 39 (10 Images + 14 Scripts + 12 CSS + 4 Fonts + 1 HTML)
Estimated Mobile Homepage Load Time ~3.4 seconds ~2.9 seconds
WebPage Test 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

Visual Design: Joan van den Berg
WordPress Development: Scott Marlow

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Building Nonprofit Websites in King County

Nonprofit youth mentoring website screenshot

A redesigned WordPress website for The 4C Coalition – a community-based nonprofit, founded in 1999, that helps black and other youth of color succeed in school and in life. The 4C Coalition offers one-on-one mentoring, group mentoring and tutoring to 12- to 17-year-olds in King County.

Scope of Work

content migration
copywriting
creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
online data management
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Performance

Page load speed ranks in the top 15% of sites.

WebPageTest Speed Index: 1.737 (median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388)

Total Page File Size: 1.3 Mb (In 2020, the median web page size = ~2.1 MB; the average page size = ~2.4 Mb)
Total Web Server Requests: 48

Web Design Team

Content Strategy: Rita Cipalla
Photography: Rebecca Sullivan
Visual Design: Joan van den Berg
WordPress Theme Development: Scott Marlow

 

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Original Websites for Original Artists

musician-composer website

A redesigned WordPress website for musician-composer, Glenna Burmer. The new site merges content from burmermusic.com into a single domain for the award-winning artist. Visitors can listen and watch concert clips from SoundCloud and Vimeo. Stay tuned for the teaser trailer for the award-winning animated short film, Nana korobi, Ya oki.

The new website is simply FANTASTIC! Absolutely beautiful!
Glenna Burmer

Scope of Work

content migration
copywriting
creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Performance

Page load speed ranks in the top 10% of sites.

Google Lighthouse benchmarks
Mobile Speed: 85/100
Desktop Speed: 97/100
Accessibility: 96/100
Best Practices:  100/100
Search Engine Optimization: 93/100

WebPageTest Speed Index: 1.169 (median = ~3.591; top 10% = <1.388)

Total Page File Size: 489 Kb (In 2020, the average page size was ~2.4 Mb; the median size was ~2.1 Mb)
Total Web Server Requests: 24 (4 Scripts + 5 Images + 6 CSS files + 4 fonts + 2 Other + 1 HTML )

Team

Content Strategy by: Rita Cipalla
Visual Design by: Joan van den Berg
Banner artwork: Descending Dragon by Nobu Burmer | Banner photo: Sakurajima volcano, Kyushu, Japan, by Glenna Burmer
WordPress Theme Development by: Scott Marlow

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Nonprofit Website Training

Job training center website screenshot

Puget Sound Training Center provides career training and employment services to immigrants, refugees and under-served individuals. PSTC trains individuals who are clients of Washington State Labor and Industry (L&I) and Department of Rehabilitation (DVR); PSTC also partners with CBOs (Community Based Organizations) to provide customized skills training.

This website redesign project involved upgrading the job training center’s decade-old static HTML website into a mobile-first responsive layout, powered by an intuitive WordPress Content Management System. During the redesign, nonprofit staff were trained how to add and edit website content – including text, images, and links – using WordPress’ new Gutenberg Block Editor. In addition to editing content, staff can now use the block editor, which has been custom-branded to their identity, to create mobile responsive layouts.

Scope of Work

creative strategy
color palette development
front-end web development
performance optimization
security hardening
search engine optimization
visual design
WordPress training and consulting

Team

Visual Design by: Joan van den Berg
Photography and WordPress Theme Development by: Scott Marlow

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Beautiful WordPress Websites

screenshot Seattle home consignment store website

Visual Design by Joan van den Berg
WordPress Theme Development by Scott Marlow

A fine visual refresh for a fine Seattle furniture consignment store.

Trish Wills’ new mobile-friendly website features easy-to-update product Posts that customers can browse by category. A modern, minimalist design draws visitors eyes to product details, with descriptions in a readable, classic serif/sans-serif typeface.

The previous non-mobile responsive site had been developed with a custom database that store employees could no longer update in-house. The new WordPress site allows any staff member to publish and edit new inventory as it arrives.

With a homepage size of 223 Kb, and only 23 web server requests – this store site scores in Google’s 90th percentile for page load speed.

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