Context
I interned with UW Provision, a family-owned wholesaler and retailer of meat products, in Summer 2016. As UWP’s Retail Promotions & Marketing Assistant, my responsibilities included managing the company’s website, creating content for the company’s blog, and updating the online events calendar. I was asked by UW Provision President Steve Kalscheur to update the company’s custom theme website.
He wanted to insert a poll feature and an online fundraiser form as well as reopen UW Provision’s online store. Kalscheur also asked me to make any other updates that I saw were necessary. I reached out to Powderkeg Web Design who created a new website for UW Provision and built the company a custom WordPress theme in February 2017. Because UW Provision’s website has a custom theme, I wasn’t able to make some of these updates on my own and since partnered with Powderkeg to update UW Provision’s website.
Objectives
- Insert a poll feature and an online fundraiser form.
- Reopen UW Provision’s online store.
- Updated UW Provision’s logo.
- Add SendInBlue, UWP’s new email marketing program, email newsletter sign-up.
- Update background graphics and branding.
- Make any other updates to the custom theme.
Audit the Current Website
To determine what updates to UW Provision’s custom theme needed to be made, I conducted an extensive audit of every webpage on the company website. When auditing, I took notes of broken links, low-quality photos to be replaced, and branding inconsistencies as well as irrelevant, out-of-date, and missing content. I organized my webpage notes into the website’s sections they are located in and compiled these notes into the UW Provision Website Changes document.
Meet with Powderkeg Web Design
I shared this document with Powderkeg’s Account Manager Elise Jenson and we discussed my notes in person at Powderkeg’s headquarters in Verona, Wisconsin. During my meeting with Jenson, she informed me which updates were cosmetic that I could make on the front-end and which updates Powderkeg’s web design team would have to make on the back-end of the website. Afterwards, Jenson compiled our meeting notes and provided an estimate for each update in the UW Provision Website Enhancement document. After reviewing the document with Kalscheur, he decided to remove the poll feature and online fundraiser form from the list of updates but approved of the remaining updates.
Mock-Up, Edit, Repeat
Once the updates were approved, the Powderkeg web design team got to work creating a mock-up of the updated custom theme. Once the team completed the mock-up, Jenson emailed the link to me to review. After auditing the mock-up, I emailed a list of edits to be made to Jenson and she forwarded it to the design team. We continued this process for a few months until I was completely satisfied with the mock-up. You can view the final mock-up for the updated custom WordPress theme and the reopened online store and compare them to the current UW Provision website with the outdated custom theme.
What I Learned
- When working on a long-term project with multiple people involved, organization is essential. By organizing my audit notes as well as my mock-up edits of each webpage into the website’s sections and utilizing bullet points, Jenson, the web design team, Kalscheur and I could all easily read and understand the content. This organization ensured that we were all on the same page.
- Communication is key – whether it be written or visual. I learned how to write very descriptively to explain my edits to the web design team to make the correct changes to the mock-up. To prevent any miscommunication, I also took screenshots of the mock-up and drew circles, lines, and arrows to visually communicate my edits.
- Because of my partnership with Powderkeg, I’m ten times more comfortable working in WordPress. After meeting with Jenson, I walked away with a much deeper understanding of WordPress’ front end. I’m now able to make cosmetic edits myself thanks to Jenson and the web design team’s guidance.